Canning Tomatoes Today - July 31, 2021

 

It has been so stinkin' hot this week!   This morning the weather-person said that it'll be 97 degrees before the day is over.

I went to the garden early to pick tomatoes.  Sweat started pouring out of my hair the minute I stepped out the door.  

Critters had munched a bunch of the nicest tomatoes.  I picked everything that seemed to be thinking about turning red.  The sills on the back porch are lined up with half-ripe tomatoes, and the kitchen sink is full of mostly-ripe ones.  There's a pot of water heating on the stove to scald them.  

The purple hull peas needed picking, too.  As I was picking them, Nanny came outside with a picking sack and a knife, wanting to know if I needed her to pick something.  I was about finished with the peas by then.  I said, "No, I got it."  But she kept asking. 

"Do you want me to pick the green beans?"  

"Not today; it's too hot."

"Do you want me to pick the cucumbers?"

"Not today; we got them a few days ago."

"Do you want me to cut the okra?"

I had already spot-checked the okra, and there were only a few pods ready.  I said, "Yeah, go ahead and cut the okra," and joined her in the okra rows.

I hope it cools off this week, as predicted.  The garden needs weeding, and I want to pull up the pea vines and plant a new crop.

Hot, hot, HOT - July 27, 2021

 We've been under a heat advisory for the past few days.  The temps have been around 93 degrees, but the weatherman says it "feels like" more than 100.  I know one thing: it's humid.  We've had pop-up rain showers every day - they don't last long or spread wide, but they sure load the air with moisture.

Until tonight, I hadn't been to the garden for two days, and when I was last there, I only picked the tomatoes.  After dinner, I tricked The Husband into going to the garden "just to look," and we ended up picking everything out there:  tomatoes (another 5-gallon bucket full), peppers, cucumbers, green beans, squash, and purple hull peas.  Probably should've checked the okra, but it was getting dark.  We gave it all to Nanny, except for the cucumbers and peppers, which we're giving to co-workers tomorrow.  

The Husband brought home another load of cardboard boxes, enough to carpet almost a whole row.  

There'll probably be another 5-gallon bucket full of tomatoes in a couple of days.  I've canned 10 quarts, so far.  This next load ought to be enough.

Canning tomatoes - July 26, 2021

 

The tomatoes are starting to come in, big-time.

This year, I grew 4 varieties:  (1) Big-better-beefy-boy something-or-other (yeah, I can't remember what I planted), (2) Early Girl, (3) San Marzano, and (4) Defiant.  

My objective was to grow both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes.  Determinate tomatoes produce their crop all at once and then virtually poop out, whereas indeterminate tomatoes produce fruit all season long.  I wanted to have determinate tomatoes for canning purposes, hoping to have a large amount of tomatoes ready all at once so that I could can as many jars of tomatoes as I wanted and then put the equipment away, rather than dragging the canning out in small batches all season.  I also wanted some indeterminate tomatoes for cooking and eating all summer long.

Early Girl and San Marzano tomatoes are labeled as "indeterminate."  I'm not sure about the beefy boys.  I thought the San Marzano tomatoes would be good for canning, as they are said to be "meaty and flavorful."  To be 100% honest, I'm not so sure I like the San Marzanos.  For one thing, the plants seem to be a little persnickety when it comes to blight resistance.  They were the first plants to "fire up."  Maybe it's our growing conditions this year, but the fruit seems to fall off at the drop of a hat.  I find a lot of undamaged green tomatoes on the ground.  The fruit that falls off will eventually ripen, but it doesn't seem to have much flavor.  Also, I'm not particularly thrilled with the central core thing, which seems to reach all the way to the bottom of the fruit.  This core is a bit tough, almost stringy; I've manually pulled it out of every San Marzano I've canned.  

It may be that I'm picking (or picking up!) the San Marzanos too green, too un-ripe.  I've picked a good many, so far, some of which have seemed ripe enough.  But they haven't had that rich, dark color that store-bought canned San Marzanos have.  I'm going to leave the rest of the crop on the vine a little longer to see if that improves the texture and flavor.

The Defiant tomatoes determinate and are doing a good job of supplying me with a lot of ripe tomatoes at once.  These plants made clusters of smooth tennis-ball-sized fruit.  They are getting ready to be picked.  I'm going to re-order seeds for this variety.  I'm also going to order some Ruby Monster tomato seeds.  This is also a determinate variety, and based on the pictures in the seed catalog, they look like a perfect canning tomato, and not too bad for sandwiches, either.

Sunday morning, I picked a 5-gallon bucket full of tomatoes, all varieties.  I got just the ripest tomatoes, and left that many more on the vines.  The batch yielded 6 quarts, plus almost another quart, which wasn't full enough to preserve.  I put the "almost quart" in the refrigerator and will re-heat it and can it with the next batch, if I can.

My intention was to pick tomatoes again this afternoon, but I'll have to wait until late in the day to do it.  It is ridiculously hot and humid outside today, and I don't intend to go to the garden until the sun goes down.  This means I won't have time (or energy) to start processing them today.  Tomorrow, I'll probably only have enough time to scald, peel, and chop the tomatoes; the canning will have to wait until the next day.

