Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

[TanksHill]

I didn't know they had an actual rule for the seed count on SFG but I've never read the book either.

I'll have to try the sand trick. I have lots of slugs!!

g

 

[moolie]

Yeah, I don't follow all the rules Although for some things like carrots/parsnips the spacing is pretty bang-on if you do 16 per square.

And you don't need to read the book, there's a website called My Square Foot Garden where she explains it all and writes about all sorts of veggies and their growing habits.

If you do read the SGF book, read the original rather than the "New Improved SGF" book--the original is way less hype about the soil mix he advocates and more useful information, especially about re-purposing things in the garden.

 

[moolie]

We stopped off at the farmer's market end of the day yesterday to see if there were any good deals and hubs bought 25 lbs of simply gorgeous Romas (still on the vine!) while I was chatting with another vendor. When I got out to the car and saw the crate I asked him about the price, and then told him to go right back and see if they had any more--he came back with a second 25 lb crate!

It really pays to get to know the vendors at your local market, we've been buying from this vendor for 5 or 6 years now and he just gave us the tomatoes in his plastic crates rather than transferring them into cardboard boxes, trusting us to bring the crates back next week

Anyway--today was a busy one that didn't go exactly according to plan so I didn't get all the tomatoes put up, but I did make a fair dent in the pile. We ended up sleeping in and missing church completely, as we had thunderstorms last night that didn't make for a great night's sleep. I got a call from a friend about a good deal on flats and half flats of raspberries at one of the other farmer's markets, so hubs and I swung down to pick up a half flat to make jam. We also had to stop at Rona (like Home Depot) for a few things to finish off the laundry room, and ran into some friends--ended up chatting in the parking lot for over an hour which really ate into the day but was a good time catching up as we hadn't seen them for a while.

So when we finally got home from our "short" errand it was just after 1pm!

Anyway, managed to get 11 half-pints of raspberry jam made along with 8 pints plus 2 half pints of salsa, in addition to helping hubs put the finishing touches on the laundry room. Now all we need to do is hang shelves, then I can take "after" photos

11 half-pints of raspberry jam (first time ever using Pomona's Pectin, seems to have worked great!)

8 pints with glass lids plus 2 half-pints salsa

 

[moolie]

So, crazy busy week but got tons accomplished

Garden is growing like crazy, had to thin the carrots the other day and as a result we've been having the most lovely baby carrots with dinner each night--didn't think to weigh them, but I got an ice cream bucket of index finger sized carrots full from two of the 4 4x4' raised beds, and will do the other 2 4x4' beds once we've eaten through these (half gone now).

Lettuce is done, so will be pulling that today (starting to bolt) and planting some more along with radishes in a couple of weeks for fall.

Beans are flowering like crazy and some pods have already formed, changes daily out there and I haven't been out to look yet today. Same with peas.

Tomato plants are all huge and flowering nicely and I'm pinching out tops and suckers today so they'll set more fruit. I may plant some of the larger suckers and see how they do, some have flowers.

Cukes are slow, corn is growing tall, haven't checked the turnips in a while, beets need pulling so I can get them canned up. Onions seem to be getting big, been picking bits of the tops here and there for cooking.

Canning is in full swing, finished up the 50 lbs of tomatoes this week, total canned =18 pints salsa, 15 half-pints chili sauce, 12 quarts tomato sauce.

Went gleaning early Saskatoon berries (like big purple blueberries, they grow on bushes that are 6-7' tall) yesterday as a family, got two ice cream buckets full. Will jam a bucket today and freeze the rest. Hoping for a similar take next week, they are SO delicious

Laundry room is finished and I love it! Shelves are in and I've been re-organizing them to best use the space, I'll post photos later today after church. Hubs has built more boxes for my canning jars as he has had time, so that part of life is feeling much more organized. I love taking a box down off the shelf and to the kitchen, canning up a batch of jam or salsa or whatever, and then using the box to get the full jars down to the cold area in the basement. Still don't have all my jars in boxes, so as jars get filled, more jars move into the now empty boxes

I will post photos later today after we get home from church.

 

[Denim Deb]

Sounds like your garden is doing great!

 

[moolie]

Just posted these recipes in the "I can't can what I want to, can I?" thread, re-posting here to keep track for myself...

I make stock when I have time and stuff to cook up, usually after dinner. We eat the chicken, while the carcass goes into the pot with a coarsely chopped onion, some celery, and some carrots and maybe bits of leftover tomato. I cook it till bedtime, then pull all the nice meaty bits off the carcass and chuck them back into the broth, pop the pot into the fridge on a potholder to cool overnight, then next day into a container for the freezer.

Then when I feel like making soup, usually while I'm cooking dinner or something else, I'll pull the container of stock out of the freezer and dump it into a pot, and throw in veggies until it looks good. I let it cook only till hot if I'm canning it, otherwise all of my soups cook for hours, then go into the fridge to cool overnight while the flavours "meld" some more, then I cook it a few more hours the next day.

