I Canned Tomatoes and Froze Pasta Sauce

I wrote this post in September of last year and saved it as a draft, but never posted it.  Here it is now.  I tried to finish it with what I could remember. Sorry.

We had a very busy week last week, with the Chelan County Fair and everything else going on.  My auntie Linda and I sewed frontier women costumes to wear to the fair because we had a booth for my aunt's business, Etched in Time, LLC, and I brought a bunch of soaps to sell.  The whole thing was kind of a bust.  Fair attendance was very low and even of the few people who attended, not many came into our barn.  We thought it would be a popular barn because the wine garden and wine tasting events were in it, but we were very wrong about that.  We were so bored that I crocheted soap savers until I couldn't stand it and then I saw an example of double stitch hand quilt piecing and decided to give that a go.  I actually hand pieced a pretty large part of a quilt just sitting there at our booth. I used pieces left over from making my costume.  It was really four days of sweltering heat and boredom.  We did meet some nice people, though, especially the other vendors.  The lady who owns the Attic Window Quilt Shop in Wenatchee was just across from us.  That is where I got inspired to do the hand quilt piecing.

Here is the section I worked on.

This is a close up of the double stitch on the front.  You put the fabrics right side together and stitch a running stitch along the edge (it is supposed to be 1/4 inch from the side, but I didn't have a measuring device with me).  Then you open the fabric up and finger press the seam allowances to one side and running stitch along the seam to hold the seam allowance flat.  I stitched pieces together end to end and then rows together.

This is what the back looks like.  I pressed the seam allowances under the blue piece on the short seams then all in the same direction on the long seams.

Well, this is supposed to be a gardening blog, so I should get back on subject, right?  You may have noticed in the above picture that there are a plethora of canned tomatoes pickles and jams under the quilt piece.

There are 14 quarts of canned tomatoes, 7 quarts of pickles 4 assorted sized jars of pickled green beans, and there used to be four batches of apricot jam and one batch of peach jam.  I have been giving the jam away.  We gave some to my husband's parents and grandparents when we visited them.  My family all makes there own jam, so we trade flavors sometimes, but jam isn't a very good gift for them.  People who don't make jam always appreciate it, though.  Store bought jam just doesn't compare.  All of these tomatoes came from our community garden plot and my porch and the cucumbers were from the community garden plot, before the squash bugs hit.

Here is an update on the plants on the balcony:

Here is one of the eight small pots with Thai basil.  They are looking great.  I will have to pick these and dry them before it frosts.

This is the poor little rescue Roma tomato.  It is doing better than the other two. It hasn't gotten a chance to get root bound yet.

Here is one of the large Roma tomatoes typical from this bush.

The super hot jalapeno plant has not been having any peppers for a while.  It finally has just two small ones.  It is very crowded in it's pot with beans and nasturtiums.

The eggplant is still going strong.  I have picked over twenty fruits already and as you can see, there are plenty more growing.  Wow, I never thought that it would do this well.  Especially after the aphid problem earlier in the year.

The sungold cherry tomato is not doing well at all.  Its roots are so crowded.  Note to self: this variety does not make a good container tomato.  The plant of the same variety that I planted in the community garden is doing very well.  It has produced so many delicious cherry tomatoes that I am kind of glad this one is a dud. I don't know what I would do with all of the tomatoes.  I even canned a jar of them.  I peeled each little guy before packing it in the jar.  I gave that one to my aunt who shares the community garden space.  She loves them so much.

These are the other two Romas.  They are covered by pole beans, and, as you would expect, they are kind of suffering from it, that and being completely root bound in their pots.  They are still making some tomatoes, though.

The rosemary plant is hanging all over the pot it is in. I really love rosemary with chicken.  I will pick and dry most of this before the frost.  I have been told by several people that it is very unlikely that it will make it through the winter in our climate.  I am thinking about bringing it inside.  That is probably a death sentence for it, too.  I am the grim reaper for house plants.  I forget about them. Maybe I will do better with this one because it is actually good to eat.