I expect that a lot of things need to be picked.  Our green beans are Kentucky Wonder pole beans, and I don't like for them to get very big - the pods get tough.  The pepper plants are loaded, but since I don't intend to do anything with them right away, I'm going to leave them alone and let them turn red. 

When I walked by the cucumber patch yesterday, it was BUZZING with bees.  We have a friend who has asked for some big cucumbers, so we're going to let them grow for a few days.  Then I might pull up all but one or two of the vines and plant something else in their place.  While digging through our freezer, I found a freezer bag of seed packets - broccoli, carrots, brussells sprouts . . . .  Around the middle of August, I'm going to see if they'll sprout for a fall garden.

Old Stories - Canned goods - July 24, 2021

 Today, I am going to take my brother some of the tomato relish/chili sauce that I made from the tomatoes our sister picked from his garden while he was on vacation.  As I was thinking about what other canned goodies I might take him, a memory from my childhood popped into my mind.

Great-uncle Garner was born in 1904 and farmed for his living.  By the time I was 10 years old, he'd sold most of his property and had retired from farming.  He and his wife, Aunt Lee, never had any children, and he was fond of my mother and her siblings, his nieces and nephews.  When I was a child, he visited my mother on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day.  And he was always good for a story or two.

Uncle Garner's mother died of a miscarriage in 1914, when he was six years old.  His father remarried to a kind, sweet woman two years later, but she died not long after the marriage.  In 1919, his father married again, and this woman, Mary, was not so kind and sweet.

Not long after their marriage, Uncle Garner's father noticed that the family's supply of canned peaches and other canned goods had diminished.  When he mentioned this to Mary, she blamed the disappearance on Uncle Garner, said he'd probably sneaked them out of the house and eaten them.  Uncle Garner, innocent of the crime, pled "not guilty," but his father still suspected him.

One day, as the family was preparing to visit one of Mary's grown and married daughters, Uncle Garner's father sent him to put something under the wagon seat.  As Uncle Garner did what he was told, he noticed that there was already a box, hidden under a quilt, under the wagon seat.  He peeked under the quilt and found that the box was full of canned goods.  He summoned his father to the wagon and showed him what was under the seat.

"And we didn't have any more food disappear after that," Uncle Garner said with a satisfied chuckle.

* * * * * * * * 

I cooked and canned the cucumber relish that I chopped and prepared yesterday.  The recipe usually yields 5 pints of relish, with a "sample" left over.  I've gotten pretty good at "eye-balling" a pot of vegetables to predict how many jars I'll need, but I always sterilize one extra jar, just in case.  Yesterday, I needed TWO extra jars - 7 pints total.

This canning makes somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 jars of relish.  THAT'S ENOUGH.  No more relish.  I swear it.

Tomatoes and Cucumber Relish - July 22, 2021

 I picked about 4 gallons of tomatoes after work today, as well as some purple hull peas.  Gave the peas to Nanny; it was about enough for supper for her and The Nephew.

Came home, scalded, peeled, chopped, and canned the tomatoes.  Got 4 quarts.

Chopped cucumbers, onions, and peppers for relish.  It ought to make 5 or 6 pints.  It's soaking in salt in the refrigerator.  I'll can it tomorrow after work.  This will make about 15 pints of cucumber relish.  THAT'S ENOUGH.  I'll be giving cucumbers away for the rest of the summer, or until I pull up the vines, whichever first occurs.

Saturday, it'll be time to start over with tomatoes.

Time to fire up the canner - July 22, 2021

 I am going to be busy in the kitchen this weekend.

We checked on the garden last night and found that EVERYTHING was in dire need of picking.

We got the cucumbers (a 5-gallon bucket full), the green beans, and the squash.  

Some critter got about half-a-dozen nice tomatoes and munched them in the row.

The tomato plants are LOADED with ripe tomatoes.  I'm going to pick them this afternoon and start processing them tomorrow when I come home from work.  This is going to take a while.

The Swamp - July 20, 2021

 If you've been wondering what I've been doing in the garden these past few days, the answer is "nothing."

It has rained every day for four days.

Our garden is a swamp.

The last time I was in the garden (last Friday), I saw a zucchini that was big enough to pick.  Ever since then, I've been planning on making some zucchini bread.  Today after work I went to get the zucchini.  It was the size of a small watermelon, and there were several others that were just right for eating.  Fortunately, the zucchini is on the front row of the garden, and we'd spread a thick layer of pine needles around the plants, so I was able to *gingerly* step onto the soil far enough to twist off the zucchinis.  

That one zucchini was so big that after I cut out the spongy seed parts, there was enough zucchini left to make two loaves of zucchini bread, and that was using only the top half of the thing.  I chopped up the rest of it for the compost pile.  

One of the zucchini bread loaves is savory; the recipe called for green onions and cheese, and I added a minced clove of fresh garlic.  The other loaf is a sweet bread, with raisins and pecans.  They're in the oven now.

It'll probably be two days before the garden dries up enough to get in there and pick stuff.  And that's IF it doesn't rain anymore.

There'll be a lot of picking to do, and a lot of canning.