Harvest is over

 

October was a busy month!  On all of my days off I worked like a mad man trying to get everything canned and preserved.  I was able to make more salsa because my tomatoes finally started to ripen.  I also made a lot more habanero jelly.  This summer was my first time taking care of a vegetable garden and I learned a lot along the way.
1) Plant flowers next to squash, and pumpking plants in order to ensure fertilization.  I had to pollinate a lot of my pumpkins and squashes this year because I lacked bee power!  I noticed that the bees were all hanging out in my front yard where I have a lot of native flowers which they love.  Next year My pumpkins will be planted next to four Russian sages...bees love these bushes.  I am also planting my squash by my roses.  I was thinking it may help keep the weeds down and the squash will benefit from all of the bees attracted by the roses.
2)  Do not plant three habanero plants unless you want hundreds of habaneros!  I did not realize how many habaneros you can get off of one habanero plant!  I just couldn't keep up.  I did have the right amount of Jalapenos which was two plants.  I made two types of salsa, one I'm afraid to try but I know my husband will love it because it my be capable of burning your tongue off.  Another side note on very hot peppers....especially Habaneros..always wash your hands after harvesting, or wear gloves.  If you rub your eyes after picking these peppers you will be very uncomfortable!
3) Corn needs to be planted ASAP!  I planted mine a bit late this year, I was able to get corn but not as much as I would have liked.
4) Don't plant a bunch of radishes unless you really like them! They grow super fast almost like weeds and if you leave them in the ground too long they wont taste very good.
5) Make sure you trim your tomatoes and don't let them get out of control!  I did not realize how fast a tomato plant can take over!  I learned, a little late in the game, that a tomato plant needed to be kept in check.  If you don't do this then the plant ends up spending all sorts of energy growing big and bushy and not so much on growing big a juicy tomatoes.  My tomato garden turned into survival of the fittest.  I had a yellow pear tomato plant that pretty much took over the area and ended up stunting the growth of one of my Roma plants.  Next year I plan on growing mostly Roma tomatoes because they are the tastiest in sauces, and even though I love me a fresh garden tomato, I just can't eat enough of them to justify growing all those heirloom plants.  I love salad......but not that much.
6) garlic should be planted in the fall...I was able to get a few bulbs this year but they weren't very big.

All and all I felt my garden was pretty successful, the plants I enjoyed watching grow the most were; eggplant, pumpkin, and peppers.  I've also learned that there are many different ways to use peppers in my cooking and I have enjoyed the adventure of it all.

Now my garden looks a bit barren..and it is cold and rainy outside.  I started a compost pile this year but it wont be ready until next harvest to put on the garden.  I plan on cheating this year and buying some good soil to add to my garden.  This fall I also planned next years garden so hopefully it will be a bit more organized. 

I planted my garlic in the middle of October...of course we had a warm spell (Utah weather can be a bit unpredictable) Some of the garlic sprouted but I'm hoping all still goes well in the spring.  If not, I will plant my garlic a bit later in the year.

I also harvested my herbs and hung them to dry.  starting from the left I have; Thyme, Purple sage, Oregano, Rosemary, Mint, and Peppermint.  I will be storing the Mint and Peppermint together so I can drink it as a tea.








I am going to take a break from this blog and work on another blog which will just be my baking adventures.  At first I was going to just keep it all on this blog but I fell it will be more organized if I separate the two.

See you next spring!

Canning

I made a sauce with multiple veggies from my garden.  The sauce includes parsley, oregano, and basil from my herb garden.  The vegetables are Roma Tomatoes, mariachi pepper, yellow peppers, onions, yellow squash, and eggplants.  The eggplants are my favorite next to pumpkins to watch grow.

I cooked everything down.........

Then bottled them using my pressure cooker.  It smelled so good!
I've also made.......

Cinnamon apples.......and..

Salsa...super spicy.  This year was not very productive when it came to tomatoes, but peppers were a different story.  As of now I still have habaneros which are turning a lovely orange, jalapenos, and two types of sweet peppers.  Growing peppers is so much fun and there are so many different varieties.  For this recipe I only used Jalapenos but to keep that nice spicy kick I left the seeds in.

