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 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. 

Who Knew? My cat is really a cow on the inside.

I have now lost quite a few plants to my cat, Cooper.  I am about to change his name to Ferdinand, because he eats more plants than any cow I have met.  Okay that is an exaggeration, which I am prone to, if you didn't know. 

Here he is, looking at me with that, "What are you looking at" face.  When I put him down out of the pot I found that my corn plant is completely gone and every other plant in the pot has been at least chewed on.  I don't know what to do.  I let him out on the porch when I go out there, but even if I just go inside to fill up the watering containers he jumps right up into the nearest pot and starts chomping.  I think he has set my pepper harvest back quite a a bit.  One of my pepper plants that I planted at the community garden was chewed on badly enough before I planted it down there that I don't think it will ever fully recover.  I am thinking about replacing it.  I will just have to keep Cooper of the porch.  He will not like that.  He will complain very loudly I am sure, but I have tried everything to discourage him from eating my plants. He also has pretty severe food allergies and is on a restricted diet, so eating random plants in the garden is probably not good for him.  I suspect that he is allergic to corn, and possibly other things as well.

I will have an update about the community garden again as soon as I can get some new pictures.  It is looking really good. Th garden at the in-laws is doing great, as well.

Weekly Update: Tomatoes are starting to set but the pumpkin never sprouted

First, lets talk about this community garden.  We are having a number of pest problems, including aphids and spinach leaf miners (which are maggots, actually). 

Here is a picture of a fresh spinach leaf miner mine. When they age they turn yellow and white. 

I pulled the little culprit right out of its little mine to take a picture of him.  my little salamander nymphs love to eat these guys.  They are kind of gross to rear, though.  The spinach leaves get slimy very quickly.

Here is a picture of the rearing jar I have set up.  Some of them have already pupariated (you can see the brown things with rounded ends)  These are iPhone pictures, again.  I will try to get better pictures once the flies emerge.  They are not very special looking flies, though.

Here you can see the bird peck damage that has continued through this week.  We still have not been able to harvest any lettuce due to bird competition, but the lettuce seams to be growing healthily. I have noticed that some of the birds have gotten wise about the presence of leaf miners and have started selectively pecking where they maggots are in the spinach.  I will not begrudge them these protein rich meals.  Please little birdies, take every single one.  I noticed that several other gardeners have planted spinach and they are all having similar problems, if not much worse, with these leaf miners.

Here is a wonderful picture of an old mine where a bird has removed the maggot.  Thank you, bird.  I have also harvested the spinach once, just removing the outside large leaves and leaving the inside ones to grow some more.  I selectively harvested and disposed of any leaves that showed signs of having leaf miners inside.  This is a very labor intensive way to cut down on infestations, but it would only work if everyone with spinach planted nearby did it as well.  I don't see that happening, so I will just have to cull about half my yield of spinach as I go.  We still got plenty to cook in two meals with other veggies.

These little blackish green guys are aphids on the underside of the spinach leaves.  They are causing the newer leaves to curl up severely and they are very hard to wash off when you pick these leaves.

Here, you can see light green aphids on a young carrot.  This one has not curled noticeably, but see below:

This carrot has curled severely due to aphid feeding.  I hope the carrot roots are not affected.  I have seen some lovely ladybugs around. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of any of them.  They were not to be found when I brought my aunt's camera down today.  They must be camera shy.  I hope they have laid eggs, and now we will have loads of lady bug larva running around cleaning up the aphid infestation.

Enough about the insect problems, here is the latest picture of the garden:

It is starting to fill in.  Once the cucumbers really get going and the scarlet runner beans climb the fence it will look better.

Here is the right side onion rainbow and the carrot chicken foot print (that is what we call the shape we planted the carrot seeds in).  You can see the marigolds starting to bloom strongly.  They are a little stunted.  They appeared to have some kind of fungus when we planted them and they died back a lot.

This is what the spinach and lettuce look like.  The lettuce would be as big as or bigger than the spinach if not for the birds.

Here is the onion rainbow and carrots on the other side.  These are the rainbow carrots.  You can hardly tell the washout happened earlier this spring.  The radishes have all been harvested now, and eaten.  My uncle got most of them because they are his favorite, and I just like growing them because they are so fast.

