2020 gardens

Sonny580 · Aug 20, 2020

trays of spuds going in the freeze-dryer. These are early norlands and they are not a long storage type so we are going to try this on them.--first time for spuds--didnt get a chance to try them 2 years ago and last year due to health problems,we didnt get anything freeze-dried so now we see.

One of the spuds like the ones cut/cubed in the trays. cubes are approx. 5/8", so we are starting with that size and go from there.

DJ54 · Aug 22, 2020

I got of the 3 rows of potatoes I planted dug yesterday, will do the other 2 today. I had 2 rows of Yukon Gold, and 3 rows of Chieftain Reds. The Reds produced better than the yellows, but can't complain for the weather we had this summer. Quite a dry spell, and temps in the 90's for a lot of July had to stress all plants. Rows were approx. 80' long. Yellows averaged 60 lbs. perrow, Reds 80 lbs per row. I was amazed there were no problems with potato bugs this year.

Next year, I need to see if the place I buy my seed potatoes has the Katahdins we planted years ago. A good all purpose white potato, and good keeper. These will be mostly donated to food banks, where they are distributed out in small amounts, so long term storage, I doubt will happen.

oldballs · Aug 22, 2020

Those are good looking potatoes. Never saw a Yukon that round ....but there is a lot that I have not seen. Love that diggin machine. Thanks for the pics.

Cheers,
Mike

Jstpssng · Aug 23, 2020

Yes, that digger is a classic... I would love to have something that size Around here I usually see them as lawn ornaments; let's put a piece of rusty iron in the front yard and call it art!

I was talking to a woman about canning yesterday and she said that her mother told her she couldn't can baked beans but she did it anyways. I asked what she had for a pressure canner... she doesn't have one.
Fortunately the Botulism bacteria isn't common here.

DJ54 · Aug 24, 2020

Not from the garden, but I canned up some chicken, and beef yesterday. Been wanting to try it for years, just now getting around to it. I love my vegetable soup, and make it quite often in cooler weather. Should cut down on time needed to make soup, or other dishes.

There are still a few of those useable diggers around for sale. I've watched for sale ads for a couple of years, before finding this one. Got a deal on a planter,digger, and a 3 pt. hiller off a local guy who had a small operation selling at farmer's markets. Switching his interests to popcorn. He said he spends a lot less time growing the popcorn, and apparently got a good deal on some processing equipment. He raises 35 acres of it, and said he has a good market for it.

There are more than several approved recipe's out there for things like baked beans. Here's one from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. National Center for Home Food Preservation | How Do I? Can Vegetables For the price of even premium brands in the store, sounds like a lot of time involved, unless a person wants to be a true homesteader. I've canned navy beansand ham, using a recipe from the Ball Blue Book. There's just some daysa person gets hungry for them, but don't want to have to wait, or have time that particular day to make them from scratch. These, you heat in a pan, pop some corn bread in the oven, and when the cornbread is done, the beans are heated through, and ready to eat. Some good fried fresh sausage, and fried potatoes for on the side are optional.

It will be interesting this year, with the glut of newbie gardeners, and the one's who saw their gardens through, and preserve it. Canning isn't exactly rocket science, but there are rules that need to be followed for safe canning. From the shortage of nearly every involved with canning, from lids/flats as we call them, to pressure canners, & jars, I'm guessing we'll see a lot of unused items for sale later this year, or next. Or some barely used products after many see how much work is involved, mainly raising it, let alone the preservation part. There are still many of us, that, that is the way we were raised, and still enjoy doing it. I guess having parents that lived through the Depression, and raising and preserving food was their way of life.

Sonny580 · Aug 24, 2020

My parents made it thru the depression and taught me that you need to take charge and grow as much of your own food as you can then preserve it for later use. That is one thing the freeze-dryer does for us. if we cant grow anything next year we still will have food. We have canned goods from a few years ago and it is still good too,---IF you do it right and use common sence, this stuff is a lot safer than store stuff! ---We also are canning more this year---got supplies in Feb. so good in that department. We also have 5 freezers about full of goodies so winter wont be much of a problem as far as food for us.

herm0016 · Aug 25, 2020

we can every year, and are garden gets better and better, and we give stuff away. so we always need more jars / lids and such. we just went on a jar mission and did well at a walmart one town over, several cases of quarts, some half gal and a few others, plus lids and bands. the tractor supply, Murdoch's, local Walmart and grocery stores near us are all out. We have about 2 or 3 gal of pickles, a few gal of tomatoes, peach pie filling and peach salsa, cocktail cherries, peaches in juice, 8 eating pumpkins, and a few other things already in the cellar this year. I had to spend 2 days redoing all the shelving to fit everything we plan on storing.

Sonny580 · Aug 25, 2020

Shelves do become a problem in time, but well worth expanding when needed. We were lucky to have 1 whole wall in the basement with 3 rows high of big shelves for jars and have them about full.

herm0016 · Aug 26, 2020

ours is an 8 ft long 4 ft wide closet that is concrete on 2.5 sides. i insulated the 1/2 stud wall and the short side with a door, and covered the studs with OSB. its a great, cool and dry place to store garden production, but small.

