Canning Salsa

I made my very first batch of salsa several years ago.  I didn't follow a recipe and it managed to turn out delicious.  After starting to can foods I have grown in the garden I've learned that if you are going to can salsa, you should follow a recipe that has been proven to have safe acidity levels if you want to trust what you eat out of a jar.  As usual I flipped through the Ball Book of Home Preserving until I found a recipe that I thought sounded good.  For this batch I used the recipe for Zesty salsa.

Here I have gathered some of the ingredients called for in the book.  I like to use up my cherry tomatoes in salsa when I can't keep up with eating them.  They make it sweet with out having to add any sugar.  I think I added a few more tomatoes, onions and peppers than I show in this picture.  It takes quite a few peppers to make the 5 cups called for in the recipe.

 

Ten cups of chopped tomatoes in the bottom of the pan.

 

Five cups of sweet peppers layered on the tomatoes.  I used both green and yellow sweet peppers.  I figure they both add a little something different to the finished product.

 

Five cups of onions on top of the sweet peppers.  I used both red and yellow onions for color and texture.  More colors look prettier in the jar. 

Last but not least are two and a half cups of chopped jalapenos.  It gets finished off with some apple cider vinegar and salt.  I usually like my salsa on the not too hot side, but I know many people that don't mind setting their mouth on fire when they eat salsa.  This is for them.  I didn't remove a single seed from these jalapenos, so this will be plenty spicy for me if I can tolerate it at all.  So far I could take the nibble I had before it was canned, but the flavors tend to come out more the longer it sits. 

 

The next day I added seven jars of spicy salsa to my shelf.  There would have been eight, but my canner only fit seven jars, and it had to be taste tested of course.  It was delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

Starting an Indoor Winter Garden

As the summer winds down I usually stop planting certain crops because they would never survive the first frost that is only a matter of weeks away.  This year I am trying something a little bit different.  I bought several seed starting lights last winter because I needed more room to start the large amount of seedlings for the spring garden.  All summer they have sat idle and I have decided that I wanted to see if I could get any winter harvests of summer veggies if I grew those crops indoors.  I'm not going to try to grow corn or anything, but I've heard that you can grow things like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers fairly well in containers.  Why not try them inside in the winter?  I am aware that I will need to play the role of the pollinator when the plants come inside and I am fully armed with a fine paintbrush.  I figure that the seed starting lights should give them enough supplemental light if I keep them near a sunny window I just need to keep them watered and happy and I could be eating fresh picked tomatoes in the middle of January, or maybe even February. 

The tomato plants I have were started from the scraps left over from the end of the season at the nearby nursery.  Two patio tomato seedlings sounded like a perfect start to me since they were bred to grow in containers.  They were planted at least a month ago and have long since overcome any shock from being in a tiny pot for too long.

The peppers went in only a couple of weeks ago.  They were also terribly root bound in their pots, but they have shown the first signs of perking up.  New leaves mean that they survived being transplanted, so things should only look up from here.

The cucumbers I have started as seeds since they don't really appreciate being transplanted.  They germinated well in the summer heat.  I need to add some sort of support to their pots since I expect they will want to climb something when they start to take off.  I just hope that the pots I put them in will be big enough for them when they reach full size.  I only planted two plants since I only wanted enough for fresh eating in the winter.

Everything will grow outside until the evenings start to get chilly.  Once the cold nights come on, these plants will move indoors to a sunny location under the grow lights to do what they will for me this winter.

End of August Harvests

The summer crops are steadily producing this week.  Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and beans are the order of the day.  I have started on a good sized batch of tomato sauce for canning but haven't found the time to let it cook down, so the strained tomato juice waits patiently for me in the freezer.

These are just the tomatoes from the last couple days.  My next canning day will involve making some salsa with my bounty (the cherry tomatoes make it especially sweet).

 The peppers have been enjoying the warm days and we have frozen almost 3 gallon freezer bags full of them.  They simply get washed, cut in half, cleaned of seeds and thrown into a freezer bag.  When I want a fresh pepper in a meal I just take out halves as needed.

I also slice up the tops I cut off (minus the stem) and dehydrate them.  I hate to waste any part of my harvest if I can help it.

 

The pole beans have almost reached the tops of their pole tipis and are producing wildly as usual.  Even though I only planted one small bed I still managed to pick almost a gallon bag full of beans the other night.

