Wow GLC! Great harvest!!
Those concord grape looks yummy. Our acorn squash was a bonus too... from a compost pile. Ours are much smaller than yours. Still good eats.
Oh and the pumpkins... Are they sugar variety? looks yummy.
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Wow GLC! Great harvest!!
Those concord grape looks yummy. Our acorn squash was a bonus too... from a compost pile. Ours are much smaller than yours. Still good eats.
Oh and the pumpkins... Are they sugar variety? looks yummy.
Yep, New England sugar pie pumpkins - they did wonderfully! We've already harvested 8 from three vines and there are still another 5 or so out there growing/ripening! I haven't eaten one yet, but hopefully soon. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by smilingcat
Our grapes are small this year, but super tasty. We also have another huge wave of tomatoes on the way and since it's supposed to be in the 90's this week, we hope they'll ripen on the vine.
A generous friend let me pick a whole slew of pickling cucumbers from her garden. I gave her some of my lettuce and scallions. I also had a bag of beautiful striped pink Chioggia beets we had gotten from the local organic farmer's market as a thank-you for us playing music there. So I decided to pickle them all today.
I made 16 pints of sweet bread and butter pickle slices. I had enough beets for four pints of pickled beets. The Chioggia beets are pink and white striped on the inside, not the usual dark inky red. They look so pretty in the jars, with a soft golden pink glow.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2579/...379034ba67.jpg
After canning and processing the 20 pints of pickles and pickled beets, I had about 3 cups of pickling brine leftover. I hard boiled 12 small fresh eggs and packed them six to a jar into two clean pint jars, then filled with pickling brine. Those I won't bother to process, I'll just put them in the fridge to mellow and eat pickled eggs over the next few weeks. :) A good way to use up the leftover brine!
Ladies,
if i cage the tomato, does that mean I get some mesh and put it around the plant? Do I still need to continue to give it a stake? or can I just leave it with this current stake?
I'm thinking caging will be better becoz the plant is out on the corridor and I'll never see fruit if leave it open to those 2 legged predators.
Thanks for the advice!!
Cheers,
D
I finally planted my winter garden today! I planted one whole bed of mustard greens, two types of collards (Vates and Georgia) to see which does better, one whole bed of kale, and finally planted an herb garden with flat and curly parsley, cilantro, two types of thyme, garlic chives, and Greek oregano. Oh, and a few Swiss chards, too. This is in addition to the leeks that I planted a few months ago and that are doing quite well. I still need to plant some lettuce in the bed that will also be under a cold frame come the cold weather.
In preparing the herb garden, I had to dig up the last of my potato plants and in doing so, unearthed a few more delicious red potatoes. Now my herb garden shares space with my strawberries, so it's all perennial, more or less (not the cilantro, but everything else).
My summer garden suffered from my absence because of alot of traveling, but I'm not planning so many trips over the winter, so it's quite likely that my winter garden will be much more productive than my summer garden. In addition, it will benefit from the wonderful compost that from last falls leaves. I did not have that last fall since I have only been in this house for one year.
Pics tomorrow. It got dark on me today.
What Tulip, no brussels sprouts??? ;)
Hey I planted Butternut Squash this summer (they are very rare overhere). When are they ready to 'harvest'?
A "tomato cage" is like a three-dimensional trellis. In the USA you can buy them pre-made from wood or wire at hardware stores and garden centers, or make your own from welded wire fence or stakes plus wire. It won't keep anyone/anything out of your tomatoes, it'll just support individual branches better than a stake - especially if your plant is an indeterminate variety (one that will keep growing taller throughout its life rather than stopping at a certain size).Quote:
Originally Posted by deeaimond
For the pests, two-legged or otherwise, maybe you could put the whole thing inside a big locked dog crate or playpen???
When the stem looks dry.Quote:
Originally Posted by papaver
Any that you plan to keep over the winter (longer than a couple of weeks after harvest), after you pick them, wash them and let them cure in the sun for a couple of days.
