Adventures in Canning

The tomatoes are finally ripening up in large enough numbers that I finally can do some canning. I have 3 quarts already in the freezer (one with the spices ready for a moussaka). I finally got a test run of the pressure cooker. Now I remember my Mom using the pressure cooker, and I think I should have been on the phone more often with her as a consultant. And I also remember the time where her pressure cooker “blew up”. The vent pipe had become blocked with probably some bean skin or other bean by-product. I was at school when the pot blew, and when Mom rushed into the kitchen to turn the heat off from under the pot, to rush back out again. When a pressure cooker blows its pressure regulator, there’s little else you can do but kill the heat and let it cool down. Of course it will continue to blow the contents of the pain out through the vent pipe. So when I came home from school, there was Mom in the middle of the kitchen on her hands and knees cleaning up vaporized bean goop from every corner of the kitchen. The goop hung like stalagmites from the ceiling, dripping into a deep gelatinous pool in the floor. Mom was not amused by my uproarious laughter at her plight. It was a pretty funny picture at the time, but it has always made me wary of pressure cookers.


So this weekend, I had made some spaghetti sauce and some apple butter. I hot packed the jars and settled them into the pot. I only canned one quart of the tomato sauce as I really didn’t know how it would turn out and I only wanted to lose one quart if that’s what happened. I remember how the pressure regulator sounded on Mom’s old pot, but this thing sounded like a steam train coming through the kitchen. And the pot is huge. It dwarfs the stove.

The whole time while I’m watching the steam expel the air within the pot, and then the pressure building and being kept for the length of the processing time, I thought how much I didn’t know what was going on in there. And when it had cooled down and I got to open the pot, I found out my fears were justified. I didn’t leave enough head room in the jar for pressurized canning. So some sauce had bubbled out under the lid and into the water. So, I don’t trust that the jar is properly sealed, as there may be food in between the jar lip and the seal. Well here’s the end result, not a fair winner but I’m looking forward to seeing how it turned out. The other part of the sauce (that I didn’t can) was delicious. So I’m interested to see how the extra heat affected the end product.

And it's raining!

Haven't seen the wet stuff since May 22nd. Looking forward to looking at the rain gauge in the morning. I'll admit I haven't looked at it in a while and I'm hoping there isn't a dead bug or some other bit of flotsam waiting for me in the morning.

Tomato Sauce from Anais Noir

So, I thought I would post a couple of pictures of what sort of sauce an Anais Noir makes. The tomato is classed as a bi-color and the only way to tell that it's ripe is to turn it over and see if the bottom is starting to turn red. And from my previous post, it makes a great sliced tomato. But I've always mixed the bi-colors with red tomatoes and I've always come up with red sauce. So here's what they look like after going through the tomato press.

Now, they do turn a bit redder under heat, but the sauce stays mostly green, which wouldn't matter in a sauce that has lots of spice, like curry, or my favorite chili mac. Or there are other recipes that the color wouldn't matter because Then you wouldn't see the green at all.

A time of balance

Autumnal Equinox hearlds the first day of Fall and sunlight diminishes each day until the Winter Solstice. Now is the time to gather in our harvests and count our blessings. Although, I feel I am bending the rules some, as it is also the time to plant parsnips, cabbages, fava beans, and other cool season crops. Frankly, once again, I am looking forward to the rains.

I am amused to notice that it is also a new moon; so many conjunctions at once. Anyway, I wrote a couple of Haikus for a friend a few days ago and I'm going to "reprint" them here.

Cool fog winds blow by
Warm fruit vines wither. Somewhere
a tomato falls.

Cabbages grow large
As bright days edge towards autumn
Summer ends too soon.

Jersey Devil

The Pressure Cooker is here, but.....

I am developing a virtual appreciation for determinate tomatoes. The benefits of indeterminate tomatoes is that they produce tomatoes over a long period of time. The problem with indeterminate tomatoes is that they produce tomatoes over a long period of time. This weekend, I probably pulled about 30 tomatoes off the vines (weighing about 6 and a half pounds). So there's enough all over the counter tops to justify making some sauce or canning the fruits whole. Problem is, it's about a quart at a time, maybe two. Canning is an involved process, and I wonder how sane I am to fire the whole system up just to preserve a quart. I do have plenty of apples to preserve. So, I'm going to stop whining and start working. Freezers do make the whole thing easier, but I like the idea of having the veggies not needing electricity for "life support". We haven't had a major power outage (knock on wood) but living on the fault lines always leaves that possibility open.