This is not even counting the giant ones I took out to feed to the chickens.  I think the huge beans don't freeze or dehydrate well so I don't mind sharing them with the chickens.

 

The zucchini and yellow squash are on their last legs and that is ok with me.  I have at least four quart jars jam packed with dehydrated squash chips, though I prefer to eat them fresh when I can.  The cucumbers are starting to falter but I think it has more to do with uneven watering than any actual problem with the plants.  I am getting a lot of fruits that are huge at one end and and tiny at the other.  I am a little wary of pickling the misshapen cucumbers because they tend to be bitter.  They also are hard to pack nicely into the jars for pickling.

 

I have also gotten in a few nice harvests of celery.

The tops go into the freezer to be made into stock later when time allows.  The stems I have decided to dehydrate for soups and such later.

 

A quick after work harvest of a few tomatoes, a handful of green beans and an actual delicata squash.  I guess some of the seeds in that pack really are delicata squash after all.  It roasted up beautifully with a little bit of butter and brown sugar.

 

I have started the onion harvest since many of the tops have fallen over.  I was trying to wait until we had a sunny day or two in a row so I could cure them before I put them away in the back room. 

For now I am settling on harvesting only the onions that have fallen over and curing them in the back window with a fan to help them dry out.  The onions that are still standing will hopefully cure in the sun the way they were meant to.

 

I have also started to harvest the dried beans little by little.  I still can't believe how many beans I am getting from the tiny packet of seeds I planted.  So far I have only harvested a quarter or so of the bean patch between rainy spells, so I may even get enough to try out in a pot of chili this winter.  What beans I don't eat will become next years crop, and I'm sure I will be able to fill the bed when I plant next year.

 

I am a little sad to know that the summer season is passing it's peak.  Now the time for preserving and storing the harvests is upon us and I will have to work hard to get everything done.  This time of year it seems like everything happens all at once and all I can do is just try to keep up. 

Autumn Is In The Air

The summer garden is still is peak production mode, though things are starting to die down a bit in some areas.  The winter squash have all but died back due to rampant powdery mildew.  I was told I could spray them with a fungicide, but I don't like the idea of spraying something I am going to eat with a potential toxin, so I just let them go.  They were mostly done growing their crop anyways and when they are completely dead I will just go through and pick the ripened squash.  The bush beans have also turned brown exposing legions of dried bean pods in their wake.  In my spare moments between processing the harvest I will pick and shell the dried beans little by little.  

I have made a few final plantings for the fall garden as of a couple weeks ago.  I filled out the remainder of the carrot bed which has started to come up nicely.  I hope they have enough time to grow to a decent size before the frosts hit.  The carrot bed is one area that will be going under a hoop house arrangement so I can pick fresh carrots well into winter.  I also planted another round of lettuce in the lettuce bed.  Some of the lettuce took so long to come up that I had given up hope of a decent fall harvest, but sure enough there were some tiny seedlings hiding amongst the overgrown weeds in that bed.  Looks like we will be having some delicious fall salads after all.

The cabbage I planted about a month ago have really started to fill out and look like they might even make some small heads for me before they are through.  I also squeezed in a couple sickly brussel sprout seedlings from the nursery though only time will tell if I will get any sort of crop out of them.  I just hope they went in late enough to avoid the aphid problem the other brussel sprouts have succumbed to.

The onions have started to fall over by the dozen now and are ready to harvest.  I have been waiting for a sunny day so I can pull them and cure them in the sun all day before they go into winter storage.  If we keep getting sprinkles on a regular basis I will have to cure them in the back room like the garlic.

Fall is fast approaching even though the days are still warm.  There has been a chill in the air at night and some of the trees have started to change color even though it is only August.  There was even snow in the mountains to the south of us a couple of weeks ago, though it didn't stick around long.  This summer seems like it went by super fast and was shorter than normal.  I am hoping the autumn is more drawn out, but with the weather behaving the way it has been I have a feeling we are in for a long winter this year.  I hope I grew enough to keep our bellies full through the cold nights coming our way.

Garden Tour

Just a little picture tour of the garden in full swing.

