hole in one!

my mom picked up radishes at the farmers market and one of them was quite bizarre!





i'd love to know how THAT happened.

canning peaches and pears

a few weekends ago my mom and i canned peaches and pears (sept 4 and sept 5).

peaches!


what kind of peaches are good for canning? colorado peaches! (colorado peaches are really good, alberta peaches would be the best) and make sure they're cling-free (freestone) peaches. you dont want the pit to cling to the peach (clingstone) when you cut it open. it makes for a messy frustrating canning experience that often ends up with mushy bruised peach bits, or excessive amounts of peach cut away and wasted.


sterilized jars


sterilized rings


peels and pits and any bruised parts, great for the compost bin


some we chunk, some we slice


load the canner


good stuff maynard


the canning kit i wished i'd had when i canned my sauce


necessary canning equipment


pears!


for our own reference, these kind are good pears for canning, even if they're on the small side.


stove setup, clockwise: the big water bath canner, a pot of water for blanching the skins off the pears, a pot of sugar water syrup to pack in the jars, and the little pan with water for sterilizing the lids.


counter setup, right to left: bowl of cold water to cool the blanched pears and rub off the skins, bowl of cold water with lemon juice to help stop browning and hold the peeled pears until they're sliced, knives and towel to slice and core the pears with, metal measuring cup to move syrup from the pot on the stove to the jar, jar to put the slices/chunks of pear in, and funnel to help get the syrup in without mess.


blanching the pears in boiling water, just a few at a time


the peels rub right off after blanching


but sometimes the bottom peels dont all come off, or are bruised and you have to cut the bruises away


mmm, fresh peeled pear


cored and quartered


most awesome rubber spatula for easing the fruit into a better, more tightly packed position in the jar


nummy


peaches:
syrup was 18 cups of water with 5 cups of sugar. we didnt use it all, but we always end up having to mix up a second batch so this way we didnt have to.
32 large peaches
got about 3 1/2 peaches per quart
got 8 quarts and two pints

pears:
14 cups water
4 cups sugar
14 pounds of pears (according to the box), approx 54 little pears
got 6 quarts and 3 pints

green bean glutton

august 25 i picked 8 bags of green beans, not including all the ones i ate while picking, and not including all the oversized ones i tossed to the dogs and threw aside. heres some pictures.

so many beans


NOM NOM NOM


a dog size pile of overgrown beans


molly likes beans


i'll just sample these for you


in my hand, overgrown beans on the left, 'normal' good sized beans on the right. all the beans in the background are overgrown.


plus some oddball beans where the top half was normal sized, but the bottom half was overgrown.




8 baggies of beans

watermelon

i grew a really big watermelon this year


but i wasnt sure when to pick it. according to the advice i'd gotten on the internet, it *should* have been ripe...

it was 7.5" tall


nearly 8" wide, and the bottom had turned a nice bright shade of yellow instead of being white


but it was not all the way ripe


although it did still taste good


i think perhaps i need to keep track of how long the watermelon grows, maybe that would be a better indicator.

here is the info on how to tell when watermelon is ripe on the vine:
i'm finally having success with growing watermelons in minnesotas short growing season. however, i have no idea when to pick my watermelon off the vine. i got this helpful link in my email today from hudson valley seed library's website and thought i'd share: http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?p=1854

For watermelons, determining ripeness is much more difficult. There are four clues to look for:

1. A bright yellow spot where the melon rests on the ground. In yellow-skinned varieties, this spot will be whitish.
2. Detectable ribbing along the surface of the melon. When immature, the watermelon has smooth skin lacking a topography. As it ripens, the skin becomes an undulating landscape which can be detected by rubbing your fingers around the melon. The more distinct the ribbing, the riper the fruit.
3. A drum-like resonance when you knock the melon with your knuckles. You should be able to detect some reverberation–not just a dull thud.
4. The browning and wilting up of the tendril on the melon vine that is adjacent to the little stem leading to the ripening fruit. As the melon grows, this tendril looks green and curly; when the melon approaches peak ripeness, the tendril grows brown and shrivels from the tip down to the base. If the tendril is not fully withered, the melon is probably not fully ripe.

Once you’ve identified a fruit that meets all these criteria, wait a few more days (unless you are growing a variety with a thin rind, in which case prompt harvest is necessary to prevent splitting). In general, the longer you’re able to abstain from harvesting, the riper your watermelon will become. While regular melons will continue to ripen a little bit once harvested, watermelons stop dead in their tracks once you pull them off the vine. So, in nearly all circumstances, the longer you wait before harvesting, the better. When you do decide to harvest, cut the watermelon from the vine (it will not slip).

You’ll know as soon as you try to slice into a watermelon whether or not it’s ripe: a ripe watermelon will seem to pop open–as if to relieve inner pressure–as soon as the knife slits the skin.

tomato blight

blight hit my tomato plants hard this year, killing off a lot of foliage.


it starts out like this, and pretty soon dries out/dies off completely.


at first glance, they may look healthy enough, but if you look closer, theres absolutely no foliage on the bottom half of the plants, some of which are up to 5 feet tall. the white garbage bag was where i was shoving all the diseased leaves and branches i'd pulled off.


i'm worried the blight will come back even worse next year.

pictures from sauce making round one, round two, and round three

back on sept 2nd i made the third and final round of sauce. august 29th was the second round. august 17th was the first round.



so many tomatoes. this bowl is gigantic. notice the tomatoes are stacked as tall as the can of no stick cooking spray.


plus some more


cooking down the sauce


onions and garlic from my garden


sweating the onions and garlic


more onions from my garden (i used one large sized and one small sized onion)


fire burn and cauldron bubble!


the aftermath


the sauce from round one all went in the freezer.


round two was when i ran all the tomatoes thru the strainer, but didnt cook them down, rather i just saved them in zip lock bags.

the strainer


close up


pouring liquid into a baggie is difficult. theres suddenly not enough hands. i cant hold the bag up and hold and tilt and pour the pan full of juice. so i improvised with a big bowl to contain spills, and a clip to hold the bag open and in place. worked pretty darn well.


baggies full of liquid tend to tip over and roll right off the counter top. they need help staying in place. (i'm still amazed the bag didnt burst and spray tomato juice/sauce all over my kitchen)


my least favorite part, clean up


4 gallons of juice/sauce



round three involved cooking down all those baggies from round two, and straining and cooking down another round of tomatoes, then using my new pressure cooker to can the sauce.

this tomato had a tail


soooooo many tomatoes


trying to get down level with the tomatoes to show how tall the pile was


let the mess making begin!


i was trying to cook down the sauce while still running tomatoes thru the strainer. turns out i dont divide my attention very well and managed to boil over the sauce.


sweating more onions and garlic (again from my garden)


one stockpot full of sauce filled 7 quart jars


pretty


my new pressure cooker


since it was my first time ever using a pressure cooker, i was paranoid about the pressure so i watched it like a hawk. turns out the pressure builds kinda slowly.


really slowly


omg would you just get there already!


as the pressure finally got close, i started turning down the heat, knowing that an electric stove top takes longer to cool down. at first i thought this would be the right temp to lower to.


but the pressure continued to rise, so i turned down the heat again


before finally settling between 3-4, which seemed to be the magic number to hold the pressure where i wanted it at 11 pounds.


my hard water left a film on all the jars (it wiped off easily tho)


left a film in the canner too


i ended up with 12 quart jars, and two zip lock baggies full of sauce.