The smell coming from these chopped up jalapenos was amazingly fresh!  As you can see one of my jalapenos had turned red.....I am letting the rest on the plant turn red but for the purpose of salsa I wanted them green so there would be a contrast in color with the tomatoes.

Since I did not have much success with tomatoes I used all of the tomatoes I could gather from my garden rather then use just one variety.  In this salsa there are Roma, Zebra stripped, and yellow pear tomatoes.  Before adding the tomatoes to my Salsa I needed to take the skin off.  This is easily done by blanching.  I put the tomatoes in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, or until the skin starts to split.  Then the Tomatoes are quickly dumped into an ice bath so they stop cooking.

I was then able to easily slip the skin off of each tomato.  Some of the tomato's skin had not split so I just lightly punctured the skin with a knife and then was able to easily slip off the skin.  I added all of the ingredients into a huge sauce pan and let it boil down for about 30 minutes.  While that was cooking I prepared my half pints for bottling by cleaning them and pouring hot water in them.  I did this so that the boiling hot salsa would not crack the glass when I poured it in.  When the salsa was done I filled the bottles with salsa leaving about an inch of head space (when stuff is heated up it expands).  Then I placed them in my canner, and filled it with water until the bottles were completely covered.  Once the water started to boil I processed the salsa for about 20 minutes.  The first thing I used my salsa on was a breakfast burrito mmm...... so good!

Zucchini improved....

I made more zucchini bread but cut the baking soda by 25%.  Now my bread is not sunken but beautifully raised.....amazing what a little chemistry will do!

Zucchini bread

The other day I was walking around my garden when I noticed a zucchini which had grown to the size of a small baseball bat. I couldn't believe that I had let this zucchini get so big! Because the zucchini was so big the only thing I could really do with it was make bread out of it. As a zucchini grows it starts to develop seeds. As the seeds become more mature the fruit becomes more watery and tasteless. The best time to harvest zucchini is when it is small because that is when you will have the best flavor. Of course if you would like to make lots and lots of bread let your zucchini grow! The only bad thing about this is that you wont get as much zucchini because the plant is putting forth all of its effort to grow this one zucchini.
First you need to grate the zucchini. I cut the zucchini into four sections so that I could handle it better.


Peel the tough skin off of the zucchini first and the grate it. Because the zucchini had grown so big, it had developed this spongy inside around the seeds. I only used the outer tough part of the zucchini and threw the inner pithy part with the seeds in my compost bin. I did this because first of all, you don't want seeds in your bread and second of all, the inner part was not appetizing at all (another reason not to let your zucchini get this big).




I then put aside 4 cups of the grated zucchini and moved on to my dry ingredients. I doubled this recipe because I had so much zucchini, I actually only used half of the zucchini with this doubled recipe, so much zucchini! Anyways the recipe really only calls for 2 cups. For now on I will write what the recipe calls for but in the pictures everything is doubled.

I put my dry ingredients in a big bowl and mixed them with a medal spoon. I chose not to use an automatic mixer because it would have made a huge mess. The dry ingredinets consist of: 3 1/4 cups of flour, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp nutmeg, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, and 3 cups of sugar. You may notice that this recipe calls for a lot of nutmeg, and your bread will have a slight but noticeable taste of nutmeg. I love the spicy taste of nutmeg so this recipe was awesome but if you happen to not like the taste then you could get away with putting 1/2 tsp of nutmeg. On the other hand, DON'T BE AFRAID OF NUTMEG! Everyone who has tried this bread has loved it, I haven't heard any complaints about the taste of nutmeg.

After I finished mixing the dry ingredients I grabbed another bowl and mixed all of the wet ingredients together. This consisted of: 1 cup vegetable oil, 4 eggs, 1/3 cup water, 1 tsp lemon juice, and the zucchini.