I am thinking of going over to Cynthia's Farm and picking up a large supply of tomatoes. Then I could have a bumper supply in my cupboards. I'm also thinking of next year. What if I choose a few indeterminate vines for a long season of fresh eating, and a bed full of determinates for canning and processing? Might be a possiblity.

Autumn's Wild Ride

The picture above is an Anais Noir tomato.

Is it just me, or is there a flurry of activity everywhere? Maybe it's just the vibe here in California. But it seems that everything is stacking up and needing attention right now, please!

Fall is the best time for Californians to put in perrenials. Then there's "crush" and the other harvests that happen now. Time to build compost piles, clean up gardens, put mulch down. Add the local and state fairs, garden center sales, plant sales, weddings, birthdays, etc. etc..... Just seems like it all piles up at once.

Every day this week there's been something planned for after work. Fortunately, the cold fog has kept the plants from wanting too much water. I'm getting tomatoes and they are piling up on the kitchen counters. I've processed a few quarts, one quart frozen, one quart used for moussaka, one in the fridge. It looks like I could get another two or three quarts this weekend. But I don't want to repeat my last mistake. I cleaned up the counter tomatoes, par-boiled them, put them through the Tomato Press, and then cooked the sauce. I was pleased with the end product & the counters were clear of tomatoes. I went down into the garden to pick some flowers and whatever veggies were available. Wouldn't you know it that I picked almost the same number of tomatoes that I had just processed? So I had to do it again! Pick first, process second (make mental note!).

And I don't have much room in the freezer. I finally purchased the pressure cooker to can the tomatoes (and large pile of apples Mr. C brought home). But I'm just waiting for it to arrive. Oh UPS, where are you? So my frenzied mind tries to calm itself by thinking in rhyme:

Lack of produce? I now will recant,
As tomatoes drop off of my plants.
Till my pressurized pot
Arrives to my spot
I'd sure like to can, but I can't.

Joke, dear.

The following letter from the family's solicitor is addressed to a member of the British aristocracy who has been spending much of the summer in his residence in the south of France leaving his wife in the United Kingdom to look after the ancestral home.

Dear Sir Royston,

I hope you are having a good time on your holiday. I say this with sincerity because I am afraid that I have some bad news for you, although there is good news too.

First the bad news. I am sorry to tell you that your favorite dog, Honey, is dead. The vet says that she died instantly and could have felt no pain. She was kicked in the head by your horse, Sherbert, though I'm sure that no blame can be attached to Sherbert, frightened as he was by the fire in the barn.

I'm afraid that Sherbert was in the barn along with your other horses when it burnt to the ground. The fire brigade had been called within a short time of the barn catching fire and would normally have been able to put the fire out. Had it had not been for the fact that the tender crashed into your Bentley in the lane. Your wife had taken it out for a spin with your brother. As it was, both the tender and your Bently were written off. No blame can be attached to your wife for the accident I'm sure.

The Bentley was stationary at the time and your wife was in the back seat of the car. She managed to escape death only due to the fact that your brother was lying on top of her at the time of the collision. The doctors say that given time she will regain her sight but that she will never walk again. She has also lost her memory and cannot even remember you. Your brother, unfortunately, was killed.

I should explain how the barn came to be on fire in the first place. You see a spark from the house blew over and set the roof alight. The fire started in the main hall of the house where, as you know, your Mattisse and your Picasso once hung. I say 'once' because they are not there now. Fortunately neither of these paintings were damaged in the conflagration as they were stolen beforehand by the burglar who started the fire.

Although all of this may seem to you very serious it is not in fact the bad news that I wrote of. Your wife and brother had been visiting your Insurance agent in prison where he is serving a three year sentence for fraud. I'm afraid that none of your insurance policies are valid.

As I said, there is some good news. The heat from the fire warmed your greenhouse and brought your tomatoes on.

From my dear husband, who knows what makes me laugh.

Garden or Garden Blog?

Well, over the Labor Day weekend, gardening won out over blogging. I'm still putting mulch down in an attempt to get ahead of the winter weeds. It's a long process, but everything is looking tidy and kept. I may even take a LS (long shot) of the garden. I will confess, my pictures are always CU (close up) because I would no more take an LS of the garden than I would open my sock drawer and take a picture to be posted on the web. But I may change that soon (shot of the garden, not the sock drawer).

The picture is the tomato monster on the 1st of September. It's looking a bit bedraggled now. But tomatoes are holding and growing, so I can't complain. The yield is under normal par. Sorry Angela, I can't put the calculator down.....