You may want to use a lopper or even a little saw to harvest any squash you won't be using right away, so as not to risk damaging the shell of the fruit. Those stems are very hard when the squash is ripe!
I have a couple that are probably ready right now... eat some next week probably. Yummmmmm.
Thanks Oakleaf!
Next year I'll build a new bed for Brussels sprouts, that's a great idea! They are so funny-looking in the garden. But now I don't have enough room, sadly.
Brussels sprouts are at their best after a couple of nights of frost. Yum!Quote:
Originally Posted by tulip
Wow, you have such a LONG season down there! Just planting your winter garden now?? I'm envious! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by tulip
Quote:
Originally Posted by OakLeaf
oooh... there are three yellow flowers on my plant now. Well, in general tomatoes do not survive our wet humid tropical climate so I'm really stumped for advice around here. However, its in a pot and so i can control the water etc.
which reminds me, Lisa, it gets plenty of light, the pictures were taken at night in the dark... is that why you thought they needed more sunshine?:p
It's right in the middle of my corridor and mine is the block nearest the grocery store, so.... the entire neighbourhood walks past. so i think it won't survive the two legged pest...people are just not very nice.
I'll google for a picture of a tomato cage and i think i need to build one soon...
then maybe get my dad to add on a full size cage temporarily. They at least need to fight a wire cage if they wanna damage my poor tomatoes...
thanks for the helpful advice!! :)
I did it about a month later than is ideal, but it'll still work. I bought plants; next year I will be more organized and do everything from seed :rolleyes:. I'll plant lettuce this week in the cold frame and I expect to have lettuce all winter long (under glass). I did plant my leeks from seed way back in the spring and coaxed them along in pots in the shade all summer and then planted them in the garden in August. They are growing very well.Quote:
Originally Posted by BleeckerSt_Girl
I still have tomatoes on the vine and lots of basil, but the zucchini and cucumbers succumbed to wilt and my watermelons succumbed to neglect. I dug up the remainder of my potatoes for the herbs, and had a wonderful tortilla espanola with those potatoes for dinner last night. I love eating what I grow!
No land to have a veggie garden? That's no excuse!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSFJPqzJp8M
:p
That is wonderful, Papaver! Where do you find these things??
http://zestyperspective.blogspot.com/Quote:
Originally Posted by tulip
My husband and I spent the day doing apple sauce...it pretty much took the whole day at a pleasant leisurely pace.
After breakfast, we bought a bushel of Paula Red apples at a local orchard that uses very little spraying compared to others. Cost more, of course. :rolleyes:
Anyway, DH peeled the apples on our old peeling/coring countertop crank machine. then he made pot after pot of apple sauce and I filled the pint jars and processed batch after batch of them in pint canning jars.
In the the end we wound up with 35 pints of wonderful chunky apple sauce- it didn't even need any sugar at all, it was so good...just a touch of cinnamon. :p
They'll be going down in the basement next to my 16 pints of sweet pickles.
Later this week I want to make another 20 pints or so of organic pickled beets....I adore pickled beets. :)
It was fun working together with my husband today side by side on our little apple sauce 'assembly line'....him churning out the sauce, me canning it. A great way to spend a rainy autumn Sunday.
Hey Lisa, can you smell the apple butter simmering in my kitchen? I'll unplug it at 5 a.m. tomorrow before going to work. I'm following your instructions. :)
Waaaaah, I'm so jealous. A late frost took out all my apples. :( The flowers had even been pollinated - I saw plenty of bees - but I guess it was just too soon for frost-resistant fruits to have formed. All my neighbors have plenty of apples, but my tree is a later variety plus my hilltop is cooler.
I still have two quarts of last year's applesauce (one wild raspberry, one cinnamon) and I'm hoarding them, now.
I made applesauce on Friday:) Didn't have quite the output you did, though. After taking a few apples out to make a crisp, the rest of the bushel I bought only made 7 pints. Perhaps I'll buy another bushel and make another batch. My aunt's boyfriend said he made green tomato pickles. I've never heard of them, but he says they're delicious, so I'm looking forward to trying them.
