Happy September! How many of us are shifting into food preservation mode, now?
I find I have a colander full of Slenderette Green Beans to do something with, whether I'm ready to deal with them or not. (We like them canned better than how they taste frozen, and it's way too many to cook up just now for 2). All came from 8 little bean plants, can you believe? A row less than 10 feet long, grown in concrete-like clay with a little potting soil put in the trench at planting time, and kept watered. I am impressed with their productivity.
I already posted about the Parisian Cornichon cucumbers that had been burnt up by the July-August heat and drought, despite us hauling water daily and sometimes twice daily to them and developed blackened stems and curled up leaves; looked like we lost all 8 even though they'd grown well up the garden fence. Well, seems that 4 of them have came back to life! I can't believe it. One was totally dead-looking and now has 2 little yellow flowers on the tip of a tiny green shoot. :)
My ONE Tomatillo plant - I knew not to go nuts with them! - has just produced 5 pints of Salsa Verde from 16 cups of little green tomatillos and we used 6 little white onions that also grew from sets.
The red onions, however, have all rotted in the row.
Making salsa today was sort of stressful for me as a poor cook and I've never done much canning, but found a good hot water bath recipe online and used bottled lemon juice with the tomatillos, chopped onions and serrano peppers. I may have overdone the serranos (bought them at a Tienda). Feels like we did something useful, at least.
The "Black Brandywine" tomatoes that only made 1.5 inch green and red fruits, all of which cracked open, we blanched, skinned and put into a liter container to make fresh salsa with. I will not try growing them again! They're rather unattractive and not particularly tasty. Whereas, the 2 German Johnson tomato plants that took forever to get going have just loaded my kitchen countertop with 5-6 inch fruits this week. The last time I bought one of these at a farm market, 5 years ago, I paid $3.00 for it. Probably $5.00 now?
Our blue potatoes were basically a bust...we harvested 12 little suckers. But the Russets seem to have come back to life after the cooler shift in weather, so the jury is still out of whether potatoes can revive this late in the season.
I've been hauling water up to the brassicas every day as it doesn't look like we're going to have much rain this fall, either. :(
[This message edited by Superesse at 10:23 PM, Saturday, September 7th]