I created a hole in the middle of my dry ingredients and then poured all of the wet ingredients in. I then mixed the whole thing by folding the dry ingredients over the wet with a wooden spoon. When the mixture was half way mixed I added 1 cup of walnuts (but you can also use pecans if you prefer). Using a wooden spoon or spatula as opposed to an electrical beater insures that your mixture wont become over mixed. You can stop mixing once you no longer see any dry flour.

When all of the ingredients are mixed spray 2 loaf pans with non-stick spray or cover them in butter. Divide the mixture evenly into each pan. Of course in this picture there are four because like I said earlier I doubled the recipe.

Put the pans in a preheated oven of 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes. I baked mine at 370 degrees because of the high altitude. Also if you look at the picture of the bread at the top you can see that it has sunk a bit. At high altitudes there is less air pressure which causes leavening agents (baking powder in this case) to work too quickly. By the time your bread is cooked, gasses have escaped causing the bread to sink. In order to prevent this you decrease the amount of baking powder by about 25%. So in this recipe you would only put 1 1/2 tsp. Another trick, if your bread is starting to brown to much on the top but is no where near being done you can put tin foil on the top so that the bread is not being cooked to fast on top.

After you pull them out of the oven let them cool before trying to take them out of the pan otherwise it will fall apart.

Asian Caprese

Sometimes when using ingredients from your garden you have to improvise. I had a big variety of tomato (Celebrity) but it only produced one tomato and it still is not ripe yet. The Celebrity tomatoes skin is also split due to a slight drought and then excess watering. Given all that I have abandoned my one Celebrity tomato. Today I wanted to make a salad but didn't have any lettuce or spinach ready in the garden. I did have plenty of.....


Thai Basil,

Yellow Pear Tomatoes,
and a block of Mozzarella cheese, I would have rather used the fresh mozzarella....but this works.
I de-stemmed the basil, cut the mozzarella into cubes, and sliced the tomatoes down the long ways to keep there artistic shape.

After plating the salad I sprinkled some rock salt over it, and poured some olive oil and balsimic vinegar. YUM!

Yesterday I also bought a pressure canner so that I could can my tomatoes and peppers. At first I was just going to make salsa but I decided that I really don't eat that much salsa and there are so many recipes that I want to try with my peppers and tomatoes so I decided to just can them so that I could use them as I see fit throughout the winter.

My compost pile is starting to get pretty big and hopefully I will have enough compost for my garden next year. I also plan on buying some chicken manure at the local nursery.

In a couple of weeks I am going to dig up yet another part of my yard and create my pumpkin patch for next year. It is going to be in the front yard so I am a bit worried about dogs and kids but pumpkins are tough so I'm not that worried. I also think the neighborhood kids would love to watch the pumpkins grow because I think they are by far the most fascinating fruit to watch develop!

Here is today's harvest. I have slowly been collecting the yellow pear tomatoes and I have a couple of Roma as well but not nearly as many as hoped for. Next year I am going to double the amount of Roma plants and hopefully have enough to make a couple of sauces and can them. My carrots are doing great though. I have been able to pull about five a week and leave the rest in the ground. I will probably pull the rest of my harvest withing the next couple of weeks. These carrots must be eaten raw because if I cook them at all I wouldn't be able to enjoy their intense flavor.


This is a green zebra striped tomato. This plant had a hard time and I am happy that I have the three tomatoes I have on this plant. They are supposed to get a bit bigger so hopefully the are able to ripen completely. I may pick them earlier and let them finish to ripe on my window sill. I planted this plant in a pot that turned out to be way to small for it. I just didn't realize how big it was going to get! Lesson learned for next year.

Besides the small yield from my tomato plants I have been very successful with my peppers! Each plant has multiple peppers on it and all of my varieties are doing very well.

Chocolate Beauty sweet pepper

Jalapeno

Mariachi pepper

I also have three Habanero plants, and a yellow sweet pepper plant that are all doing nicely but I haven't taken pictures of them yet. I have already tried a Mariachi pepper and it was delicious!

