well, here we are the next morning, back in real time, not here in blog time.
the sauce is now in a smaller pot and is chilled, ready to be put into jars.
and here are the jars! half pints because there are usually just the two of us to cook for.
our high tech metering system to ensure that each jar is filled just so.
the automatic labeler
and the finished products. sauce and tomato chunks and pepper pieces.
i'll add here a garden recap because we use blogger to keep a record of some parts our life.
the tomatoes seemed to ripen a bit late considering the early heat spell we had, but they have come on quite nicely. the purple cherokees are pretty much done. we may get 3 or 4 more. some early girls and beefsteak are still ripening and we will have loads of green ones to
ripen inside when the weather turns cold. there are many romas left. maybe we'll freeze some.
our corn was delicious. we could have planted more. the bush beans only gave us about 4 meals. we planted 5 basil starts and all flowered very quickly. there were enough nice new leaves for daily use but mostly the leaves turned bitter. we didn't make any pesto this year. an early potato crop is tasty but has very thick skin. we tried a midsummer 2nd planting. the tops grew well and are just now fading. i've poked into the dirt a bit and found at least one large tater.
the transplanted strawberries grew well but didn't produce many berries, though they were quite tasty. they have gone wild with runners and probably need thinning. aaah zucchini! the heat messed with it a bit but we have had fresh zukes all summer and have thrown away some monsters that seemed to grow huge overnight. there are about two dozen mature butternut squash of various sizes hardening for winter storage.
the
shade house was a slow start. we did eat a lot of kale, but the chard leaves got burnt a lot in the early heat. the kale finally got aphids and is gone. the chard pulled through and we have eaten quite a bit. after sowing carrot and beet and onion seeds in the outside beds more than once and having almost no plants come up (save the early beets mentioned below) i sowed some of each in the shade house and now we have all three coming along nicely.
we harvested about 15 pounds of garlic in late june. the onion sets we planted last fall along with the garlic didn't do so well. we did harvest almost two dozen good onions but the majority fell to root rot and tiny worms. an early spring planting of beets gave us many nice meals.
we grew mini red bell peppers, regular red peppers, red rocket hot peppers and jalapenos. they should have been staked. they all fell over and i have added straw mulch under them several times. they are prolific. we have been cooking with the bells and frozen some. i pickled some mini bells and i have made some tasty hot sauce with the red rockets and jalapenos.
even though we have decided quite firmly to move next spring we ordered garlic for fall planting that will mature after we plan to leave. and we'll do onion transplants instead of sets.
best laid plans "gang aft agley" and all that.