Canning Like a Grandma!

I think that I had more fun yesterday than I have in a long, long time. Before I went to work last night, I spent several hours heating my kitchen to about 85 degrees and "putting up" veggies for the long, harsh winters that we get here. Ok, so that was a little extreme, but I really did get to do some preserving, which was incredibly fulfilling.

Squash I chopped about fifteen squash into half-moon shapes and froze them in a one gallon freezer bag. I'll be able to thaw them out, and use them in soups, stews, casseroles, or anything else I can think of. I've frozen squash before and discovered that they really aren't of a consistency to eat by themselves. They get a little slimy. Gross, I know, but they cook up just fine if they're in something else. I've got a couple really great crockpot and stew ideas, so I'm not worried about it at all. I'm getting several squash each day, so I have no doubt that I'll be doing this some more. I also have plans to make a squash relish that I found a canning recipe for, so I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

Green Bell Peppers I cored, sliced and blanched about ten peppers and filled a one gallon freezer bag with these guys. I have absolutely no idea how they'll taste, but I'm pretty confident I'll be able to figure something out. Worse case scenario, I can cook them in some stir fry, beef stew, anything. I've got at least another fifty little peppers coming up on my plants, so I have a pretty good feeling I'll be getting even more.

Tomatoes Salsa, baby, salsa! I found a great Rick Bayless (my hero, in case you didn't know) recipe for Roasted Tomato and Jalapeno Salsa that can be made in huge batches. I didn't have a whole lot of confidence going it, but man it turned out great. I mean, incredible. It took about three or four pounds of tomatoes, five jalapenos (also from the garden), one onion, some garlic, salt, vinegar, and cilantro. Roasted them all in the oven, blended together in stages, mixed in a huge metal bowl, and voila! Magnificent! It made over a gallon! Rick recommended freezing it over canning because of the low amount of vinegar in the recipe, so I froze a one gallon bag of it. Since I still had more left over, I filled one pint jar and took the rest to a vegetarian friend at work. This was pretty time consuming, but man it was worth it. It tastes amazing, and I can't wait to bust it out in the middle of winter and relive the awesomeness. Yes, that's a word.

I plan on beginning the great pickle canning fest in the next couple days, so I'll be sure to let you know how that goes. I've got about twenty cukes ready to go, a new canning pot that holds eight jars at a time, and twelve jars to fill. I may work on it tomorrow, we'll just have to see.

There's a ton of really fresh, local produce at farmer's markets around the country right now, so go and get some! It's cheap, and if I save it, anyone can.

I've been listening to the new Jack Johnson album and an older Ugly Casanova album. Really good standing up and sweating music. Enjoy your weekend and go outside!

So, I've got these pretty pictures.....

This is a picture from back in early may. As you can see, the cucumbers are just starting to come up, the sugar snap peas are still going strong, and in the far left hand corner I still have some lettuce, bok choi and cabbage. Those three burned up one we started hitting ninety degrees with regularity.

These were from one of the first days that I got a ton on one day. Probably June 20th or so. I'm now getting about two times this much a day-except for the green beans. They're kinda crapping out on me.

Yup, the small stuff is mine and the big stuff on the other side of the fence is my 80 year old neighbor's. Man, that guy's annoying.

Seen me lately?

Hola, and long time no see! I would apologize for not updating this big guy more, but once you add a forty hour a week job to twenty hours a week in the garden, you get zip. I'll try and give quick little update today, with some pictures over the next few weeks.

Tomatoes They're doing pretty well overall. I'm averaging about 8 romas a day and five or six large tomatoes a day. The only plant that really hasn't been producing is the German Queen heirloom tomatoes. By the time they're ripe enough to pick, birds have usually picked them apart trying to get at the bugs that are on the plant. We've had so much heat and so little rain lately that they've really begun to wilt if I don't water them thoroughly every day or two. I have a pretty good size bucket filled right now and I'm deciding if I'm going to can salsa or pasta sauce first. Decisions, decisions.

Cucumbers I have three full size plants with multiple vines and one that is growing. I planted six more plants today, hoping that they'll begin to produce fruit in time for me to get some pickles made before the weather turns too cold. They should take two months or so, which is why I'm pretty hopeful. I get an average of three to six cukes a day, which is great for lunches and some refrigerator pickles, but not enough to get my goal of twenty jars of pickles to help me make it through the winter.

