Season's end

The tomatoes have run their course. They've been much appreciated and enjoyed. But now the time has come for them to make way for something else.

The experiment netted some fine results. Container gardening on the deck is viable. Not all of the varieties were home runs but we now know which ones we like the best.

There are still some producing tomatoes in the yard garden, so we'll get a few more tomatoes until a cold snap, maybe.

The shadows are long now and the main crop doesn't get any light at all really. The deck still gets light in the a.m. and so we'll try some more container gardening going forward.

Sitting Bull

Canning

We began canning some tomato sauce recently.

We canned about twenty pounds of tomatoes and ended up with twenty pints of tomato sauce.

It's a pretty simple process. A propane burner works well when bringing a large pot of water to a boil. You can do it on the stove but it takes longer.

The first step is to bring a large pot of water up to boiling. Cut an X in the bottom of the tomatoes before tossing them in the boiling water to remove the skins. Just a couple of minutes is all it takes.

Remove the tomatoes and set them in a colander to cool off for a few minutes so that you can handle them. When they are cool enough the skins will be easy to remove.

After the skins are removed put all of the tomatoes in a large canning pot. They will need to cook down for a couple of hours.

While they are boiling they need to be stirred often. The tomato sauce will reduce quite a bit and become more concentrated. How much you reduce them is up to you. The more you reduce them the more the depth of flavor they'll have.

After the sauce is reduced you will probably want to remove any large chunks and throw them in a blender and then add them back into the large pot.

The jars and lids need to be given a hot water bath before canning. After they are removed from the water, fill each of the jars, not quite filling them completely.

Place the lids on but don't tighten them all the way. Depending on the size of your pot you can process eight to twelve jars at a time.

Submerge the jars into a pot of boiling water and be sure they are covered at least one inch by water. Let them sit for about five minutes.

After that remove them and let them sit out. In a few minutes you will start to hear the lids popping. This tells you that the vacuum has formed in the jar.

This process doesn't take very long and if you are sitting around on a weekend you can do this in a couple of hours and drink beer at the same time.

No matter what, your own canned tomato sauce tastes better than the store bought stuff. Tomato sauce is the base of spaghetti, chili, brunswick stew, chicken cacciatore, tortilla soup, etc.

In the depths of winter, homemade tomato sauce is special because in reality you are canning a little bit of summer in the process. That canned summer leaps out of the jar when you open it in February. Honestly.

Tomato Factory

Here's the tomato factory that was once our deck. I haven't counted the number of pots there are but over twenty I believe.

The cherry tomatoes have been going strong for a while and they are very tasty. The others are still small so we haven't been able to sample them yet.

There are some other tomatoes in various places throughout the yard and I have found two tomato worms on those already. The container garden seems to be all but pest free. But, they need to be ridded of suckers nearly daily whereas the ones in the real earth don't seem to sucker hardly at all.

Listada di Gandia

There is some eggplant that is coming along decently as well. I am not sure which variety it is however. I believe it is an Asian variety, I will have to check the seeds and find out. It's nice and hot now (90's) and the tomatoes really do love it. Quite a bit more watering but they seem quite happy with the heat.

No it's an Italian variety.

Tomatoes!

BHN-624

Finally some tomatoes are ripe! They are small cherry tomatoes but they are very good. Some larger varieties are growing in various places around the yard but they are still very small. So it will be another few weeks until they are ready.

These are a cross between a cherry and a grape tomato.

Tomato Update

Finally there are some tomatoes on the vines here. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we can begin harvesting some.

These are Roma tomatoes, I think.

These plants need to be suckered quite often. They really want to try and run away on you.

June 2nd

We started these way back in February from seeds.

The most sunny spot in the yard is where the deck is, so we've done a lot of containers.

We also dispersed some around the yard in different places where there will hopefully be enough sun, but those places are limited. I believe that we've got about a dozen different varieties. It will be interesting to see which ones do the best.

May 1st

We didn't start them all at the same time so there are some that we've just repotted into larger containers.

Updates

I think these are Roma tomatoes. They were sown on February 7th.  I put them outdoors a couple of weeks ago. They are doing well so far. They are about a foot tall now.

Mar 25

 I think these tomatoes were from seeds leftover from last year.

I've started all new seeds from Baker Creek this year. There is about 9 varieties in this tray. Yesterday we potted them up.

It dropped into the 40's again last night and probably will tonight as well. But it is supposed to be in the mid 80's by this weekend.

We have a 700 percent increase in peach production this year. We have seven peaches versus the one we had last year.

This peach tree was just put in the yard last fall. The Elberta peach that produced the one peach last year, got hammered by frost while it was in bloom this season.

It didn't set any fruit at all. This new tree is doing very well and has grown a lot. It even got hit by a big poplar limb and has a large scar on it's side now. It seems to be healthy though.

The strawberries are literally going crazy. Hundreds I imagine. If we can manage to get some to ripen that will be fantastic.

Blueberries are really going good this year. I have about 4 or 5 big bushes that are loaded with them. Some of the smaller ones I planted last fall bloomed but I cut them off so they would grow a bit more since it's their first year.

They bloom all summer though so it isn't a big deal to drop the blooms off of them. I had a few blueberries all the way into November last year.

Here is one single berry that is beginning to ripen. All of the others are still green. So hopefully in a week or so we can start harvesting some strawberries.

There are a few tartarian cherries and a few nectarines as well. I'm not sure the cherries will ripen. The nectarines are very, very small still, so it's hard to know what to make of them yet.

There are a few gooseberries on as well. They seem to be doing okay, but I'm not sure how long I am suppose to wait to harvest them. I've never had one before.

Tomatoes & pepper update

Here is a shot of some Roma paste tomatoes I started back in February.

They've been outside on a few nights that dipped into the high thirties and seem to be withstanding it fine.

Here is a shot of the Olympus F1 peppers we started at the same time as the tomatoes.

The eggplant was doing very well, but I left it outside and it got hammered and gave up the ghost.

The remaining bing cherry tomatoes are still growing but haven't done as well as the peppers and roma tomatoes.

Tonight it is supposed to get down to twenty-five degrees.