I'm also looking forward to when I can tear out the tomato plants. I had hoped to make this area a permanent perennial bed. I'm sketching out where the plants are going to go and I'm taking inventory of all the plants that are in containers waiting to be set "free". Just having dahlias growing and blooming for bouquets in the house has been really satisfying. I can't wait to have more flowers to choose from. And there are plenty of hummingbird plants that will go in too.

Ever have that little voice say "didn't I tell you so"?

Saturday I was working on one of the gardens in the Master's Tour and it was pretty cold and damp. I was thinking to myself, "I'm not dressed properly for this, I'm going to catch my death of cold." and thereby fulfilled my own prophecy.

Summer colds are the worst, I think. At least when you are smacked with one in the winter, you can feel assured that hiding under the covers and sipping hot lemon tea will not seem contrary. It's cold outside; it's likely I'd be in bed with tea anyway. However, a summer cold you think, why would I willingly miss a day out in the garden?

I did don a sweater and go out for a quick look around once or twice.

One, I ask myself, how many times must I lose a set of freshly planted out seedlings before I remember to use shadecloth? I mean how many times can you chalk it up to a "learning experience"? Well, I'll be sprouting more "yuppie chow" salad mix to replace the sad, wilted & dead seedlings I left to roast in the sun.

I had ripped up the three dying tomato plants and turned the bed. I added an entire box of vermicompost, 2 cups of blood meal, 2 cups all-purpose organic fertilizer and another bag of compost from the nursery. I wanted to increase the organic matter in the soil and boost the macronutrients that seemed to have "bottomed out". This is where I thought I was going to have some cabbages and leaf lettuce. The cabbages might just make it with the "now in place" shade cloth.

Two, what the devil is going on with the tomato monster? It's dying off in places, but it's also flowering like mad. And much to my surprise, some of the flowers are keeping fruit. Maybe it's true that you have to stress the plants a bit to get them to fruit.

"No more lounging in the garden boys, time to make tomatoes or become extinct!!"

I'm still not holding my breath for an overwhelming bounty, because botrytis can settle on any of the young green fruits and rot them out completely. But I've ordered the pressure cooker just in case the monster proves me wrong (again). I have been surprised by the Northern Lights tomato, which now has two fruits forming. I was resigned to not get any this year. Maybe I will, fingers crossed.

In addition, the lack of sunshine here has affected the pollinators. When it's foggy, the garden is oddly quiet. Moment the sun shines through, the place is a-buzz. During the weekend, I was so concerned the butternut squash not being fertilized; I ended up hand pollinating it (once I picked the correct male flower - couldn't believe I mistook the first one for a male, please tell me it's the Sudaphed working on my poor brain!)

I noticed one google search land here with the question "how to pollinate pumpkin". I'll try to post my method later, minus using a female flower as the pollinator. D'oh!

Masters Garden Tour 2006

If you are in the Monterey area on the weekend of September 9th, consider going to the Masters Garden Tour. It is a self guided tour of 5 gardens around the Monterey Penninsula to be open from 10 am to 4 pm. There is also a Raffle, art galleries and a Plant Sale (see "gardeners and their gardeners for locations). There is also a vermicomposting exhibit and of course Master Gardeners to ask all sorts of gardening questions. For more information, please see their website www.smartgardening.org.

Oh, snap out of it!!

Tomato Monster July:





Tomato Monster August:




I'll have to admit, I've been in a bit of a funk of late. Who can say when it started? Last weekend was frankly, cold. I needed a sweater while I was putting down mulch. The tomatoes are definitely getting the signal that summer is coming to a close. The crookneck squash is succumbing to mildew, and my strong and productive Black Beauty Zucchini also has a bad case of mildew. I'm not ready to give up on having fresh zucchini, dammit!

I've finally come to admit that the Cossack is dead. It didn't even flower properly. How come after such a tremendous beginning? The Ukranian Pink Pearl is declining fast and so is the Jaffe's cherry. I think I could get a cutting from the Ukranian Pink Pearl, but I wonder, is it worth the effort? At least the last two actually bore fruit. The Jaffe's cherry has terrific taste, but doesn't have any branches that would make a decent cutting. All of these tomato plants were in Bed 3. Perhaps they didn't have enough compost and fertilizer worked into the soil. But I'm leaning more and more towards the constant exposure to the sea breeze as an explanation.