If I'm canning it right away, i just cook it till heated while I run the jars through a hot "rinse" cycle on the dishwasher to made sure they are clean, ladle the hot soup into the jars, lids onto jars then into canner, and process while we eat dinner. Timer goes off, turn off burner, wait till pressure goes down to zero, jars out onto towel on countertop till I check the seals and put them away the next morning.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but I already made soup for years the same way, so adding the jars and processing step just added time for the most part

Tomato Soup

4 quarts chopped tomatoes
3 large onions, chopped
2 cups celery, chopped
3 red bell peppers, chopped
5 carrots, chopped
salt, basil, bay leaf

Cook tomatoes till soft, run through food mill to remove skins and seeds. Cook rest of veggies in just enough water to cover till soft, run through food mill. Combine tomato and veggie pure in pot, season and add bay leaf. Simmer about an hour till thickened, remove bay leaf. Pack into clean hot pint jars, leaving 1/2" headspace, process 20 minutes at 10 lbs pressure (adjust for altitude, I need 12 lbs).

Split Pea Soup with Bacon

1 lb split peas
3 cups water
6 cups chicken broth
1/4 lb thick bacon, cooked and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced carrots
1/2 tsp dry mustard
salt, pepper
1 cup diced ham

Combine all ingredients except ham and simmer 2 hours until peas are tender, add ham and heat through again. Pack into clean hot pint jars, leaving 1" headspace, and process 75 minutes at 10 lbs pressure (adjust for altitude, I need 12 lbs).

Turkey Veg Soup


2 onions, chopped and sauted
2 quarts turkey stock with meat
1 quart water
4 cups assorted chopped veggies
salt, pepper, herbs to taste (rosemary is nice, parsley is classic)

Add sauted onions to stock and water, simmer till veggies are cooked but not too soft. Can pure half the soup with immersion or regular blender if you wish it creamier OR can add 1 cup yellow split peas while simmering veggies (this will also thicken the soup). Season to taste, pack into clean hot pint jars, leaving 1" headspace, and process 75 minutes at 10 lbs pressure (adjust for altitude, I need 12 lbs)..

Cream of Whatever Soup

3 quarts of veggie or meat stock, no meat
2 cups veggie of choice
2 cups yellow split peas
salt, pepper to taste

Simmer veggies and split peas in broth till soft, pure with immersion or regular blender, add water if too thick (should be eating consistency for creamy soup), season to taste, pack into clean hot pint jars, leaving 1" headspace, and process at 10 lbs pressure (adjust for altitude, I need 12 lbs) for 75 minutes.

Hamburger Veg Soup

1 lb ground beef/bison
2 onions, choppped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 quarts chopped tomatoes
2 quarts beef broth
4 carrots, chopped
1 cup assorted mixed veg (can be frozen, we like grean beans and corn)
salt, pepper

Saute onions and celery, brown meat and spoon off fat, add tomatoes and broth along with veggies and cook till heated through, season to taste. Pack into clean hot pint jars, leaving 1" headspace, and process 75 minutes at 10 lbs pressure (adjust for altitude, I need 12 lbs).

 

[moolie]

And here's pics of the laundry room progress:

-first image shows the BEFORE (NOT our stuff, I took this photo before we moved into this house over 4 years ago)

-second photo shows DURING so you can see the half-drywalled wall hubs built behind the machines to hide the dryer vent pipe

-third photo shows NOW--just need to cut the old 12" deep shelf board to length for the shelf brackets along the left side wall, the shelves on the back wall over the machines are 16" deep

And here's my latest kijiji score, a 35-year-old solid maple hutch that we picked up the other evening for $75. The jars on the two top shelves are the half-gallon jars I scored with my last kijiji jar run, top shelf has 10 Gem jars, second shelf from top has 11 Consumer's Glass regular mouth jars--nothing in them yet but they are all clean now (they had been stored in a very spidery dusty garage for a long while I think).

Showcasing my recent canning: 12 quarts tomato sauce, 18 pints salsa, 15 half-pints chili sauce, 11 half pints raspberry jam, 10 half-pints saskatoon berry jam

 

[moolie]

And a few random garden photos:

The veggies boxes have grown really bushy in the last couple of weeks, here they are July 21:

This was just after I thinned out the carrots and pulled a few lettuces (still some in the background, but they've since been pulled as well).

And some of the flowers growing around the back deck and shed:

lavender

violas

roses

pinks

 

[TanksHill]

Wow, great pictures. Your garden looks so green and seems to be producing very well. The hutch is a fantastic find. I can just see the jars all filled up with peas and beans.

Great job on the canning as well.

g

 

[moolie]

Thanks Gina

Everything is doing well except for the pumpkins and cukes, and I think I forgot to plant the zukes--there are a few blank spots where they should have come up. And my tomatoes got off to a slow start because I had to pull several due to Septoria Leaf Spot blight, but the remainder seem to be disease-free (knock wood!) Oh, and most of the blossoms blew off my apple trees during a spring storm, so we probably only have half as many apples growing this summer as last year, but we're happy just to have the fruit we can get

We had a warmer than usual winter, a warm rainy spring, and while we had a few weeks of super hot and dry back in late June/early July, this last week has been sunny and low to mid-80sF with thunderstorms in the evenings (and at mid-day yesterday and today) that have done all my watering for me.

Now if the frosts can hold off till the second week of September, I think we should do really well this year.