Gardening Thread- Show me your gardens!

we have our tomato's about to go full on ripe...I'd say about 1/3 are getting red.

 

After researching, I used PT for my new box. I'm a tightwad and it was much less expensive at our lumber stores. I also attached pictures of my simple irrigation setup. Very low tech but it works for me.

 

Cherry Peppers before and after stuffing...





Just picked a few things
Garden got real stressed this year with the abnormally high amount of 90+* days.
More than double the normal amount here.

 

are those spicy? We had some cherry bomb peppers that were spicy. Thats what made me think of this.

 

No. Not bad at all.
Soaking in white vinegar for a few days before stuffing cuts the heat down.

 

Are those stuffed with prosciutto?
Looks great

 

I had a tiny tiny bite of a habanero from our garden and it lit me up! They are starting to change color but prob 2 weeks out I guess, hopefully it doesnt freeze by then! Tomato's are going full blast. one last batch of green beans we think!

 

Those peppers look damn fine!

 

The garden is still doing fairly good. The pumpkins a little more defined, and gourds are just starting to grow.

 

Nothing like some fresh basil out of the garden. The smell is magical.

 

Last night was 'tomato night' at my house.

40lbs of tomatoes...


worked out to 38 pints of various sauces and 7 quarts of soup base.




And also means that I'm this morning. Started processing as soon as I got home at 5:30 and pulled the last batch out of the canner at 11:45. And I wake up for work at 5-5:30

 

how much did you lose in cooking? Or does it stay pretty much the same. We have about 5.5 gallons of uncooked sauce with more on the way...

 

Depends on which batch I was making. The soup base basically doesn't lose anything; it's just juice and pulp that got brought to a boil and put in the jars. The pasta sauce gets transferred to the jar when it's been cooked down by about 10% or so, and the Pizza sauce get moved to the jars at about 15-20% reduction in moisture. When I'm making ketchup that usually gets simmered in the slow cooker long enough to reduce down by probably 40%

Edit-
It also varies from year-to-year; sometimes my paste-variety tomatoes do really well and sometimes the general eating tomatoes do better, so that affects how much I need to reduce the sauces. I like the Brandywine variety for an eating tomato, but they tend to have a fair amount of liquid when you squish them down for sauce. The Amish Paste and Speckled Roman varieties have a higher pulp-to-liquid ratio, so when they flourish I don't need to do nearly as much boiling.

 

Planted a few mini marigolds, Mexican Heather, and creeping Jenny. Also updated pic of the pumpkin.

 

it will be the first time making tomato sauce so it will be interesting. we have mostly Roma's, one beefsteak and maybe one other type.

 

Awesome thread. I am huge into plants and gardening. It was between a 4Runner and a Tacoma and the Tacoma won out because I needed the bed to enable my gardening / plant addiction ;D

 

Awesome reason to buy a Tacoma

What variety of corn is that?

 

The corn is ''Seneca Stalker Red.' It is a flint corn. Very nice looking plant and produces beautiful corn

 

is it edible or just ornamental?