Garden thread
Replies
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Green tomato salsa is also excellent, and green tomato relish, chutney or jam are also traditional options. Sometimes I thin slice them and layer in lasagna (or equivalent casserole without pasta). Also a good ingredient in soups, stews.
Other than salsa or raw pickles, I prefer to cook them, but that's just a taste preference, not an absolute.2 -
Pleasant surprise today; ripe figs! I have three different trees, and two of them bore gifts. These are the small ones; there's another tree that has figs the size of my fist. I have to cut those in quarters to fit them into my dehydrator. It's full now.
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Just canned 6 pints of pasta sauce from my tomatoes. I put ripe tomatoes in the freezer if I know I will do sauce so I can do it all at once. They are mushy when thawed but I will be cooking them down and putting them through a food mill anyway so it doesn't matter.
My sauce is:
Tomatoes, cooked and milled.
Onions, chopped and saute'd in olive oil.
Garlic, saute'd with the onions but added near the end.
Minced fresh basil
Minced fresh mint, usually half of however much basil I use
Red pepper flakes
This year I added a little smoked paprika. It didn't give a smoky flavor to the sauce so much as make the flavor richer.
I cook the milled tomatoes down until sauce consistency then add onions and garlic and cook a little further. Add rest of the seasonings to taste and blend with an immersion blender until the onions and garlic are well blended in. Keep simmering while preparing canning jars and water bath (or cool if you are going to freeze). Fill jars and water bath for 10 minutes. Cool.
Each pound of tomatoes should produce about a cup of sauce.4 -
Just canned 6 pints of pasta sauce from my tomatoes. I put ripe tomatoes in the freezer if I know I will do sauce so I can do it all at once. They are mushy when thawed but I will be cooking them down and putting them through a food mill anyway so it doesn't matter.
My sauce is:
Tomatoes, cooked and milled.
Onions, chopped and saute'd in olive oil.
Garlic, saute'd with the onions but added near the end.
Minced fresh basil
Minced fresh mint, usually half of however much basil I use
Red pepper flakes
This year I added a little smoked paprika. It didn't give a smoky flavor to the sauce so much as make the flavor richer.
I cook the milled tomatoes down until sauce consistency then add onions and garlic and cook a little further. Add rest of the seasonings to taste and blend with an immersion blender until the onions and garlic are well blended in. Keep simmering while preparing canning jars and water bath (or cool if you are going to freeze). Fill jars and water bath for 10 minutes. Cool.
Each pound of tomatoes should produce about a cup of sauce.
That's interesting . . . I've never heard or thought of putting mint in tomato sauce. Can you say how you think that affects/improves the flavor? ("Not expressible in words" is a perfectly valid answer!)1 -
@earlnabby Thanks for sharing your recipe! I wanted something tried and true to use some of my zillions of bags of frozen tomatoes in.
DH wants to make sauce and I'll be making Minestrone Soup. Yummm! 0 -
Just canned 6 pints of pasta sauce from my tomatoes. I put ripe tomatoes in the freezer if I know I will do sauce so I can do it all at once. They are mushy when thawed but I will be cooking them down and putting them through a food mill anyway so it doesn't matter.
My sauce is:
Tomatoes, cooked and milled.
Onions, chopped and saute'd in olive oil.
Garlic, saute'd with the onions but added near the end.
Minced fresh basil
Minced fresh mint, usually half of however much basil I use
Red pepper flakes
This year I added a little smoked paprika. It didn't give a smoky flavor to the sauce so much as make the flavor richer.
I cook the milled tomatoes down until sauce consistency then add onions and garlic and cook a little further. Add rest of the seasonings to taste and blend with an immersion blender until the onions and garlic are well blended in. Keep simmering while preparing canning jars and water bath (or cool if you are going to freeze). Fill jars and water bath for 10 minutes. Cool.
Each pound of tomatoes should produce about a cup of sauce.
That's interesting . . . I've never heard or thought of putting mint in tomato sauce. Can you say how you think that affects/improves the flavor? ("Not expressible in words" is a perfectly valid answer!)
The best way I can describe it is that it adds a more herbal flavor that isn't traditional basil/oregano. It doesn't taste "minty" but you can tell that there is something unique in it. I think it can be overdone but the "2 parts basil to 1 part mint" ratio is perfect.2 -
@earlnabby Thanks for sharing your recipe! I wanted something tried and true to use some of my zillions of bags of frozen tomatoes in. DH wants to make sauce and I'll be making Minestrone Soup. Yummm!