Here are the early girl and the super fantastic tomatoes in the back and the cheyene and jalapeno peppers in the front.  They are looking pretty good.

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This is an areal shot of the cucumber patch.  The red arrows indicate the cucumbers we planted form starts.  They are not doing well at all, the ones in the lower right hand corner are thoroughly dead and dried up.  The yellow arrows indicate the hills where we planted seeds.  At least one of each hill is growing and very green.

As you can see above, they are smaller, but they look much healthier. 

This is an areal photo of the bush been patch.  They are going pretty well.  You can really tell the difference between the colors.

A closer picture, notice that some are much darker, almost purplish.

These are the cherry and roma tomatoes along with the Anaheim and another jalapeno pepper.  The roma tomato started out the smallest, but it will catch up.  It is growing fast. 

The scarlet runner beans are beginning to climb up the fence.  I have grown these before.  Once the start climbing they will be up to the top of the fence in no time.

The peas are suffering in the heat.  I have half a mind to just rip them out and plant some more pole beans.  I will first have to see what my Auntie Linda thinks.  She is too nice to pull plants out.  It is always my job to thin and pull things out.  You have to be a ruthless killer, like me, to be a successful gardener.  If you don't thin things they don't thrive.

Here is a picture of a cherry tomato that has set.  It won't be long before we can pick this little guy.

This is a close up picture of the Anaheim chili pepper.  This is one that was chewed on by my cat, Cooper.  It is still very small, but has sent out lots of branches. I hope it recovers quickly.  I love peppers.

Here are the first early girl tomatoes that have set (above and below).  I am so excited.  None of the other non-cherry tomatoes have set fruit yet. The others bloom and then the flowers fall off.  Well, I guess that is why these are called early girl. 

The pumpkins have not sprouted, and now I fear they never will.  I am sad about this.  Perhaps we will buy some different seeds and try again.  They will be awfully late, but it has been so cold that they would still be very small even if they had been planted on time.

That is all there is about the community garden.  Except that we have been weeding regularly and the weeds just keep coming up everywhere as if we can't make a dent.  So far, though we have been at least keeping up with them.  The worst are these little reddish succulents that break apart when you try to pull them.

The balcony pots are growing even faster than the community garden.  I think they get more warmth and of course, I fertilize them with chemical fertilizer.  Here are a few pictures of these pots:

This is the jalapeno pepper with the nasturtiums.  Believe it or not, I trimmed back the nasturtiums last week.  they are getting bigger and bigger.

Close up Jalapeno pepper.

The eggplant has grown quite a bit this week and has two blossoms that are ready to open soon.

This cherry tomato has grown taller than its 4 foot bamboo pole.  It has several fruit set and is blooming like crazy.

This is one of the twin romas with some pole beans growing behind.  The beans are growing like weeds and the tomatoes are starting to bloom already.

The lavender is starting to bloom.  See the long stems.

I found out that my daughter has been picking sprigs of rosemary all along, so I will not make any more comments about how slow it is growing.  It is actually looking very nice.

Here is a pole been growing right up its twine.  I will have to train it to wrap around the balcony railing.

The other twin roma tomato with some more beans.

The basil is flowering already.  I quickly picked all the blossoms off, but I have experience with this which tells me it will just keep making more blossoms from here out and not more leaves.  I hope the Cinnamon basil seeds I planted last week sprout soon.  I am getting nervous about weather I will have basil to go with my tomatoes when they are ripe. 

Here is our heirloom tomato.  It continues to flower but has set no fruit that I can find.  The flowers are hidden in the dense foliage.  I wonder if it is just too cold and early for it to set or if it is not getting pollinated.  I will give it a while, then I will prune out lots of the leafy branches.

Here is the tiny bonus roma plant found between the twins, kind of a conjoined twin that I surgically separated and planted in the radish/onion tub to see if it would survive.  It is obviously doing very well.  I will buy it a pot for it this week.  The onions are doing well.  They hardly reacted at all to being dug up and replanted last week.

For some reason I only have a picture of the shabby hanging pot, even though the other is growing much larger. 

The hops have not broke through yet.  I hope they are still alive under there.

That is all for now.  I am working on a plot map for the garden at my in-laws house, but it is complicated and I have been busy.  It may be next week before I am ready to post that.