Park Seed Garden Journal

Quick & Easy Old-Fashioned Berry Jam

This is a quick and easy, old-fashioned jam recipe, perfect for creating a personalized gift from your very own garden or simply ensuring that your abundant berry harvest doesn't go to waste.

Jellies and jams start the same way, with a bowl of fresh fruit from your garden. The main difference is Jellies are clear, made only from the fruit juice, and Jams are chunky, consisting of the the juice, seeds, and fruit body. Jam is my favorite, and it is easier. You don't even need any pectin.

Suggested Materials:

1. Canning Jars (usually sold at most grocery stores)
2. Jar Grabbers (Tongs made for canning, so you don't burn your hands)
3. Jar Funnel (Or, you can just ladle your preserves into the jars if you wish)
4. Canner (A pot large enough to submerge and boil your jars)
5. A Blender/Food Processor/Magic Bullet/Potato Masher

Ingredients:

1. Sugar
2. About 5 lbs. of Fresh Berries from your garden
   

Park Seed currently offers:
Blueberries - 3 Varieties
Cranberries
Grapes - 2 Varieties
Strawberries - 4 varieties
Raspberries - 4 varieties
And many more.

You can use any fruit you like, mixing and matching as much as you like to find your own unique flavor.

Making The Jam

1. After you've washed your fruit and removed all leaves and stems, crush, process, or blend it thoroughly - you want to release as much juice as you can.
2. Measure your sugar. The mix will be about 2 parts sugar/3 parts fruit. So, if you have about 6 cups of crushed berries, measure out 4 cups of sugar. Work in smaller amounts, no more than 9-12 cups of crushed fruit at a time, because more fruit requires longer to cook, and it will become too dark and bland.
   
3. Put your berries in a pot and bring them to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent burning and sticking. Stir in sugar until it is dissolved and boil for about 5 minutes. Keep stirring, don't let the jam stick or burn.
4. Ladle you jam into the jars, close the lids tight, and boil the whole jar in the canner for another 5-10 minutes.
5. Remove your jars and let them cool overnight. You're done. Try not to jostle or bump your jars while they are hot.

It's that easy, delicious jam!

Plant Blackberries and Blueberries For Great Summer Treats!

I have always been a fan of berries, particularly Blueberries and Blackberries, probably as a result of all the pies, homemade ice cream, milkshakes, and jams that came out of my great-grandfather's yard when I was young. As soon as the air warms a little and the trees start to bud, I start dreaming about the multitudes of sweet possibilities growing in the garden.

Blackberries and Blueberries, two of my personal favorites, are both native to North America, and they grow vigorously in the wild. Here in South Carolina, thorny patches of wild Blackberry can be a real nuisance if it gets out of hand, and wild Blueberries are often too small and a little too tart.

But Park Seed offers the spectacular, thornless Blackberry 'Navaho' -- you won't have to get out the first-aid kit to make your favorite pie!

And the most popular Blueberry bush this year is the Blueberry 'Spartan' -- I promise, some of the biggest berries you've seen, with some as big as a quarter. Spartan also has big white blooms and beautiful, showy fall foliage. This sweet and tangy fruit is perfect for one of my favorite treats, Blueberry Cream Pie! And if you are a health nut, Blueberries, full of antioxidants and vitamins, make delicious, immune system-boosting, low-cal smoothies.

National Watermelon Day at Park Seed

August third of every year is National Watermelon Day.  It's a celebration of one of those great fruits that nearly everyone loves.  To me, I don't think any fruit or vegetable is so closely associated with summer as watermelons are.  They're right up there with hot dogs, lemonade, and sunburns earned on the lake.  This year it fell on a Sunday, so we didn't celebrate it in the office until the next day.  Here's David, part of our E-Com department, with a beautiful watermelon he brought from his home garden for the occasion (as if we needed an excuse).  Just another one of the perks of working at Park Seed.

Did you grow watermelons this year?  We would love to see pictures of you and your family enjoying the fruits of your labor!  Send pictures to tandrews@parkseed.com, and we might just post them up here or at Park Seed Memories.

Blueberry Sunshine Blue: The Best Container Blueberry Plants

I suspect that we all love growing our own fruit.  The satisfaction of biting into a sweet, fantastic apple or pear that you've grown yourself can't be beat (nothing's better than fresh).  Blueberry plants are especially popular.  The fruit is not only delicious and extremely healthy, it's also versatile.  Blueberries are not only great raw, alone or in cream, but also baked in almost any way you can imagine.  The problem that many people have with growing blueberries is that many blueberry plants aren't the prettiest fruit plants available out there.  Park Seed has found one, however, that is one of the best-looking plants you'll ever see.  The foliage on the Blueberry Sunshine Blue is a glossy silvery-green color, and it's semi-evergreen to boot!  It's a dwarf blueberry bush with a dense habit that makes it a perfect container plant.  Sunshine Blue is easily attractive enough to stand alone as an ornamental potted plant, but come spring it is covered in bright pink flowers followed by masses of sweet, juicy dark blueberries.

Blueberry Sunshine Blue is also an exceptionally easy blueberry bush to grow.  It's self-pollinating, hardy all the way from Zone 5 to Zone 9, and it's more tolerant of high pH than most other blueberries.  Add to that the ease of container gardening (it's certainly easier to adjust the pH of a couple of gallons of soil than a patch of uncontained ground), and you've got one of the easiest blueberry bushes I've ever seen.