What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

at the moment, waking up and taking stock of what i hope to do. pick more beans for me. Mom is going to have to pick tomatoes. normally i help her, but this past time i just carried buckets in for her and i did the canning. today she picks and i'll carry again. she may have to do most of the processing as i have beans i have to sort through before they start rotting that can't wait for another day. those i'll do right now before i get out to pick some more.

luckily i made it through a bad back tweak for a few days and kept going, but i sure hope that was it. i don't have time right now for back troubles. ibuprofen worked when i needed it (which is why i've never wanted to make a habit of using it otherwise).

 

[Carol Dee]

WEED weed WEED , have to to find stuff to harvest Picked some Over ripe cucumber and zucs. DH brought in LOTS of tomatoes. We just put 16 quarts in freezer.

 

[Trish Stretton]

Weeding, sowed some beetroot, celeriac, onions, spring onions, lettuce, Globe Artichoke and some old bean seeds of Cannellini....not too sure if they will grow, but I do have newer seed if they dont.

I cleared underneath the Golden Queen peach tree and Italian Alder that is down by the roadside and found 4 peach seedlings. 3 have been potted up and the other was planted on the other side of the yard where it will get more air flow. The original tree was doing really well til recently but the other trees so I'm hoping the baby likes its new spot and will do better.

I rediscovered my packet of Crimson clover, so this has been broadcast under these two trees.

 

[Prairie Rose]

Harvested a dozen watermelon, and the last two zucchini. There were a few other baby ones on the plant, but it has gotten powdery mildew, so I pulled the plant, along with the remaining watermelon vines. Topped off the pumpkins and the butternut squash. Emptied the flowerpots of all the annuals that have died during the last few weeks of 60 hour weeks at work (7 more to go!), and kinda-sorta turned the compost. Started pulling all the bindweed out of this year's garlic bed, and fertilized and watered the roses.

I need to find more ways to minimize labor, I let the garden get away from me again this year. I will have a new job next year with something approaching regular hours so it shouldn't be so bad, but looking at the shell of what was left makes me sad.

 

[ducks4you]

I just got back from the grocery store. They were out of regular sized lids. They had other canning supplies but were fairly low in stock for most of them. I have plenty of rings and jars but not lids.

I just canned chicken broth. My pressure canner holds 18 pints so I barely have enough lids for another canning. Just trying to restock when I can.

You should make a mental note to buy 2 packages of lids at a time this winter. That is how I stock up. Dunno about you, but I clean and prep ALL of my jars so that they are complete with lids and non rusty screw tops as I store them. I hate cleaning any dust from inside of them.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I have been putting cardboard down and pulling out old plants, digging the compost out of the bin. I am also using a pile of grass clippings and some of the straw and rabbit bedding because I am not going to have enough compost. I am hoping that we get a load of manure and put on. I would like to put on top of leaves, but I think I better spread the manure as soon as possible before the rain comes. I might not be able to get any manure if I wait and then just put the leaves on as I rake them and if it does not rain mow them.

 

[Zeedman]

Some things in the gardens are finishing, while others are going crazy. The "Nicoviotis Orange" tomatoes have really been outperforming my wildest expectations, from only 6 plants:

And fortunately, about 1/2 of the "Greygo" peppers (also 6 plants) were ripening at the same time:

Canned 19 pints of salsa, which used up all but 5 of the peppers - and hardly made a dent in the tomatoes. I hope to try my hand at making sauce; my past efforts were disappointing, but I've got a better kettle now & a better stove than in my last attempt. @flowerbug 's idea of canning chunks sounds good too, DW said she could use those. The bright orange color was visible in the salsa (in spite of the deep red peppers) so it should be really beautiful canned alone.

BTW, my favorite pepper for salsa ("Beaver Dam") was from 2012 seed, and had only one plant germinate. I've never used "Greygo" for salsa, so was pleasantly surprised by the aroma of the chopped ripe peppers. It was very sweet scented, more like apples than peppers. DW likes to eat them raw, sliced & mixed with apples, so I'm glad there are still quite a few left on the plants.

In the rural garden, we picked the first ears of sweet corn today! If there is one thing I've most missed in the two years that plot was fallow, it was fresh home-grown sweet corn. Because weeding worked its way across the 2 patches over a week's time, the crop will be similarly staggered - which is not entirely a bad thing. It beats trying to process & freeze the entire crop at one time (been there, done that, up all night).

The WI 5207 cucumbers & Chinese bitter melon are still producing heavily, and bitter melons let go for seed have begun to ripen... I cleaned the first seed today. The gherkins have finally begun; we are picking hands full, so hopefully they will yet produce enough to do a couple batches of pickles.

The dry seed harvest in the rural garden is about to take off as well. 3 of the 6 beans there have started drying, as have all 4 of the cowpeas/yardlongs, "Buff" adzuki, black gram, and "India Bush" hyacinth bean. 2 more beans are at shelly stage, and should begin drying down next week. It remains to be seen, though, how many of the ripening beans have been destroyed by our going-on-36-hours of continuous rainfall. DW & I were out in the mud today, trying to save as much as we could.