Here's my helper after I caught him "pruning" the beans again.

It is hard to stay mad at him. He is so cute.  Look at his pupils.  They have almost disappeared form the bright sun on the porch.  He is a house cat, and doesn't get outside except when I am out on the balcony taking care of the plants.

The eggplant is a very pretty plant. I think I will always grow them.  They make a pretty ornamental and they produce loads of delicious fruit. You can see the marigold peaking out.  I always try to incorporate some into my gardens for the beneficial insects and the beauty.

I emptied this cupboard to store all of my tomatoes in.  I pick and store them until I have enough ripe for a batch of sauce or at least a batch of quart jars of canned tomatoes.

Eggplants are wonderful fruit.  They keep for what seems like forever in the crisper drawer in the fridge.  These are about two weeks old. I finally took them out and made one of my favorite french dishes.  I don't have a clue what it is called, but my friend Christelle told me how to make it after I asked her what she was eating for lunch at work one day.  It is basically a stew with eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, tomatoes and whatever else you happen to have around.  You cook it and cook it until it is a thick chili-like consistency.  You season it with salt, pepper, garlic and a nice mix of french herbs.  It really tastes like there is meat in there. It is so good, even my husband really likes it.  My daughter wouldn't try it.  Apparently it looked too scary with all the different ingredients.  I still haven't gotten her to try an eggplant.

The beans are getting away from me at this point.  I pick them every other day and still, lots of them escape my notice until they are too far along.  I have been eating them raw, steaming them, frying them, giving them away, and pickling them.  I can't can them because I don't have a pressure canner yet, but I think I will buy one before I plant this many beans again. These plants on my balcony are really impressive.

Here is where the tomato sauce I made ended up.  I did my research and decided that it just wouldn't be safe to water bath process this sauce because it has too many other ingredients added to predict the acidity.  I just put it in quart sized freezer bags and froze it.  From now on I am just canning strait tomatoes.  Then I can take those canned tomatoes and make sauce when I need it.  The frozen sauce is pretty good and very convenient, but I don't have very much freezer space.  I mostly like to save that space for buying meat in bulk and freezing the rest for later. Oh, and for frozen berries and fruit for smoothies. You can see frozen strawberries in the front right corner.

 

Patio Plants are Going Strong: The latest pictures are in

I have to say, I have the greenest balcony I have ever seen.  I won't lie and say it is very tidy, but it definitely is very green.  The most exciting two pieces of news are:  the eggplant is finally making fruit and the pole beans I plated to grow over the balcony rails and up the side of the porch are making beans.

This is the biggest eggplant.

This one is still quite small.  I counted five of them that are definitely fruiting, and loads more flowers, as well.

You can't see the beans here, but the iPhone does not take close up pictures very well and the bean pictures just would not turn out.  When I pick a few I will take a picture of that.  Don't you think the beans look nice growing like this? 

Oh, I forgot.  There is one more piece of exciting news.  We got our first tomato off of the Belgian beauty heirloom tomato plant.  It is small, but cute.  I will let you know how it tastes.

This is the little guy before I picked him.  He is so cute.

The rest of his brothers (don't ask me why tomatoes are boys today) are much bigger and very lumpy.  They are not showing any color yet.

These two are hanging on the outside of the balcony railing.

There are s few hidden inside the foliage.  The pole beans have used some of the branches to climb up.  I am not too worried about that.

Here are a couple more future Belgian beauties.

This is what the eggplant looks like now.  If you look close you can see the leaves that were damaged by the aphid infestation.   Many of them have fallen off, and lots of new clean wonderful leaves have grown in.  It is really flowering strong.  Eggplants make such beautiful flowers.