Okay, I am SO going to do some canning this fall. What's a good one to start with? I haven't canned since I was a kid, helping my stepmother. We did it the big, hot, messy way full bath way. Now I understand that steam canning is easier, but not good for acidic things like pickles.
I don't have enough of my own home-grown produce to can, but I can certainly buy a bushel of apples.
I do have a slow cooker (for apple butter?). Thoughts and resources are appreciated!
I would suggest you get the Ball Blue Book of canning/preserving--it has lots of recipes as well as general instructions for canning. For acidic foods (pickles, fruits etc.) you do need to use the boiling water bath. Making a mess is unavoidable when you're canning ;).Quote:
Originally Posted by tulip
This hurt us, too. The only apples we got this year was from the one early tree and one branch on a later tree (a branch that is somewhat protected by it's odd location!). Such a huge difference from last year! No applesauce for us this year.... Our pear harvest was minuscule as well - only the earliest ones made it!Quote:
Originally Posted by OakLeaf
We are making due with masses of blackberries, grapes and pumpkins! ;)
Tulip - go here: http://pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htmQuote:
Originally Posted by tulip
Sooo much good information and inspiration for canning!
7 pints? Surely you must be thinking of peck baskets, not bushels? A bushel is a huge boxful, and our bushel of apples made 35 pints of apple sauce.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoNo
Here is our apple sauce from yesterday:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2457/...517e1626b5.jpg
OMG that looks yummy! I'm so jealous! I have to learn how to make applesauce one day. We can go through applesauce like crazy
That must be it. Mmmmm....35 pints. Of course, I'd need to buy more jars for that:pQuote:
Originally Posted by BleeckerSt_Girl
Been meaning to post a pic. this is about a week ago.
The little green peppers in the bowl are Japanese pepper "shishito".
The dark green ball is an 8-ball zucchini.
Smilingcat, what a pretty photo!
I rigged up a plastic A-shaped tarp thingy over my long lettuce bed to ward off the first few frosts. Hopefully the winds won't make a mess of it. Crossing fingers. :cool:
Going to make organic pickled beets tomorrow, and lots of them. I bought about 55 organic beets from our local farming family.
What flavour are those Japanese peppers, smilingcat?
Bleeckerstgirl, guess you try to make the precious applesauce "stretch" in terms of lasting a long time? :) My partner buys a dz. apples from market and makes applesauce..he's the applesauce freak. Whatever he makes lasts only a wk. or less. For his daily breakfast yogurt...even on top of steamed brusssel sprouts (a traditional German way of serving sprouts).
Yes, fresh apple sauce is great! (like your partner makes)Quote:
Originally Posted by shootingstar
We are canning many jars so we can both give as Xmas presents and also have some last throughout the winter. Even canned in jars, our chunky apple sauce made from orchard fresh local apples is so much better than what we buy canned from the supermarket the rest of the year. The apples are best in the Fall, for sure.
Two years ago we made several gallons as well, plus apple butter...but stored it in the freezer in pint containers instead of canning it. Since we don't have a dedicated storage freezer, it took up way too much of the freezer in our kitchen refrigerator. The jars are better for us- we can just stack them on shelves in the basement. :) They get used up within a few months.
Mmmmm apple butter. And healthy stuff ..at least the stuff I buy from Mennonite area in Kitchener-Waterloo area (100 kms. west of Toronto) since it has no sugar. I actually find apple butter a rare commodity in stores here on the Northwest coast.Quote:
Originally Posted by BleeckerSt_Girl
Xmas presents sounds like an excellent idea.
It wouldn't work here at home...he eats it up. :) He decided to make his own after calculating cost of unsweetened applesauce from the grocery store. He piles in grated ginger root, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamon and anise, sometimes all or some of these spices. It works and does taste great. Does it regular that it's down to a fine proficient art...seems to chop up the apples and have this large pot of hot spicy applesauce done under 1 hr.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3428/...8b78a4deda.jpg
I pulled my first young carrots from the new garden today, along with some turnips, parsley, and scallions. They all went into a big crockpot of vegetable soup for tonight. Added to the chicken broth were some local friends' broccoli, kale, tomatoes, celery, and red cabbage. Some store bought onions , red pepper, and garlic too. I ground some black pepper to top it off and started it simmering....