My SIL saw it in Food and Wine magazine last year and tried it. It was so good she immediately sent me the recipe since I was still drowning in tomatoes and looking for ideas. Only thing I did different this year was adding the smoked paprika.
Something else I had this summer that I thought was a great variation on a standard was salsa made from smoked tomatoes. My niece had some at her son's b'day party that she made (small group, outside, socially distanced) and it was excellent. Never thought to smoke tomatoes. Don't have a smoker so I probably won't be doing this but that is what gave me the idea to add the smoked paprika to the sauce.1 -
My silly pumpkin plant is flowering again.
I wish it would send its energy into ripening the second fruit. The first one is good-to-go. I scratched up the second one for display purposes, but it's still hunter green.
Obviously I took that picture when there was ash all over everything. We've had a few inches of glorious rain, so most of that has been washed off. Speaking of rain....
It's been so long since I've made a banana split, I probably don't remember how. I don't even have any bananas much less all the other ingredients. But I can tell you this much: all the wonderful rain we've been getting sure knows how to make Sungold cherry tomatoes split
I just keep picking the split ones and cooking them. I would make quick pickles, but once split, they fall apart in the jar. Still tasty, just harder to eat. 1 -
All tomato plants destroyed, torn out of my garden and gone. Mice would not leave them alone and I was at my wit's end. I'll try again one day with more forethought.
I have one jalapeno plant flourishing and also one Bell Pepper plant thriving. However, they're leaning and they're growing so big and laying on the ground. What would you use to reinforce (?) them, train (?) them? It's late in the game because they're big now but they still could use some help. Would you use tomato cages, sticks, stakes...? Thank you.0 -
Most of my garden is done.
1) I am tomatoe'd out. When I pulled then last week I still had a lot of green ones. I picked the ones that were starting to ripen so I could finish ripening in the house. Except for one plant that never set fruit, I had an abundance
2) I am thrilled with how much my grape vine grew. I expect to get some fruit next year and good production after that (Concords)
3) Tomorrow I will finish my raised bed. The carrots are ready to be pulled although I might leave my fall planting of snap peas for a while longer.
4) Except for some pansies, the flowers are done.
5) The basil got frostbit so is done. Some oregano is still good and the sage will stay good until January. The rosemary is ready to be brought inside.
6) It was a good year. I have all kinds of plans for next year but it is time to put stuff to bed for the winter and plan for spring.
Happy gardening for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere. For the rest of us, see you next spring!2 -
Most of mine is done too. Chard and cabbage still doing well.1
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My silly pumpkin plant is flowering again.
I wish it would send its energy into ripening the second fruit. The first one is good-to-go. I scratched up the second one for display purposes, but it's still hunter green.
[snip]
It varies by squash plant, but for butternut squash anyway, after a certain point in the growing season, we prune the vines past the set fruit.
https://www.thespruce.com/can-you-prune-winter-squash-plants-4125561
...Winter squash needs a certain amount of vine to support and feed the developing fruits, but you don't have to let the vines grow forever. Most varieties will not set more than four or five fruits per plant. Once your vines have set that amount, you can begin to prune them back and keep them in check. While you are waiting for the fruits to set, it's okay to gently move the vines out of the way to make room for yourself or other plants.3 -
kshama2001 wrote: »moonangel12 wrote: »So, what does everyone plant for fall? I have never done fall plantings
I want to get some cold frames set up on the south side of the house, against the brick. My husband is worried about bugs (currently surrounded by pea gravel), but our old house had mulch up to the foundation? Really wanting to do garlic again this year, I did it years ago and it was a satisfying harvest.
I'll probably plant some short snow peas shortly. The first link says, "Pea seeds germinate best at soil temperatures of 50 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit" and my soil temp is 85 degrees, but I see highs in the 70s and 80s over the next 10 days, so am going to give it a shot. In other years, I've waited too long and the frost killed them before they produced much.
https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/flowers-and-plants/vegetables/planting-fall-peas#:~:text=ANSWER:,peas is about 80 percent.
http://www.motherofahubbard.com/its-time-to-plant-fall-peas/
I planted snow peas the third week of August and they are doing great, despite a few nights in the 30's. I mostly munch on them when outside, but last night harvested enough for a stir fry.
I don't remember when I planted spinach, but it was probably too late - it's very healthy, but not producing enough to cook. (But there is enough to harvest for eating raw.)
As always, I have more kale than I can eat.