This is the super hot jalapeno plant.  We have picked about 5 or 6 of these, and they are quite hot.  I was wondering if growing in a pot would make them wimpy, but it does not seem to have affected them.  They even made my husband cry and he loves hot peppers strait from the garden.  There he was crunching away on a whole pepper, with tears streaming down his cheeks saying, "wow, honey, these are great peppers."  I am not that into hot peppers.  I don't eat them strait and raw like that.  I like to make salsa and use them in my cooking.

This is the baby roma that I rescued.  It is just as big as its two larger twin brothers, but is a little behind.  It has has only one ripe tomato while its brothers have each had around 10.

I have always liked hens and chicks.  These are very cute.  If you don't remember, I found these in my mothers garden when she moved into a new house and we were clearing it to make room for vegetables.  They were very small and cute.  I thought they might be a smal variety, but they have grown quite large to prove me wrong.  I will definitely take these with me and plant them in the ground when we get a house.

Here are the lavender plants my daughter rescued in the same weekend.  I think they have grown as big as their pots will let them. We have picked and dried some flowers for my daughters magic potions, or should we call them chemical solutions.  She loves to mix things up and see what happens.

The cherry tomato has also run out of room in its pot, I believe.  It has really stopped growing.  It is still making tomatoes ( I took this picture after I picked the ripe ones), but I think it might not do very well in the future.  You can see the roots crowding in the pot.  Notes for next year: do not plat cherry tomatoes or romas in pots. Peppers, beans, and eggplants seem to do great though.  I think next time I will listen to the experts and plant determinant varieties of tomatoes.  There are several nice heirloom tomatoes that are determinate.  I bought one late this spring, the Bradley that I squeezed into the garden plot between the peppers and tomatoes.

This is one of the Roma twins.

The Rosemary is doing quite well.  I believe I will cut it back and dry the clippings for an herbal soap.  I do love rosemary soap.

This is the other Roma twin.

This picture is very blurry, but you can get the idea.  The cinnamon basil is huge and the flowers have gotten away from me.  I was trying to keep them clipped off, but there are just too many now.  The beans are loving them.  That is good.  That might be why everything else is fruiting so nice when it wasn't before.

This is a picture of the Belgian beauty from farther away.

Remember when I freaked out because I thought that my basil would go to seed and I wouldn't have any to go with my tomatoes when they were ripe?  I went and planted several small pots with cinnamon and Thai basil.  Well, those are now starting to bloom as well.

This is the prettiest one. The pots are kind of small. I was thinking I would transplant at least some of them into the big pot, but the other basil is so huge that is not possible,

I caught Cooper at it again.  I really should change his name to Ferdinand the Cow.

You can even see his teeth chomping on that leaf.  He is incredible.  Well, I hope you liked the virtual tour of the balcony garden.  Next up:  a tour through the community garden plot after the vandals have gone.

Patio Container Garden Update, Finally

It has been a while since I took pictures of the patio containers.  I finally borrowed my Auntie's camera and took some pictures of everything today.  My patio is getting to be like a jungle.  Okay, I am exaggerating a bit, but it is getting a bit out of control.  I seriously need to trim and tie things up as soon as I find my green plant tying stuff.

This is what my balcony/patio looks like from the lawn. We live on the second story.  I am worried that my nasturtiums that are creeping downwards might annoy the neighbors.  I will have to tell them that I will trim them up if they want.

This is the side view of the nasturtiums in the jalapeno pot.  They are really taking over. Poor pepper.

This is the creepingest nasturtium I have ever seen.  Before you ask, I don't know where you can get some seeds that grow like this because I planted seeds from two packets and one was a mixed variety bag, Alaskan Mix if I am not mistaken.  I don't know which seeds I planted in what pots.  They are all different colors, from yellow to dark orange.

Here is a front view of the poor jalapeno.  You can barely see it peeking out the top.  I did move the flowers aside to take pictures of the peppers.  Scroll down to see those.

