Canning Weekend

So we decided to do a bunch of canning this past weekend, as we had about 15 pounds of ripe tomatoes, and a huge amount of peppers.   So we made an entirely homegrown salsa, plus we bought a box of "seconds" tomatoes from the farmers market to make tomato sauce and ketchup.  Since our cucumber plants  died before we got much of a harvest, we also bought a box of pickling cucumbers from the farmers market to make pickles.

Ingredients for the harvest salsa (we also used our homegrown garlic and parsley)

 Tomatoes cooking down for the sauce

 Fresh basil, purple basil, oregano, and parsley from our garden for the sauce

 simmering sauce down

Finished tomato sauce ready for canning

 

Finished salsa ready for canning.  

 It was way spicier than we anticipated.  We think it was maybe the fish peppers or jalapenos that was hotter than expected

 Skinned tomatoes for the ketchup

Ketchup simmering down

 

Pickling spices for the pickle brine

  

Total: 5 pints of tomato sauce, 4.5 pints of ketchup, 6.5 pints of salsa, and 32 pints of pickles (4 different recipes)

Veggie Garden Update

Harvest is in full swing, tons of tomatoes, over thirty pounds so far, and the peppers plants are loading up. The Italian rose beans are drying on the plant and should be ready to pick this weekend. Soy beans should be ready soon. Peas and green beans are finished, we left a few on the plants to dry to collect as seeds for next year. The cucumber plants unfortunately died, and we are battling cucumber beatles and squash bugs on the squash and zucchini plants. Our watermelon, pumpkins, and gourds are doing well.

Trial Mead #1 and #2 is Ready

After aging for almost exactly 4 months, looks like the two trial batches of Mead (orange w/ spice, and mixed berry) are ready to go.  They've cleared, and the fruit has dropped to the bottom, along with all of the yeast and other suspended particles.  

 I bottled them in 12 oz beer bottles, each batch 8 bottles, with one bottle that is a half/half mix. 

Once they are chilled, we'll sample and see how successful it was.

Vegetable Garden - 1st week of July

We've planted two rows of gourds, we'll be building an arbor for them.  

Birdhouse gourds and snake gourds.

 The watermelon vines are starting to take off.

 Sweet potatoes are doing fine, they needed more room.  The squash and zucchini plants have bloomed and are developing. 

 The sugar snap peas have completely climbed the tepee, and are now starting to yellow with the heat.  Carrots next to them are good, we think we should have thinned them out a bit though.  We'll see how big the carrots end up.

 The Italian rose beans are full of beans, the 3 cucumber plants in this bed appear to have been infected with Bacterial Wilt.  But we've only seen one cucumber beetle, which supposedly causes it.  The plant didn't seem slimy when cut either, which is supposed to be a sign.  Either way, this is the 2nd year in a row they did not do well. 

 Closeup of the Italian Rose beans.  We are going to let them dry on the plant.

 These 4 cucumber plants are doing much better, but now some of the vines are starting to wilt too. 

 Our soy beans plants are huge, and are flowering.  The green bean plants behind them have already flowered, and have small beans on them. 

 As you can see, for whatever reason, the one half of the tomato plants are doing much better than the other half.  We can't figure out why. 

 The "Fourth of July" and "Fresh Salsa" varieties are starting to be ripe.

 The peppers plants all have peppers.   The Scarlet Runner beans have flowered, but don't seem to be forming beans.  We think maybe the birds are eating the flowers/baby beans?  

Closeup of some of the peppers

Closeup of Peppers and Tomatoes

 We planted 5 pumpkin vines, 2 "Amish Pie" and 3 "World Color". 

We harvested our onions (yellow and red), and the rest of the garlic. We discovered that you do not want to let the onions bloom.  The 3 that had flowered, had the smallest onions.  The garlic is hanging up to dry on the porch, as it's supposed to be out of direct sun, and breezy.