I also have about four pumpkins ripening on the vine. I'm happy to have that many considering the difficult time I had with pollination. Here is a picture of my biggest one thus far.....

Making garden pesto

Today I made pesto from some of the basil growing in my yard. The aroma from the basil and garlic was amazing and I can still smell it on my hands. This year was my first year planting garlic and I did not realize the cold winter was a necessity for huge bulbs. As a result my garlic did not get very big and I wont have cloves to plant in the ground for next year. For next year I have already ordered two types of garlic which should arrive in time for me to plant them in the fall. Even though the garlic was small it still had a strong taste and it made the pesto slightly spicy!


Instead of chopping up the basil I just used scissors. I find it is much easier to use scissors as opposed to a knife. All of these cloves came from one garlic bulb, they were a bit small but had a big taste!



I crushed up the pine nuts and garlic using a mortar and pestal...I need a bigger mortar and pestal it was a pain using this small one because I kept on pushing the pine nuts out onto the counter. I used a blender to crush everything together....someday I will have a proper food processor.


When I was done I put the sauce in mason jars and placed them in the freezer. Pesto sauce has to be frozen and it is not recommended to can and preserve them. I learned this from the "National Center for Home Food Preservation". They state that, "Herbs and oils are both low-acid and together could support the growth of the disease-causing Clostridium botulinum bacteria." Since Pesto is an uncooked sauce and is basically just basil and oil it falls into this category of extreme low-acid. Clostridium botulinum is rod shaped and produces the neurtoxin, botulinum neurotoxin types A-G. This causes flacid muscular paralysis seen in botulism and is used as the main paralytic agent in botox treatments.

Pesto sauce is recommended to be frozen and can be stored this way all winter. I have read other ideas like putting the pesto in ice cube trays and then storing the cubes in a freezer bag this way it is easy to handle when you want to defrost the pesto. I may try that next time with my other batch of basil I will cut next week and see which way I prefer.

Blossoms

Here are a few of the blossoms from my herbs and veggies. I didn't include pumpkin because I had already taken a few pictures of them in a earlier post.


ONION: This blossom is one of my favorites although it isn't very fragrant I still love all of the little white flowers. I also like how the stem is a bit twisted giving the blossom a unique look in a floral arrangement. I pick these when they are just starting to bloom so that more energy can go into the onion. I put them in water and it will finish blooming in the water.

DILL: looks like a yellow cloud.

PARSLEY


EGGPLANT: This is a very unique purple flower. The flower is about the size of a silver dollar.

onion from seed

These are some of the onions that I started from a set (bulbs not seeds). I harvested them when the greens had laid down and I could see the top of the onion sticking out of the ground. They are full of flavor but are tiny, I'm wondering if I planted them to close together or if it was just the quality of my soil. Next year I want to try and start them from seed but I am scared, I heard it was hard to start onions from seed, is this true? Should I try it and see what happens? I guess I could try and if it didn't work out I could go buy another set.

I bought my last set from Sam's club but this time I will buy a set from my local nursery.

No buzy beez

I have had a lot of success with my pumpkin, long neck squash, and zucchini. The plants are healthy and there are plenty of blossoms. There is one problem though...I don't have any bees!!!! One day I was checking my pumpkins and I noticed that the baby pumpkins were shriveling up and dying before they got bigger than an inch around. I saw my squash doing the same thing. I did a little research and realized it was because the female blossoms were not being fertilized.

My alternative was too hand pollinate. Every morning I go to my bee-less backyard and check for new female and male blossoms.
MALE FLOWER

FEMALE FLOWER

The female flower also has a tiny fruit underneath it which you can't see in this picture.

To hand pollinate I carefully take the petals off of the male flower so as not to spill any of the visible pollen inside. Then I get as much of the male flower's pollen into the female flower.

I have just started this so hopefully it works I will let you know if it does.

Another thing I have done was open the side gate to my vegetable garden that leads to the front yard. In my front yard I have a wild flower garden which attracts a lot of bees. My theory is that if the bees see the flower's on my pumpkin plants then they will enter the side yard. I don't really know if that works or not because I really don't know how bees operate but it seems the bees just didn't know the veggie garden was there.

