Garden End 2021

Our third gardening season out here on the acreage is over and once again we had good results. We have put up over 20 quarts of diced tomatoes and around 10 quarts of zucchini for soups and stews. The herbs we brought inside to nurse along for as long as they last. During the summer we thought the zucchini was stretching vines all over the garden only to discover an invasive yellow gourd plant was the culprit. When we were pulling it out we discovered it had shot roots into the ground all along the vines, making it even harder to pull out. The tomato plants did so well that just before the killing frost at the the end of October they were so full of green tomatoes and yellow blossoms they looked like they could have continued producing for months. The final act of the 2021 season is waiting to see how many of our green tomatoes laid out in the garage will ripen.

Nine Things To Do With Your Extra Tomatoes

If you planted some tomatoes last spring and have had a good year you might have more of the juicy red crop than you know what to do with. It has been another great gardening year for us here on the acreage and we are starting to employ some of these ideas ourselves.

Eat more. We have them with our daily fruit and vegetable plate and have been adding them to other meals. Today I diced up one and added it to our scrambled eggs.

Freeze them. So far we have put up a dozen quart freezer baggies. Great to thaw out during the colder months and add to soups and stews.

Can them. We haven’t done this in a few years, but we still have all our canning equipment if needed.

Make homemade V8 juice. In the past I have made enough to last two or three days then made another batch. Click here for a recipe or search for a different version online.

Make chili. Here is my recipe.

Make salsa. As with the homemade V8 I only make small batches because I am not using any additives or preservatives.

Give them away to friends, family and neighbors. One of our neighbors reciprocates with a full bag of sweet corn each year.

Give them to a homeless shelter.

Put up a roadside stand. Try charging just over or just under store prices.

What do you do with your extra tomatoes?

Garden Update

This has been a pretty good year so far for our garden. We have been frying up zucchini almost every day as a side with a meal, there is a big jar of pickles in the refrigerator from our cucumber plant and the tomatoes and peppers are now coming on so fast we will need to start putting some up. As for the herbs the parsley and basil seem to be faltering a bit while the rosemary and chives are growing well. We found that if we let the zucchini grow too big the skin becomes too thick and hard to cut and chew, a problem we had not experienced before. The cucumbers so far this year have been fat and slightly bitter, while the tomatoes and green peppers have been excellent. Barring an extended drought occurring during a heatwave, like last year, this should be one of our best gardening seasons on the acreage yet.

Garden 2021

We planted the garden in the same plot as the last two years. It gets full sun from dawn until late afternoon when the sun dips behind our western willow trees. This year we put in 7 tomato plants, 2 pepper plants and one each zucchini and cucumber plants. Along the north side of the house we have chives, basil, parsley and rosemary in pots. Shelly picked up two purslane plants and for a couple of days I puzzled over them growing smaller, thinking I was watering too much or not enough, until I realized the rabbits were munching on them, so they have been moved to a bench hopefully out of their reach. Shelly discovered a new weed control method whereby she cut an X in the flat cardboard we put down, opened the four flaps and that is where we dug a hole for a plant. We dismantled a huge dog kennel in the machine shed last year that was full of straw, which we saved for this spring to spread over the cardboard. Currently there is a heatwave here in Iowa with temps in the 90’s, with the forecast calling for the same all next week into the following weekend. All we can do is keep the garden watered and hope for the best.

Garden Update: The End Is Near

It is October and we have already experienced our first frost. Some of the the tomato plants look like they might want to hang on for awhile longer, while the others have had enough of the cooler temperatures. We have been picking the tomatoes off of the slowly dying plants every few days and pulling up the plants that are done for. The zucchinis are blooming a few hopeful big yellow flowers, while most of their large leaves have shriveled and are melting away. Last spring Shelly accidentally bought a habanero plant with the green pepper plants and I have harvested it twice. I decided to try out a small food dehydrator that was a gift from several years ago and I now have a small glass jar full of dried peppers for some wintertime chili and maybe some hot sauce. We also put up several quarts of shredded zucchini for winter stews and soups. All in all it was a below average production year for the garden because of the drought and concurrent heat wave over the summer. But like all gardeners we are looking forward to a fresh start next spring.

Garden 2020

We planted our garden in the spring with the usual high hopes most gardeners have starting the growing season. Tomatoes, green peppers (and one habanero, bought by mistake that I insisted we keep) zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and asparagus. Because of shortages caused by the pandemic Shelly had to go to several greenhouses to find the plants we wanted. Many more people than usual decided to grow vegetable gardens this year. Once we got everything in the ground and mulched against weeds we were set. Until birds, rabbits or mice (maybe all three) dug up the green bean seeds and the asparagus withered and died. We will try to establish the asparagus bed again next year and as for the green beans Shelly had the idea of cutting a plant cage in half and covering it with chicken wire, then laying it over the seeds to keep out pests until the plants are established. The rest of the garden progressed well through the spring and into the summer until we entered the drought that continues as I write this in early September. It has been so hot and dry the grass crunches when we walk across the acreage. Some of our trees began dropping leaves last month and the corn and bean crops surrounding us are gold and yellow, ready for harvest. We did the best we could with our garden but unending weeks of hot dry weather took its toll. At this point only the tomato plants are still producing, but I am holding out hope for the green peppers. We are also keeping our eye on the the little volunteer plant that popped out of a crack in our sidewalk, now full of yellow flowers and little green tomatoes.

Recipes, Cooking and Gardening

Once a month I will share a recipe, a post about cooking or one about gardening. On a previous blog I posted around 30 of our family’s favorite recipes, so they would be archived and available for use. I won’t repeat those recipes on this blog, so here is a link to them if you are interested.

For this month I want to share a cooking tip I learned a few years back about homemade soup. I imagine most of you already know this, but for the few that might not it can really make a difference. After your homemade soup is fully cooked choose a can of cream soup that most closely parallels the type or flavor of your soup. Add the cream soup to a blender, throw in some shredded or cubed cheese and then fill the remainder with ladles of the soup you have just cooked. Blend it and then pour the contents into your homemade soup to make a thicker, cheesy version. I have also added a leftover diced baked potato or a package of instant potatoes to the blender ingredients.

Bon Appétit!