Sonny580 · Aug 28, 2020

First batch of the season from the freeze-dryer ----switched from potatoes to sweetcorn for a couple batches then back to potatoes.
trays of fresh corn dry and ready to bag/box up.

DJ54 · Sep 2, 2020

Another approx. 60 lbs. of tomatoes to work up today. At least that many more like that left in the garden. Thisshould do me for this year, and seems all but one has al they want. I know there are 10Z that many that have split, and ruined from last weeks rains.

The food kitchen where I normally donate excess to, has changed their fomat, to basically sack lunches, and not preparing dinners, due to the Covid thing going on.

Towards the weekend, if more start ripening, I'll more than likely post an ad in a local neighborhood newsletter, for free to pick. I did that several years ago, and was really surprised at how many responses I got, and amounts they got, for home canning. Not sure how that will work this year, with all of the supply shortages.

Better get with it here, gonna' be along day...

Sonny580 · Sep 8, 2020

Did another 21 quarts of greenbeans and now working on some red shellbeans---14 quarts so far and many more to go!

a couple quarts of the 14.

most of the garden is winding down even tho it was planted late but we did get a good supply of produce from the efforts.

herm0016 · Sep 8, 2020

while you guys are harvesting, we had to tarp everything and move small stuff into the greenhouse for the first snow. currently about 35 degrees outside, 55 in the greenhouse with no heat on. hoping our peppers, squash, tomatos survive for 2 days under tarps. we should be able to get a couple more weeks out of the plants before its really too cold. this is an early first freeze.

Industrial Toys · Sep 8, 2020

Tomatoes are still as green as many TBNers with their first tractor.

Had tomatoes under a tarp nights. Now using some vapour barrier. Can't that just stay on? Info says not to water them anymore anyway to promote ripening.

Not much hope. Also sprawling pumpkin patch vegetation and one pumkin!

Sonny580 · Sep 9, 2020

When tomatoes are starting to turn ripe----NO water!--it will rot them.---we have heavy rain here now and it is rotting all of our tomatoes!
So far temps. are not too bad but not much sun to ripen tomatoes and the ones that do turn red taste like store bought "gassed" ones, so we quit on them.
Wanted to do one more batch of sweetcorn in the freeze-drier if possible. --- All of the heavy rain and wind put the corn down almost flat on the ground making it hard to pick. Also the third planting did not pollinate very good!
Nobody here had any pumpkins this year. --- Sis has about a dozen nice sugar pie pumpkins on her 3 vines.

herm0016 · Sep 9, 2020

we will uncover and take stock tomorrow morning. you should try Rouge Vif d'Etampes
also known as fairy tail pumpkins, we got about 16 of them on 3 plants this year, they are large and much more tasty than sugar pies. we have 8 in the celler, and we have about 8 more that need to be canned.

hoping we get more red curries after we uncover. we have 8 in the celler. we also have 8 spaghetti / acorn hybrids. I am going to bring 10 more to the food pantry, as 3 large squash a month for the next 8 months is plenty for us!

anyone else still can in half gallon jars? we use a propane burner and a huge aluminum pot for processing them, but some places say you should not use them? i remember my grandmother having shelves full of them.

Jstpssng · Sep 9, 2020

herm0016 said:
we will uncover and take stock tomorrow morning. you should try Rouge Vif d'Etampes
also known as fairy tail pumpkins, we got about 16 of them on 3 plants this year, they are large and much more tasty than sugar pies. we have 8 in the celler, and we have about 8 more that need to be canned.

hoping we get more red curries after we uncover. we have 8 in the celler. we also have 8 spaghetti / acorn hybrids. I am going to bring 10 more to the food pantry, as 3 large squash a month for the next 8 months is plenty for us!

anyone else still can in half gallon jars? we use a propane burner and a huge aluminum pot for processing them, but some places say you should not use them? i remember my grandmother having shelves full of them.

The way that I understand it, they haven't taken the time to establish safe processing times because there aren't many people who can with them.
Yet if you have a way that's been working for you...
That's like processing low acid foods in a boiling water bath. It isn't recommended for beans, corn, meat, and other low acid foods because the temperature doesn't get hot enough to kill botulism toxins. Yet people have been doing it for years... we don't have the soil conditions here for botulism to thrive in the first place which is why it doesn't affect our food.

herm0016 · Sep 9, 2020

Jstpssng said:
The way that I understand it, they haven't taken the time to establish safe processing times because there aren't many people who can with them.
Yet if you have a way that's been working for you...
That's like processing low acid foods in a boiling water bath. It isn't recommended for beans, corn, meat, and other low acid foods because the temperature doesn't get hot enough to kill botulism toxins. Yet people have been doing it for years... we don't have the soil conditions here for botulism to thrive in the first place which is why it doesn't affect our food.

we did tomato sauce and peaches i think? high acid stuff, we add citric acid to our tomatos. we also pressure can. just ordered a new bigpressure vessel as ours is too small for the volumes we do now.