Yum, I can't wait till I can pick these along with the tomatoes and make some spicy hot salsa.  My husband loves hot peppers in everything.

You can see how much of a jungle it is in this pot.

This is that little tiny Roma that I found in a pot and rescued earlier in the year.  One of the pots that I planted hops in never came up, so I put that poor tomato plant into it instead.  It desperately needs to be staked up.  I will have to make it to the store to buy a stake for it soon, or it will be drooping out of the pot.  It is already heavy with tomatoes.

This is the cherry tomato plant.  You can see some of the tomatoes are turning orange. These are orange when ripe, and I have been picking ripe ones and eating them for over a week.  There are at least a couple ripe ones out here every day.

Aren't these clusters of tomatoes beautiful.  They ripen from the inside towards the tip.

Here is that super creeping nasturtium from the other side.  The poor Roma tomato that shares it's pot doesn't know what to do. 

This is the other Roma tomato.  You can see the pole beans really climbing the railing from this pot.  Every pot has at least one or two of these beans climbing around.  I have not seen any bean flowers on these yet, so I will not have any beans for a while still.

This pot holds the heirloom tomato.  It has been flowering for a month now, at least.  It finally has two fruit set.  I just noticed them today.  I hope it starts really setting fruit now.  I can't wait to see how the fruit look when they are ripe. They are supposed to be purple and green and delicious.

They are still both really small, but I hope they grow quickly and large.

This is the eggplant which has also been flowering for quite a while without setting any fruit. I have tickled some flowers with a paint brush without any effect.

I take back everything I said about not believing in pinching back basil.  In the past when I pinched off basil blooms they just sent out more blooms and never another leaf, but not this time.  Look at this huge bush of cinnamon basil.  It sent out its first blossoms about two weeks after I transplanted it from the store.  Look at it now.

This pot has one pole bean and two hop plants.  From this far back all you can see is the bean.

Here you can see one of the hops peeking out from under the bean.

I lifted back the big bean leaves and here you can see the climbing stalks of the hops.

The hens and chicks are really filling up their pots and starting to send out little chicks.

I kind of freaked out when my basil started flowering, thinking that I would run out of basil before my tomatoes were ripe, so I planted eight of these small pots with several basil seed each. This is Thia basil.  I will have plenty of basil even after I thin these to a couple per pot.

Here are the seedlings up close.  Cute.

The patio garden has not been all fun and games, however.  I have a couple bad things to tell you about.  Have you ever heard of tomato end rot?  Well, my master gardener mother says it is very common in potted tomatoes.  It happens because the soil is allowed to dry to much between watering's.  It turns out that Roma tomatoes are especially susceptible.  I should have looked this up before I decided to plant three Roma tomatoes in containers on my porch this spring.  Check this out:

I know I am not alone in saying, "Gross!?!"  Well the only thing I can do is water them deeply and frequently and hope it is enough. 

Another problem I am fighting is aphids on my eggplant:

Eggplant flowers are beautiful.  I would grow this plant just for the flowers, but look at all the aphids.

They are covered.

This poor flower is drowning in aphids before it even has a chance to open.

These young shoots and buds are covered, too.

I tried bringing home lady bug eggs and larvae from the community garden.  They ate a lot and grew very fast, but didn't even make a dent.  The adults have flown away and I don't see any eggs left behind.  I also, later, tried soapy water like you read about in all the home garden books.  That seemed to help for a day or two, but now the aphids are back and worse than ever.  I have never had and aphid problem this bad that lasted this long  Usually after a while some kind of natural enemy moves in and starts getting the population explosion under control.

I will give the ladybug thing another try as soon as I find some more lady bug eggs at the garden or at work  Maybe I will find some syrphid fly larvae in the orchard I can bring home to eat the aphids.  

Hopefully, it will not be so long before my next post about the patio garden because things should start getting exciting soon with tomatoes to harvest and jalapeno peppers.  The next post will be about the community garden.