The spring peas have begun their decline.  About half the plants have started to dry up and turn brown.  Though I am still picking a small handful of peas on a regular basis, I have decided to allow the older pods to mature on the vine until they are completely dry.  These will become the seeds that I plant in next years garden.

 

The carrot bed has finally been filled for the season.  The first of the succession plantings have long since been harvested and eaten and the following rows are becoming ready for harvest as if on cue.  The largest planting was this last one since I wanted the crop to be well established before the colder autumn weather arrives.  It fills about a third of the bed and will probably be put under a row cover when the temps start to drop to the low 40's overnight.

 

The onions still appear to be growing and I will leave them in this bed as long as the weather keeps calling for rain.  I'd like the bed to be a little drier before I harvest them to reduce the chances of mold.

The cabbages have recovered from their transplant shock and have started to grow well.  Hopefully they will be hardy enough to last until early winter.

The eggplants have recovered from their shock as well, though I am not sure they will produce much of a crop before the season is over.

The tomatoes are overflowing their cages despite my attempts at training them.  I have never trimmed my plants to keep them in their boundaries.  I figure every new branch is another potential fruit.

The celery are very happy in the shade of the chicken coop along the fence.  They have been putting out plenty of stalks and I need to start dehydrating them before they slow down their production.

The broccoli have been steadily growing and putting out many small side shoots.  Unfortunately the brussel sprouts in this bed are just loaded with aphids and it doesn't look likely that there will be any left to harvest.  I haven't pulled them yet because I figure they are kind of like a trap crop for the aphids so they won't bother the other plants around them.  Obviously the onion border didn't do much to repel the aphids, though I do think that the plants look less chewed on than plants I've grown in the past.

The lettuce bed doesn't look good anymore either.  The first plantings of lettuce have long since gone to seeds.  The succession plantings I have done since were all direct seeded into the garden and very few of them came up.  The autumn lettuce harvest is not looking very promising, though I will try planting a few more rounds before the season is through.

The pole bean tipis are working out pretty well.  The beans have had no problem winding themselves up the poles after a brief initial training.  The plants themselves are filling out well.  So well in fact that I am planning to use a different spacing for the poles in the tipis next year.

The cucumbers are also looking fairly happy.  Unfortunately they seem to be quite content to crawl along the ground rather than being trained to the trellis.  Next year's trellis will definitely involve some chicken wire so they won't have such a hard time gripping the surface.  For now I will just have to put up with constantly retraining them to the poles every few days when the wind knocks them down.

The yellow squash are still looking content though I have seen some squash bugs amongst their leaves.  One of the zucchini has succumbed to either powdery mildew or a nutrient deficiency of some sort.  Perhaps this variety of zucchini just doesn't do well in this area.  The plants started off life looking a little sickly and the one that died never did get very big.

The peppers keep chugging along despite being crowded by the pumpkins and acorn squash.

The dried red beans are winding down for the season and I should have plenty of seeds for planting next year.  These will become sprouts in the chicken feed and also be added to chili and soup if we have enough for eating.

The amish moon and stars watermelon has managed to produce one good size fruit (that I am able to find anyways)  I am going to give it a little more time to grow before I pick it, but we are looking forward to the sweet flavor of fresh picked watermelon.

I also came across a couple young cantaloupes or honeydew melons - I'm not sure which because the vines are so tangled in this area I can't tell where they stared from.

The dent corn is at least ten feet tall and has finally started to tassel.  I am glad that it tassels so late because that reduces the chances that it will cross pollinate with the farmers corn in the fields across the street.

This is the view from the corner of the bean patch.  I like the step effect of the crops with the short beans in the front.  The next step is the squash patch, followed by the millet beds and finally the dent corn.  The final bed holds the giant sunflowers, but the corn is so tall that you can't even see it from this angle.

This is the wall of giant sunflowers that you can see from the road.  There is one that is ridiculously tall and towers over all the others by several feet.  If I had to guess, I'd think it stands at least twelve feet tall.

Standing under it and looking up the towering stalk makes me think of Jack and the Beanstalk.  It looks like you could climb it right into the clouds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Making Dill Pickles

I thought I should do a more in depth post about how I make pickles.  Basically I just follow the recipie in the Ball Book of Home Preserving.  Here is some step by step info on what I do.