I am enjoying tomatoes. I've gotten more this year than ever before from my garden. But I'm certainly not putting up 11 quarts! I'd really be grinning! No, I think I will barely get enough to freeze for the months up until the next tomato season. And of course my friend from Scotts Valley sent me this picture:





Beautiful, but I can't help but see it with envious green eyes. I have to look at the wonderful harvests of other bloggers with the unattached fortitude of a Buddhist monk. But after a while in my garden, picking handfuls of fresh green beans, I gain enough strength to say "this isn't a contest, I'm not entering the county fair". What I have is enough, and I should be grateful. I am grateful. I just have to remind myself.

Off Topic Post

A post for Sweet's wilder cousins.

Okay, so this doesn't qualify as gardening as such. But I was reading Susan's blog "Farmgirl Fare" and I have to admit, this story made me think "I'll post this and perhaps it will help". The basic gist is there is a wildlife preserve in Colorado and its affiliates, and they need help. They are having to close due to lack of funds and maybe, just maybe, we, the blogsphere, can make a difference.

So what am I asking? If you can, send some money. Or if nothing else, write a post about The Wild Life Sanctuary. Spread the word. I know from my own life, we all have "connections". Some bloggers are writers, some are in the entertainment fields, some know people connected with foundations and or other money sources. I don't have a large "readership". But some other people do, and perhaps we can get the word out enough and find a way to keep the Sanctuary running.

Here's an article by the Denver Post regarding the refuges: Animal Sanctuaries may be on last legs.

The three sanctuaries are:
The Wild Animal Sanctuary, Keenesburg, CO
Big Cats of Serenity Springs, Ellicott, CO
Prairie Wind Animal Refuge, Agate, CO (no website).

Susan wrote a beautiful appeal, and I'm hoping that somehow these preserves can survive. Thanks for your time.

What to do with an apple bounty

So a co-worker of mine heard about my apple "disappearance" and low and behold a "package" shows up on my desk on Friday. He has too many apples and he doesn't have any interest in "dealing" with them. Well, I don't mind at all. First I got them sized, and determined which had so much moth damage or bruising that they wouldn't make a decent pie apple.


And I had plenty for a nice batch of applesauce. The nice thing about applesauce is that you don't have to peel the apples, especially if you have one of these:



I think this is called a food mill, but I actually think it has a different name as it is used to make jam and fruit juice. It makes the job really much easier because it clears fruit of the skins and you have a quick batch of applessauce.




Now usually I can the finished product, if I'm feeling industrious, I'll make apple butter, but instead I was inspired to make Applesauce Cake. Someday I'll post a really old family recipe for applesauce cake, but it is pretty involved and I'd like to publish it with pictures of the 6 layers of cake. But today, I must get more mulch put down in the garden, although it's looking foggy and cold.

(I apologize if your blog aggregator shows this a million times, but I've been having problems with this post. So much for point and click publishing)

Robbed

I think I should get a hint when it comes to things like this.

I went to extra effort (asked a friend to bring a flowering apple branch cutting) to pollenize the Pink Pearl apple tree. It took on a single apple, which was growing quite well. I was excited to find out what this apple would be like. I checked on it and watered the tree and fussed and worried.

I looked out my bedroom window this morning, and I couldn't see the lone apple. In disbelief, I went outside to see if it had ripened and dropped off. But to no avail. It's gone. Just like the first tomato in my garden from years before.

I didn't even get a picture. Sigh.....

Seeing more red in the garden

Beauty Lottringa

Cynthia described this tomato as so beautiful that you will bring visitors down into the garden just to look at it. It's so true. Her tomato stand is open now, if you want a really tasty heirloom tomato! She will be open Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays from 9 to 6. And there's more than just tomatoes to enjoy. It looks as if she'll have a variety of vegetables and dahlias for purchase.



The "pumpkin" is finally ripening. Again, I can't believe I have a tomato that is this big. I wonder what it will weigh? Can you see that it has grown?

I wish I knew what this plant was

Anyone who gardens regularly gets asked "what's this plant?" I like to try and identify them, if I can, but sometimes it's impossible from a simple description (usually "well it was about a foot tall and had these cute purple flowers) or a photo (mostly because the concentration is on the flower and not the leaf or growth habit). Here is a plant I saw at a winery in Amador County. It was a shrub about 5-6 foot high, and was in the protected area of the winery. I'd say it was a hibiscus but the flowers don't look like a hibiscus. Leave a comment if you know what it is. Thanks.

The first ripe tomatoes

 
I picked the Ukranian Heart and a Jaffe's cherry on Monday. Snapped a few pictures. Now I really need to update the tomato page. Had guests over on Sunday and it was a real challenge to get everything ready in the record breaking heat. It was unusually hot here on the coast. We hadn't seen fog since Wednesday night and the air was unusually still. Last night was the first time the fog even made it to shore. Tonight we've had a nice cool wind off the ocean so it's certainly nicer to sleep at night.