My husband suggested I kidnap a bee and take it to the veggie garden. Once in the veggie garden I release the bee so that he sees the pumpkin flowers and then goes back to the hive to report to the other bees. Sounds funny but hey that might work, I will use that as a last resort though I don't want to traumatize any bees haha

My pumpkin plants have got to be the most successful plant thus far. I have so many blossoms each one a beautiful yellow star shape. I'm curious to see how many pumpkins I will get. Right now two of my plants are starting to grow out of the planter boxes and onto the ground. My third one I'm afraid does not know what to do with itself. I'm afraid I did plant them a bit too close together. I found that it is impossible to learn everything from reading gardener books, it is best to experiment and learn from your mistakes. (Although a little research never hurt anyone!) This year I planted my onions too close together and although they will still taste good their size will suffer.

I dug up some more grass a couple of weeks ago and created what I call the berry garden. So far I have three raspberry plants which will be paired with some blackberry plants. Behind the berry bushes I have a crop of corn. I planted the corn pretty late this year but I saw a flat with ten corn sprouts for three dollars so I figured, "what have I got to lose?" Since I planted the corn it has doubled in size! I hope they are able to reach full maturity before the frost. Next year I plan on planting corn again in this area with three different pumpkin plants growing between the corn and the berry bushes. I know, my obsession with pumpkins is a bit over the top but all the different varieties are just too tempting I've got to try them all!


My Tomatoes are starting to grow. I have had a couple of ripe tomatoes off of my yellow pear heirloom. The other variety is a Roma tomato. My celebrity tomato has had plenty of blossoms but the fruit has not started growing yet. All of my tomato plants are about 4 feet tall now. The only one I'm worried about is my green zebra striped heirloom. This tomato plant is huge but it has not produced any blossoms. This tomato is in a container and is apart from the other tomatoes so maybe it has something to do with the soil. I've tried adding tomato food but no luck so far, suggestions anyone?

peppers, pumpkins, and tomato plants

My homemade tomato trellis is working out great! I've got three baby tomatoes on my Yellow pear, and plenty of buds on my Roma and Celebrity plants. Sadly my heirloom tomato plant has yet to produce a flower that produces a fruit, the plant suffered the most during the past few storms.

The trellis is a little less than five feet tall, I wonder if the tomatoes will grow all the way up it. I planted them right after mothers day and since then they have tripled in size. I think that now since the weather has been consistently good they will grow even faster. The poor tomato plants have survived through high winds of up to 50 miles per hour, heavy rains, temperatures dropping to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and even snow! I protected them with a huge tarp during this extreme weather which was easily draped over the whole trellis.


Another plant that had a hard time during the extreme weather this spring were my peppers. On the left is a picture of one of my Habanero plants. I had four and one died, so I replaced it with the pepper plant pictured on the right which is a Mariachi pepper. The Mariachi is doing really well and already has two baby peppers on it. I also have two Jalapeno plants, a yellow bell pepper and a purple bell pepper.

This is a baby pumpkin! I'm so excited about my pumpkins, all three plants have several buds and the plants are huge. I hope my pumpkins mimic the leafy part of the plant and grow to immense proportions by October. I have decided that I will always grow pumpkins because they are so much fun to watch grow. I also planted some albino pumpkins in my front yard but I started them really late so I hope they can catch up to there orange counter-part.

HERE ARE SOME OTHER PLANTS IN MY GARDEN......

EGGPLANT (Never planted eggplant before so this should be interesting)


BLACKBERRY (I also have a raspberry bush, I hope I get enough fruit for jam!)


CARROTS (Most annoying thing about carrots is making sure they are spaced out because the seed is so small it is hard to plant them away from each other. I pulled plenty of seedlings out during the process and I hope I spaced everything out okay.)

NON-FOOD ITEMS


TRUMPET VINE-for the hummingbirds...


TIGER LILY