I am feeling smug and happy to have some peppers put away for winter stews, chili, and casseroles. I must have spent all of an hour or so cutting up and freezing about 20 bell peppers, a dozen Anaheim peppers, and a couple of dozen jalapeno peppers. And look at my cherry tomatoes pictured here, still putting out the blooms, which hopefully means I’ll be harvesting a few of these every day until frost hits them.I am mostly a “harvest and eat it all right away” kind of gardener, planting just … [Read more...] about On Preserving, Freezing, and Canning
vegetables
Pepper Day and Good Bye Sweet Peas
I harvested this basketful of peppers this morning but will refrain from saying “Carol picked a peck of peppers” or anything along those lines. I will cut most of these up and freeze them for use in chili and casseroles later this winter. If I don’t, I will kick myself when I have to pay 99 cents for a green pepper at the grocery store this winter. The varieties include Jalapeno M, Sweet Banana, Anaheim, Valencia, California Wonder and Golden Summer.I don’t mind freezing them because honestly, I … [Read more...] about Pepper Day and Good Bye Sweet Peas
Garden Clean Up – I Need a New Toy, I Mean Tool
I started some garden clean up this morning. This is a before picture. Over the last few weeks, as summer wound down, I have not been as active in the garden, so some of the weeds took advantage of that to grow a lot. It looks like a mess, but taking it one raised bed at a time, I was able to do a pretty good job of clean up in just a few hours this mornng. This is a picture aftewards. It may not look that different, but I cleaned up beans, cucumber vines, zucchini and corn, which were clearly … [Read more...] about Garden Clean Up – I Need a New Toy, I Mean Tool
Are You Ready for Some… Gardening?
Are you ready for some… gardening? How about fantasy gardening?I read an article in the Indianapolis Star about how 37 million people will spend time each week during the football season managing their fantasy football teams. These millions of people form fantasy leagues, hold mock drafts to pick their players from the rosters of real NFL teams, and then each week use the real players’ statistics to figure out how their “teams” did.So, if they can play fantasy sports team manager, how about … [Read more...] about Are You Ready for Some… Gardening?
One More Tomato Story
Just when I was starting to think about shutting down the vegetable garden and clearing out some of the raised beds that are clearly not going to give me more produce this year, I find this big beauty waiting for me.Yes, there are some raised beds that are “done” and I’ll start clearing those out next week, but the tomato plants are still giving me some nice tomatoes.Pause for a side note:Okay, the next part of this blog may convince you that I am clearly over the edge with gardening, and maybe … [Read more...] about One More Tomato Story
Tomato Worth Saving
I decided that I should try to save some seeds from this German Johnson tomato. I've enjoyed this heirloom variety the most this summer, so to be sure I have these again next year, I decided to save some seeds.I picked up some tips and ideas on seed saving on the Daughter of the Soil blog. She described two ways to save tomato seeds, one that involves mold and stench, and the other that involves spreading them out on "a sheet of kitchen roll" which I've decided is a sheet of paper towel. I … [Read more...] about Tomato Worth Saving