Green Beans I have a forty foot trellis that I planted green beans on, but only the far end has really produced any beans to speak of. I tore out the twenty feet closest to the house and replanted today. They also have a germination period of a couple months, so I'm hopeful to get some out these in time also. I've been getting twenty five or so every couple days. This is pretty good for eating now, but not nearly enough to be able to freeze. I have a huge deep freezer that is just begging for some one gallon zip lock bags of crispy green beans.

Squash Great Guggamuggah! I get several squash a day, which is several squash a day more than I can handle! I've taken squash to friends' houses, dropped some off at work, and eaten enough to have jaundiced my skin a little! Frozen squash is pretty slimy, so unless you're making soup or something, it's a little too gross to eat. Those plants keep growing, too. Good Lord.

Okra Going pretty well! I've got a one quart tupperware container filled with sliced okra that is ready to either preserve or cook, and I expect to have thirty or forty more of these. Eleven plants have survived and thrived, so I'm really looking forward to freezing most of these guys to have all winter long. Sweet!

Sugar Snap Peas They've burned up because of the heat, and I really didn't get many before they did. I definitely started these too late, and I really didn't ever get a decent support system up for them. I think that I'll either build a lattice type fence that I can put up and take down depending on the season, or just grow them along a chain link fence that runs across the back of my yard. I can grow some more in the fall once the heat ends, but I'm not sure if I want to mess with it this year.

Yellow Bush Beans These guys were overrun by weeds and grass earlier in the summer, so I had to replant them in a different place. They've really grown a lot in the past two weeks and I'm looking forward to having these guys in a month or so.

Cabbage Blah. Too hot. I read that I can actually grow these all winter long unless we have prolonged hard freezes like this past year, so I may try again in a few months.

Bok Choi Sweet, sweet awesomeness. I grew these completely on a whim because the seed packet was fancy looking. I know, I know, but they turned out amazing. I got way more than I could ever eat, so I pulled up the bolted plants and have replanted four seeds every two weeks for the past two months. They're coming up in stages, which is great. Grilled, stir-fried, used as wraps, anything. I highly recommend tossing a couple of these seeds in the ground and then tossing the plant's leaves on the grill right before you pull the burgers or steaks off. Incredible.

Corn Well, um, yeah, not so much. I planted them in partial shade. I thought it was full sun. I'm an idiot. I have about ten plants left, but only a couple even have corn growing on them. I may get ten ears. My Methusalah of a neighbor has about fifty plants and they're all about eight feet tall. He's a gardening god.

I guess that's about it for now. I plan on putting some more cooler weather plants in around the middle of August, so I've been trying to clear some of the used land for then. I'll buy five or six forty pound bags of manure (peat moss, for ya'll city folk) and work it into the ground between now and then to ensure that I've got enough nitrogen and other nutrients to make it through the winter.

Junk I've been listening to:

The Avett Brothers
Broken Bells
Ugly Casanova
Jack Johnson
The Gaslight Anthem
Sleigh Bells
Passion Pit
She & Him

Good Stuff, Dude.

I promised some pictures of this behemoth, so here's a few that I took this evening.

Nice grass, right? Yeah, I'm a big fan, also. I've found that my weeds are minimal, but the excess amount of grass and crabgrass are pretty frustrating. It has taken almost constant tilling and plucking to keep the whole thing in any semblance of order. I till in between my rows in a pretty constant cycle that lasts about two weeks. I try and weed one row every other day, but I still haven't been able to stay ahead. It's a lot better now as opposed to last week, but I still don't feel like I've got a really good handle on everything. This is a view from the lower left corner of the space. You can see corn, dill and cilantro in the foreground followed by okra, squash, snap peas, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans.

These will be some of the most massive tomatoes I've ever grown. They are an heirloom variety and will grow to over a foot in diameter. These are the first two that appeared and they've grown over the past week. I have at least ten more blossoms on this plant, and I expect to have a lot more. A LOT more.






To the left are my six tomato plants. I'm incredibly proud of the weird little planting system I came up with. First I created a hill of about eight inches from the rest of the plot for each of the plants. When I planted them, I put them incredibly deep and left a crater around the stem of each plant in bowl shape. When I've needed to water the plants, I poured enough water into the crater to fill it to the top and let all the water soak down to the roots. I really believe that this method helped to ensure that the plants received the water and not the dirt around the base. Whether this worked or not, I have four plants that come up to my shoulder and all six have at least ten little green tomatoes growing on them. Tomato sandwiches for months!