Wow.. Carrots look delicious. And the scallions look really good.
Soup.... yumm... My partner and I were commenting the other night that our food definitely tastes better. Only produce we buy right now are avocados, onions, potato and occasional bunch of scallions. And oh stone fruit.
We think we have a racoon problem in our garden :mad: :mad: one of our flowers were dug up and newly planted tulip bulbs were scattererd every where. Couldn't make out the foot print but the animal is too heavy to be a cat and too small for a big dog and too heavy for a small dog.
My neighbor found two full sized racoons in his attic the other day. AND WE LIVE IN A CITY!! We've been told that the racoons live in the storm drain during the non-rain season.
Time to borrow a racoon trap. :( I really don't want to deal with racoons. They are vicious. I also don't want them to mess with our dogs. Dogs wouldn't have a chance.
smilingcat
I finally got around to planting my garlic today! Something's been munching on the kale, and I found out what it was...green worms that are the exact same color as the kale. I picked them all off, and I'll keep doing that every time I water. I think my collards and kale and mustard would benefit from some fish emulsion, so I'm off to Southern States tomorrow to pick some up. That always makes plants happy.
I mulched the leeks and watered everything. We have not had a frost yet, and I've got a few more weeks before I'll put the scavenged storm windows on the raised bed boxes at night. I still have tomatoes ripening, although at a slower pace than before. I'll also have a big load of basil for pesto. I'll harvest that before the frost.
Great carrots BSG! I've got some pretty nice ones this year too. Hope I remember the variety, so I can get some more seed next year.
Smilingcat, bummer about your flowers :( I don't know if raccoons dig randomly like that though, they're usually after something (usually a beehive). Someone's been tearing the heck out of our lawn in the last week or so - I'm pretty sure it's skunks. They do that, hunting worms and grubs.
Raccoons sure can be destructive when they find something they want, though. But the good part of them being smart is that, once you've found something effective to deter them, they'll learn and quit trying. Once I had an electric fence on my garden, they stopped trying, even when I let the grass grow up too high and ground the fence out. Same thing with my bird feeder pole - I greased it for about two weeks and the 'coons don't even try to climb it any more.
I've still got some basil that survived the frost since it was so well sheltered by weeds. :rolleyes: Maybe make another batch of pesto, maybe we have enough already - not sure.
Green worms - kill them now or they'll turn into cabbage moths and you'll never get rid of them!Quote:
Originally Posted by tulip
If you blanch your kale, the worms fall off and die (and turn yellow so they are easy to see). I had to do that to quite a bit of ours before I dehydrated it. It's even worse when they get in the broccoli because they have lots of tiny little places to hide!
We harvested about 15 one gallon bags of basil leaves over the last week. We gave several bags away and froze the rest after pulsing with olive oil in the food processor. The temps are down into the high 30's this weekend, so the basil bush is finally dying out. We were in Italy for two weeks so no one picked the flowers off. I picked the rest of the tomatoes and squash from our garden. Have to forget about the lovely swiss chard and broccoli that are out in the bed the yellow jackets are underneath. :(
You might get lucky- swiss chard can supposedly withstand some light frosts, and by that time the yellow jackets may have gone into dormancy in the cold. :) Keep an eye on the situation, you may well get the chance to harvest your chard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Photoflygirl
Hey Lisa, just saw those carrots, indeed beautiful.
So yeah my tomato plant has had loads of flowers but no fruit. I think its the lack of direct sunlight... but that i can't help. We only get direct sun on the plants for half the year. next time i will start growing in January so when the sun comes over it'll be ready.
but i still feel kinda sad coz its really tall and looks gorgeous.
D
oh and i will try to get some heirloom seeds when i'm in the US in dec. here we have like... one kind of tomato in the markets.. and thats about it. small, mealy and quite tasteless