It's funny the things you don't own when you don't need them. I hardly remember to whom I gave my oscillating fan. But I was regretting letting it go as the house was really stifling and I thought how unfortunate to have the house full of people and no fan! But the breeze thankfully picked up and it was more pleasant. I had thought about serving a hot black bean side dish, but that morning I changed my mind and made a black bean salad instead. It was really convenient to walk down to the garden and pick up the "extra" ingredients. The yellow tomatoes (Azoychka) came from a friend who has some of the original plantlings. She sees more heat in Scotts Valley and is already enjoying the tomato crop. Now I'm looking forward to tucking into mine. 

See me jumping up and down

like a kid at Christmas.

The first sign of a blush has shown up on three different plants. The one pictured here, which is the Ukranian Heart, the Jaffe's Cherry and the Japanese Oxheart(#2). I didn't know if the Jaffe's Cherry was red or some other color. I guess I will find out soon. It's looking like a red.

The Florida Pink, remains green and continues to swell. Mr. C thinks that I've mistakenly planted a pumpkin. It has set a number more fruit, but I'm trimming it back heavily so I can at least get into the greenhouse.

I keep telling the greenhouse tomatoes that it's no good growing to their grand and luxurious greatness if the gardener cannot come in and give them refreshing drinks of water and nutritious supplements of compost tea, fish emulsion and liquid seaweed. I sometimes think I should write them a little book, Lessons of the Wild Tomato; a Cautionary Tale.

All of this exhuberance is due to a heat wave they have been enjoying. For me, it's a little uncomfortable, but livable. Flowers seem to be staying and fruiting instead of the usual drop off. When the temperatures regularly see 55°F (or lower) blossom drop is to be expected. But we have been staying at 60°F or higher in the evenings. A high pressure system is parked over the coast and the predicted temperatures are expected to rise and stay through the weekend. The weak onshore flow is creating humidity so there's a stickyness to the air that is really unusual. So I feel that the "experiment" has been blown. But if predictions are what they claim to be saying (as there is no snow on Kilimanjaro and there might be trees growing in Antartica soon), this might be the upcoming "norm".

ooh. I've scared myself......

But there's a blush on the tomatoes! :D (attention span of a kid, I know)

This is the fog I'm talking about

This was taken at about 1 p.m. 16 july '06
Fortunately for me, it stayed in Moss Landing for the day, and didn't roll in until about 6 p.m. And it kept everything nice a cool for a pleasant day in the garden (even if I didn't get much done.)

I did start a new worm bin and realized I need to harvest another. Potted up a couple of plants. Watered and made notes and picked a few things. Really just relaxed today.

Ferals are our Friends

I call the cat in the picture, Sweet. She's not "my" cat. She's feral. Three years ago, my freshly planted Nepeta disappeared. And the usual suspect (Mr. Gopher) was not to blame. I couldn't blame snails either as there weren't any slime trails and the leaves and stems looked "eaten". The culprit was a momma cat and she had left her small litter of 3 kittens under the juniper. It was then that I realized how many feral cats live in our area.

The kittens were quite mature, and frankly, I couldn't adopt them myself or convince others to adopt. I ended up turning to Project Purr. They have a low-cost spay and neuter program. So there was this period of time where I was humanely trapping and escorting these fellows to a participating veternarian. Quite the chore, and somewhat harrowing in some regards. But, as far as I can tell, they live perfectly happy lives. Sweet is the only one that regularly comes around my garden. I used to feed the others when they came around, but they have since moved on (or have passed on). She's no lap cat, but will come to watch me (at what she sees as a reasonable distance) putter in the (ahem, her) garden. In fact, this morning, I came around the corner and she looked quite surprised with a "what are YOU doing here? don't you work elsewhere?" look. She'll even get surprisingly close when I'm harvesting beans. With all the leaves rustling, I think she believes I've caught something interesting for her. She looks a little disappointed by the long green things in the bowl.

She does her job at keeping the field mice in check. I've never seen her catch a gopher, but she does hang out in the "active areas". I assume when she doesn't show up for her usual "supper time", she's found fresher fare (and yes, I hope it's a gopher).

The only thing Project Purr asks in return for their services is to send a letter to the editor of the local paper, talking about how they helped me, and their overall mission. I sent the letter, but I never saw it published. So after I had snapped the picture, I thought maybe I'd blog about Sweet. She's a very nice companion and I thank Project Purr for helping us out.