To the right are my incredibly surprising massive heads of bok choi! Thanks to some friends for reminding me how incredible it tastes grilled! Warm up a saute pan, toss in some leaves with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and you have yourself some of the best tasting greens you could ever imagine. I have had over twenty heads come up and I've decided that I will replant these in August to try and get a second crop this year. We'll find out the hard way, just like with everything else!

I've got some more pics to put up, so check back tomorrow for tons more. Thanks to everyone for their support, it's been an absolute blast sharing this with you guys. Holla!

Recent Garden Playlists:

To the Sea-Jack Johnson
Madman Across the Water-Elton John
Plastic Beach-Gorrilas

Watching the Grass Grow

So I broke my tiller. Sort of. Ok, not really, it's just resting. I was tilling through some of rocks along the fence line and lost the bolt that holds the blades in place. Tomorrow I'm going to head out and pick up a replacement and try to tackle the amazing amount of grass that has cropped up. things are really coming along though! I have at least fifty green tomatoes on my plants, so I'm sure to be sharing!

Amazingly, I've had a pretty boring run of it lately. Some family came into town a week ago and that has really put a damper on anything that I had planned on getting done over the past week. Still lots of tilling and weeding to do, but I've done so little lately that I'm almost looking forward to it. Almost.

Dude. Guess what I had for dinner.

Yum, yum, gimme some! I had quite the meals today! For lunch-LETTUCE from the garden! For dinner-stir fry with BOK CHOI and CILANTRO from the garden! Woohoo! All I can say is that both were absolutely amazing.

I have some good news, and tons of bad news about this bad boy. First off, the good stuff. Four of the six tomato plants have itsy-bitsy tomatoes on them and they all have tons and tons of blossoms. The greens bean plants are starting to climb my chain link trellis and look like they will be coming in just fine. The sugar snap peas, yellow squash, cabbage, cucumbers, and assorted peppers seem to be right on schedule. Sounds great, right? Well, here's the bad. TONS of grass still all over this bad boy. I'm tilling in between every row and each individual plant at least once a week, and I'm still getting waaaaay too much grass popping up in between. It's a little frustrating, to say the least. My yellow beans were over run by grass and weeds and I've had to till them up and start over in that section. No swiss chard. No beets. Only one or two okra plants out of 20. They'll be replanted this week. Corn is growing very, very slowly and I'm not too hopeful. My old guy's corn next door is already up to knee level. Jerk. That's the last time I help him till anything up.

I've come to the realization that I have too much space and not enough plants. My pops-in-law encouraged me to put in some field peas, so I'll probably do a couple bushes of those and a couple bushes of black beans. They'll go in this week too. I've got four different kinds of hot peppers coming up now-anaheim, jalapeno, poblano, and habanero. I've got a couple friends that absolutely love spicy stuff, so I'm gonna drop a little hotness on them.

I'll put some more pics up in the next couple days, but I spent about three hours out there today, so I'm pooped. Have a good one!

Like I Said. Pics.

Yeah, so, for some reason, my garden is Bok Choi friendly. I have no explanation, but these guys have been growing from seed really well and will probably be the first to be ready for harvest.

This is a pretty good long shot that gives you a good idea of the size of the garden. You can see some corn sprouting in the foreground, my rosebush in the far corner, and my 80 year old neighbor's rockin' garden. Much respect.
Righteous Rosebush. I didn't trim or cut it back at all this year because I wanted to see how it would grow and how many blossoms I would get. Um, yeah, tons.
Tomatoes! They're getting big and bushy and already have tons of blossoms on each plant. Good stuff.

It looks like I'm going to have to give up on the idea of growing my peppers from seed this year. I haven't been able to get any sprouts for either the poblanos or the jalapenos. I'm gonna head to Lowe's this week and buy two plants of each and hope that they'll grow for me. I'm also going to replant a lot of my cucumbers. A couple have sprouted, but I'm really hoping for bushels of them so I went ahead and tilled up the row that they really weren't coming in on. I'll replant today or tomorrow depending on the weather.

Check out the new album from The National! You won't regret it, I promise.