The tomatoes & peppers in the rural garden are just starting. The 21 plants of paste tomatoes were intended to make salsa, but as they say, "the best laid plans..." It remains to be seen whether they will survive this cool wet spell, and ripen in sufficient quantity to be useful. The same can be said of the watermelons, which bloomed very late because of the weed pressure.

 

[flowerbug]

Some things in the gardens are finishing, while others are going crazy. The "Nicoviotis Orange" tomatoes have really been outperforming my wildest expectations, from only 6 plants:

View attachment 36908

And fortunately, about 1/2 of the "Greygo" peppers (also 6 plants) were ripening at the same time:

View attachment 36909

Canned 19 pints of salsa, which used up all but 5 of the peppers - and hardly made a dent in the tomatoes. I hope to try my hand at making sauce; my past efforts were disappointing, but I've got a better kettle now & a better stove than in my last attempt. @flowerbug 's idea of canning chunks sounds good too, DW said she could use those. The bright orange color was visible in the salsa (in spite of the deep red peppers) so it should be really beautiful canned alone.

BTW, my favorite pepper for salsa ("Beaver Dam") was from 2012 seed, and had only one plant germinate. I've never used "Greygo" for salsa, so was pleasantly surprised by the aroma of the chopped ripe peppers. It was very sweet scented, more like apples than peppers. DW likes to eat them raw, sliced & mixed with apples, so I'm glad there are still quite a few left on the plants.

In the rural garden, we picked the first ears of sweet corn today! If there is one thing I've most missed in the two years that plot was fallow, it was fresh home-grown sweet corn. Because weeding worked its way across the 2 patches over a week's time, the crop will be similarly staggered - which is not entirely a bad thing. It beats trying to process & freeze the entire crop at one time (been there, done that, up all night).

The WI 5207 cucumbers & Chinese bitter melon are still producing heavily, and bitter melons let go for seed have begun to ripen... I cleaned the first seed today. The gherkins have finally begun; we are picking hands full, so hopefully they will yet produce enough to do a couple batches of pickles.

The dry seed harvest in the rural garden is about to take off as well. 3 of the 6 beans there have started drying, as have all 4 of the cowpeas/yardlongs, "Buff" adzuki, black gram, and "India Bush" hyacinth bean. 2 more beans are at shelly stage, and should begin drying down next week. It remains to be seen, though, how many of the ripening beans have been destroyed by our going-on-36-hours of continuous rainfall. DW & I were out in the mud today, trying to save as much as we could.

The tomatoes & peppers in the rural garden are just starting. The 21 plants of paste tomatoes were intended to make salsa, but as they say, "the best laid plans..." It remains to be seen whether they will survive this cool wet spell, and ripen in sufficient quantity to be useful. The same can be said of the watermelons, which bloomed very late because of the weed pressure.

i thought i was looking at apples there for a moment!

what follows are philisophical (or sillyphosical) thoughts about tomatoes, sauces and cooking with them, which may not make any sense to others, but work for us. ... if you disagree or your tastes or preferences are different that is ok, i'm just noodling along here before i fall asleep.

we never bother with cooking tomato sauces down because when you figure out that most sauces are going to use spices then it no longer is a matter of preserving the exact flavor since you are cooking the crap out of it anyways. so instead of doing that what we do is use the tomato chunks and/or juice which keeps the umami flavor strong and thicken with a can of tomato paste from the store. if you get the kind that only has tomatoes then you avoid added salts and other gunk. saves a ton of time and a ton of energy. yes, we do put up a lot more "water" but it is 100% pure nature tomato water.

we don't grow paste tomatoes either because they just don't have the umami flavor that we really want which is what we consider a reason to have tomatoes at all to begin with.

 

[flowerbug]

You should make a mental note to buy 2 packages of lids at a time this winter. That is how I stock up. Dunno about you, but I clean and prep ALL of my jars so that they are complete with lids and non rusty screw tops as I store them. I hate cleaning any dust from inside of them.

i always wash jars before putting them away in the cases and i turn the jar upside down in the case so they won't get dusty, but they are also covered with a layer of cardboard in between for extra protection of the jar rims. we don't always leave the rings on (we no longer give jars away with rings on so we are set for rings for this life time i think).

i suggested that the next time there is any stock on the shelf at the store that we buy lids for the remaining cases of large mouth jars we have that do not have lids so we won't be stuck with jars we can't use. that cost us $50 this year we didn't need to spend. not that the new jars weren't nice to have, but still having four cases of jars in the garage we couldn't use means we have those few cubic feet of space taken up. also when giving away jars i much prefer to give away the large mouth jars instead of the small mouth.

 

[ducks4you]

I put away clean with a new lid and screw top, put back in the original or a new (Amazon, etc.) cardboard box and I also bag it in a new garbage bag, preferably NOT the ones with the pull ties, and store in my basement pantry. That tells me that they are clean and ready for use.
It is Definitely a winter time project. NO TIME NOW!!
I have some BAD habits, but I started doing this when I began to can.
I was grateful for any free jars, but kind of disgusted that they came with the used (I guess? cleaned?) lid upside down with the screw tops. Was this a....Thing?!?!? I got 5 sets of jars from different people just this way.
I just saw GERMS HERE!!! written all over them, so I handwashed, ran through the dishwasher and prepped them clean and disinfected to store again.