First Garden Harvest

Well, guess it's garden harvest time here! Well, just the beginning actually, most of the garden produce is still in it's seedling stage.

My chives and rhubarb have been ready to pick for a couple weeks now. In fact, both had gone to seed already, I hope they make a come-back, especially the rhubarb.

I cut a handful of chives and chopped them up to dry in my dehydrator. I might go pick some more and make it a worth the energy used to run the dryer. Once they're dried I use them in scrambled eggs mostly, but also in homemade biscuits.

My next harvest today was the rhubarb. It had 3 seed stalks already so I pulled them out and picked about a third of the ripe rhubarb. I haven't made canned rhubarb in a few years so I didn't want to waste all of the rhubarb in case I messed up the syrup. Well, it turned out good, even if the rhubarb cooked a bit too long. I clean & sterilize my jars in the dishwasher and the cycle took longer than I realized it would.

Now I have a canned rhubarb topping. :o) It will taste yummy on cake or over ice cream.

I cooked up 4 cups of water with 1 3/4 cups white sugar to make a medium syrup (according to my Bernardin canning recipe book). I added my bundle of chopped and rinsed rhubarb (maybe 6-8 cups chopped) and then cooked it for a few minutes.

I ended up with these 6 pint jars and about a cup of leftover rhubarb/syrup that we'll use tonight for dessert.

Now that I know what syrup to make, I'll pick the rest of the rhubarb another day. My sister-in-law wants me to split an older plant so I'll do that too. Her rhubarb doesn't produce well anymore, so it's time to share since I can't keep up to the production from the 3 large plants I have.