August 1, 2011 in New England

Well, the Dog Days are here and the Dog Day Cicadas are singing their songs loudly. The bees are as busy as they can be during the midsummer dearth and I had to close up the hive entrances except for a 3 inch opening because of robbing by bees from another colony.
The garden is really starting to come along. I will have to get the ladder out in a few days time so that I can train the tomatoes up their trellis. I pulled a bunch of carrots this morning looking for 5 that were equal to submit to the fair, but that was a no go. Same with the beets & my cukes, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are a no go, everything is still about 10 days behind because of the spring weather... I will be bringing to the Fairgrounds this afternoon for judging some canned goods from last year, today's canned tomatoes, shallots, garlic, onions maybe some baby leeks and some stained glass.
Green and growing Gilberties


It is so much easier to see the hornworm when it has wasp eggs on it. This doomed little guy went to the other side of the property with a nice juicy tomato leaf and will eventually make new wasps.


My volunteer sunflower is just shy of 10' tall. I left it there when I turned the bed the other day.


Aubergine coming along.


The leeks look like a bunch of grass in the boxes.


I bought 40lbs of Gilberties from my farmer friend as he has hundreds of pounds ready to go and the price was right!


Canning has commenced! Blanching tomatoes to remove skins.


Fresh tomato juice is so, so good on a hot summer day!

Camprn, great pix.

How do you make your tomato juice? I'd love to see a recipe.

My Gilbertie is still green as well.



I have several toms that haven't turned red yet.



The big white in this basket is a cucumber. Its a white variety grown in our community garden. And even though the fat green one looks past its prime, it was great eating tonite. Its a Bushy variety.



My earlier sown cukes, on the other hand, are doing well. These are both Homemade Pickling and Bushy cukes and they were delicious according to the family and my taste buds.

Hey QB your toms are lookin' good! nice cukes too! The uniformity is good.
Those gilbertie tomatoes are so juicy; the juice was just what came out of the tomatoes after blanching and removing the skin and seed. I just strain it and drink what I have fresh.
Fresh recipe: Tomato juice, salt, lemon juice, a squirt of hot sauce and fresh ground black pepper. Add ice (vodka optional) and enjoy!
To can it, I use the Ball Blue book recipe. Heat juice to 190F and hold 5 minutes. I put 1/4 tsp kosher salt and 1 TBSP bottled lemon juice per pint, add juice leaving 1/2 inch headspace, cover and process in waterbath 35 minutes.
I processed 38 pounds of tomatoes today and put up 20 pints of crushed tomatoes and 11 pints of juice. I was pretty happy with that.

I even love canned tomato juice so I can imagine what drinking my own fresh juice must be like. Mmmmm good, I'm sure. I can't wait for more tomatoes to try it.

You're killin' me here! No homemade tomato soup? Condensed and frozen; add dairy when served on a dark, gray, drizzly, and cold PNW winter day along with a grilled cheese sandwich?

That's the second best reason to grow tomatoes; right behind eating them like an apple.

boffer wrote:You're killin' me here! No homemade tomato soup? Condensed and frozen; add dairy when served on a dark, gray, drizzly, and cold PNW winter day along with a grilled cheese sandwich?

That's the second best reason to grow tomatoes; right behind eating them like an apple.

Oh dear! Sorry! most of the juice does end up as soup, I didnt make it today because it just take a long time to put food up with my current kitchen set up. I can only fit 2 canners on my stove at a time. I may try to get another stove for outdoor canning next year. i love grilled cheese and tomato soup!

HAH! I don't have homemade tomato soup on hand, but the power of suggestion... I just finished a grilled cheese sandwich! Ahhhhhh.....comfort!

Today's activities included build a height extension for the cherry tomato Florida weave trellis. Planting shallots, beets, carrots, kohlrabi as well as red cabbage and Brussels sprouts seedlings. Picked and froze a quart of green beans. Picked a gallon of cukes and I hope in the next few days another gallon so I can make pickles.

Despite my vigilance, I lost one squash plant to SVB and I found and destroyed 5 other SVB

I don't think I have SVB here, tho maybe I'm just not noticing.

camprn, when you freeze your green beans, are you blanching them first or just throwing them into the freezer?

That tomato soup sounds excellent! I never even thought of that. You guys are definitely making me hungry....

yes I blanch the cut up bean for 3 minutes, drain, ice water bath, drain, freeze.