First off I always try to use the very freshest cucumbers that I can find.  If the skins are starting to pucker I won't use them for anything but eating fresh.  I try to keep up with the cucumber harvest by eating the oldest in cucumber and tomato salads, but some weeks it is very easy to get behind. 

This is the cucumber harvest from the last two days.  It's not huge or anything, but canning in small batches is less overwhelming to me.

 

I scrubbed them well and cut a thin slice from the blossom end.  Leaving that on can make the pickles bitter.  I then layered the cucumbers in a ceramic dish.

 

 

The next step involves mixing a 1/2 cup of pickling salt with 4 cups of water. 

 

 

Stir until the water is clear again.

 

Then cover the cucumbers with the salt water.

 

Depending on the size of the dish, you may need to add more water to cover them completely.

 

In the book it says to layer cucumber and ice cubes, but I just cover the mix with ice and keep it in the fridge to soak for about 12 hours.  I figure that the ice is just meant to keep the temperatures of the cucumbers as cold as possible without freezing them.  I don't want to use too much ice because it obviously dilutes the salt water as it melts which would affect the taste of the finished product.

 

 

As the 12 hours mark approaches I prepare the canner with jars and lids.  I fill the large pot until water covers the jars and heat on high until it boils.  After the water is boiling I add fresh lids to the water and let it go for at least ten minutes to sterilize the jars and lids.

 

While the canner is heating I heat up the pickling brine in a seperate pot.  I make my brine in large batches and keep it in the fridge to use as needed.  Every time I need some brine for pickles I just take a couple jars out of the fridge and throw them into a pot and bring it to a boil.

 

While the brine is heating I will skin a few cloves of garlic and pick fresh dill flower heads to be added to the jars for flavor.

The book also calls for adding a few teaspoons of mustard seed to the jars but I have been unable to find any this year.

 

The last thing I do before I pack the cucumbers into the jars is to rinse them very well under cold water.  This gets rid of any excess salt in the final product.

 

Each jar gets one clove of homegrown garlic, one head of fresh dill and as many pickles as I can squeeze into it.  Right now I am only using pint jars because my harvests are still fairly small.  If I start getting cucumbers in large numbers I will use quart jars instead.  After packing each hot jar I top them off with boiling hot pickline brine.  When all the jars have been filled, wiped and capped they go back into the canner for twenty minutes.  At the altitude I live at they need to process for an extra ten minutes to ensure they are safe.

 

This small batch only made three pints, but in my book three is much better than none.  I look forward to munching on delicious dill pickles all winter long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harvests From This Week

This week the garden has been very productive.  I think I have harvested a little from almost every bed in the garden. 

This is a meager harvest of some Yukon Gold potatoes.  All of my potato plants have died of some sort of blight I think and at this point I am just digging them up as I need them.

This is one evening's harvest which includes a handful of broccoli, a single zucchini, and a mish mosh of tomatoes.

Another evening harvest.  This is the next to last batch of radishes and probably the last of the spring peas.  The first red pepper was finally ripe along with a handful of green peppers.  The cucumbers have been steadily producing between 2 and 8 fruit every day which makes my pickle prospects look fairly decent.

The pole beans have also been increasing their production and I have picked at least a solid quart of beans in the last couple days. 

 

The yellow squash and zucchini only produce a couple fruit every few days.  This has not been a great year for them and I am glad that I have three hills of each kind.  Whatever hasn't been eaten fresh goes directly into the dehydrator. 

 

I wish I had taken some pictures of the celery that I harvested.  I have pulled several bunches this week to give to co-workers who have requested it.  When I harvest the celery I only crack off the largest stalks and leave the plant to continue growing to produce more celery.  I also save the celery leaves in the freezer to make stock with later.

 

I also haven't taken many pictures of the carrots I have harvested.  I generally pull one or two a day to snack on in my lunches or to cook with dinner.  The carrots I have been pulling lately are huge and still have great flavor.  For once most of them look nicer than the ones you can buy at the grocery store.  In years past I haven't had great success with carrots.  This year I tried a different variety and am very pleased with it.

 

Some of my harvests made it into the pan before I remembered to take a picture of them.  This is a skillet with potatoes, green pepper, red onion, and fresh garlic that I had for breakfast one morning.

 

Another harvest was well on it's way to becoming a grill packet before I caught it on my camera.  This includes some of those ever elusive carrots and yellow squash that never quite make it on film whole.