I made Kale Salad with Dates, Pistachios and Green Tahini from Milk Street's latest magazine.
https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/dates-pistachios-green-tahini-kale-salad
It was good, but a lot of work. I was going to say if I make it again I'd just use a bottled tahini dressing like Annie's:
https://www.annies.com/product/goddess-dressing/
Then I remembered I was out of tahini and had made it from scratch, which added to the work.
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It hasn't been cold enough to kill Mom's Malabar spinach, a tropical plant (as opposed to normal spinach, which is a cool annual.) This is from 4 seeds. (It takes a really long time to get going - needs summer heat before it explodes.)
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I haven't checked on frost damage from overnight yet, but there's still a few things waiting for me.
A couple jalapeno plants, and there's even a couple red-ripe chilies.
There's another Thai chile (or something similar; my neighbor who gave me the start is awful at labeling, and it's NOT what she told me it is) that is LOADED with fruits, but so far almost all green.
There's even still some raspberries!
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Those chiles with the vertical fruit can go either way depending on variety, can be as mild as a bell pepper or SUPER hot!
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Yeah; my neighbor thought they were poinsettia, which they probably are. They range in heat from pretty mild to pretty hot. I'd love them to ripen. I picked one to eat, and it wasn't all that hot.
We've got some hard frost coming, so I'll have to cover them with a blanket for a couple nights this weekend or just cross my fingers.... or harvest all of them. They're still too green.1 -
The weather prognosticators are saying it is going to be 22 or 23 degrees F overnight. Kind of unseasonable. Not totally - we're right around the time of average first frost. We've already had a couple light frosts, but no hard freezes.
Hoses are drained and coiled. Hose bibs are insulated for winter. I harvested the last of the jalapenos and eggplant. I put a 30-gallon garbage can over the Poinsettia pepper to see if I can get it through tonight so the last fruits can ripen. I put a 5-gallon bucket over the celery plant. I'm going to consider putting a blanket over the bed of greens. The beets should be fine.
I cut out the spent canes from the marionberrry and strung up the new canes for next year's fruit. I cut back all the peonies to the ground. Tonight will be the first time for the year I bring the hummingbird feeders in for the night. I'm thinking that today is the last day they'll be able to harvest nectar from the fuchsia and honeysuckle. They'll be eating small insects and drinking sugar water for a while. At least the darkness isn't quite as long as it will be in a couple months. That's when I really try to make sure to leave the feeders out until dark (not a problem) and get them back up as soon as possible in the morning so they have some fuel as soon as they come out of their nightly torpor. I can't imagine what they go through. They either shiver all night to stay warm (burning up their energy stores) or go into a state of torpor to awake with the sun and go get some fuel.
Any figs left on the trees will freeze and fall off. Soon I'll prune the trees back.
Have you put some of your garden to bed for the season? Or if you are in the southern latitudes, what do you have starting up?2 -
Well, it got down to 23 degrees.
I was surprised, but maybe shouldn't have been, when I walked out back. The Princess Tree (Paulownia tomentosa) had dropped ALL of it's leaves overnight.
Yesterday it had only dropped a few. Now it's done. Very interesting. If you're not familiar with this tree, it's probably bigger than it looks. The leaves are nearly a foot long. I didn't plant this tree. It's a volunteer from a couple yards down. It grew where I had to take out a willow several years go. For some reason, I left it; I am thinking it might be time to take it down. That said, it's super easy to rake those huge leaves each year, and maybe it will be my shade tree if/when the other two (a mimosa and a filbert) age out. That might be pretty soon.
Good news is that the Poinsettia Pepper I covered with the 30-gallon can survived. All the other chilies did not, but I had harvested all the fruit. The eggplant also is no longer. The celery froze; there just wasn't enough heat trapped in the five-gallon bucket. I should have harvested more of it. Oh well. Some of the spinach seems to have survived. The beets look ok. The chard is fine; maybe the frost killed the aphids and I can cut back the affected leaves and have more greens soon. The sugar snap peas survived.3 -
@mtaratoot, that Paulownia is a strange critter, at least as it grows here. (I gather it can be invasive where it sets seed: It doesn't, here . . . yet, anyway.) Gorgeous flowers.
I don't have one, but used to volunteer in a botanical garden that did. Here, it was quite fragile (broke often, in Winter ice/wind especially), but would send up a new trunk that grew much, much faster than more common trees. In the garden, they would cut it periodically to keep it the size they needed, and the cut stump would have the widest growth rings I've ever seen - like 3-4 years' growth, 3-4 rings, would be a trunk close to the max size I could encircle with my two (non petite!) hands, thumb/fingertips of right touching left.2
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