Thanks camprn. I was really hoping you were going to say you just throw them straight into a baggie.

Sorry! but it is just as hard as boiling the water. At lest there's no canning and skinning and mushing and seeding and stuff like that.

I have never been able to truly like the flavor of frozen green beans with the odd exception of those in a tv dinner, go figure that one. So I have always canned my usual 50 pints. I do use all of the canning liquid and it's vitamins somehow even if I have to just drink it. This year time is a problem and am reluctantly considering freezing them again. I don’t really like the idea of using a water bath to blanch due to nutritional loss. Do you think steaming instead would give me good tasting frozen green beans. CAMPRN those toms next to the glass look like opalka are they.

Hey Westie, the tomatoes are the gilberties, which are quite like olpakas. Good eye! Give a try to blanching and freezing the green beans, they turn out pretty good. It is easy, a lot less work than canning. I still can up my dilly beans or any that just get too big on the vine. The blanching only for 3 minutes does not release a lot of nutrients from the beans and they are quite green when I put them in the freezer.
http://www.pickyourown.org/beansfreezing.htm

http://nutrican.fshn.uiuc.edu/tables/Greenbeans.html

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2347/2

August 17, 2011~ the geese have begun to fly. The past two years I heard them about August 10. Time to plant spinach again.

camprn - So glad you said that about time to plant spinach, because my lettuce has been beyond bitter (looks beautiful tho) for a while now, and I might as well put something else in those 8 squares.

Besides spinach, what will you plant now? This is my first time planting in August - is it too late for peas? Broccoli? More lettuce?

You can try peas but I think it may be too late. We are only about 6-7 weeks from frost. BUT you could give it a try. I planted mesculin mix greens yesterday and beets and kohlrabi about 10 days ago. It's time to put in some spinach and in a few days I will sow some parsnips and see if they winter over for next summer parsnips. I did put in some red cabbage and Brussels sprouts starts about 10 days ago. I will probably get some small cabbages but I don't have confidence in the late season BS.
I have been concentrating more on getting some old flower beds rebuilt and getting some new ones going. THAT is a lot of work. How is your garden doing NHG?

For 1st year I can't complain. My main problems were about 30 or so hornworms - next year, moving those tomatoes to a different bed and going to try to nip those in the bud more quickly. Not much production with the squash, I think the borers got those, they're out of the boxes next year, just too thick and choking others out. Peas were great, green beans good except for the Japanese beetles. Peppers never produced. Eggplants were good, cucumbers were great, and the watermelon plants are just too small and I think overtaken by the cukes - next year the cukes are going on a trellis. Corn is looking beautiful, lettuce was good till it went bitter. The potatoes are in pots on the deck, hopefully those will be good. I'm away from home for 5 days right now, in Tennessee where it's still actually summer, ha - so I hope everything can last w/o being watered.

Lots of plans to thin things out a little next summer so there is better ventilation. Rotating things around. More of this, less of that. Better around-box weed control.

Still in the learning process. Not up to self-sufficient status yet, we would have starved even at the height of summer this year. Haha.

Oh, and one biggie - need to extend the season, need hoop houses (?) and better indoor seedling growth conditions. The growing season is just TOO SHORT.

So, today I received an email from Folia telling methat my first frost day is in 52 days and my last frost date is in 270 days.

Just thought I would share.

Waaaaa.......

I don't wanna go......

The days are getting noticeably shorter. I'm losing motivation to water my lessening plants.

And what do you think about Irene? I have 3 rows of corn in one box. I never tied them. Maybe I should. They'll definitely blow over. They may blow over anyway tho, with the winds that may be headed this way.

NHGardener wrote:Waaaaa.......

I don't wanna go......

The days are getting noticeably shorter. I'm losing motivation to water my lessening plants.

And what do you think about Irene? I have 3 rows of corn in one box. I never tied them. Maybe I should. They'll definitely blow over. They may blow over anyway tho, with the winds that may be headed this way.

You may want to try to somehow secure the corn. I'm pretty sure we are going to take a hit.

camprn, are you going to do anything to secure your trellises or other garden stuff?

NHGardener wrote:camprn, are you going to do anything to secure your trellises or other garden stuff?

My trellises are about as secure as they are going to get. If I must, I can lay down the trellises with the pole beans. The tomatoes at about 8' now will have to fend for themselves, there is so little foliage left they will not make a great sail. I may put my eggplants in a weave trellis, but I'm not sure yet.