Saving Seeds: Radish

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Chioggia Beets

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Go Vote! And Some Fun Stuff from the Garden

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Squash Bugs

Let me just begin by saying I despise squash bugs.  I don't remember having any trouble with them in our garden when I was growing up in Colorado, but they have been a constant nuisance since I've been gardening in Utah.

The first year sweet husband and I planted a good sized garden, we found these very cool little eggs on the bottom of our squash leaves.

They are usually laid in kind of a pattern and most times follow the veins of the squash leaf.  Interesting.  So, being the curious people we were, we thought we'd let them hatch and see what came out.  Dumb.  Don't do this.  If you find some strange eggs in your garden, go look it up on the internet (which, by the way, wasn't nearly so full of information then) and maybe you'll end up here reading about squash bugs!  DO NOT just let them hatch--get a sharp stick or rock and smash them!  The eggs range from cream colored to very dark brown.  The darker they are, the closer they are to hatching.  Most times they are laid on the underside of a leaf, but some times they are on the stems as well.  Just smash them all.  It will probably destroy a little piece of your leaf, but don't worry about it.  Sometimes I've found a leaf that is particularly heavily infested.  I'll just take that leaf off the plant and destroy the whole thing.  Most squash plants have plenty of leaves--they won't miss that one.

If you do let the little eggs hatch, or if you've been slacking on your squash bug squashing, you'll find these super creepy little grey bugs with black legs crawling around.

Don't make them your pets, smash them.  You could also use some type of insecticide on them that works on squash bugs.  I haven't found any that isn't just as much hassle as squashing the stinky little bugs since it has to be sprayed right on them and not just in their general direction.  I really don't like using bug spray either, so we generally just stick to squashing them.  Maybe you know something that works, I'm open to suggestions.  These little guys will kill your squash plant.  Yes, we had them crawling all over our squash plants that year and the plants withered and died and we had no zucchini to leave on our neighbors' doorsteps.  Something's just not right about that.

Now, the eggs and the little creepy guys all come from big squash bugs that look like this:

They are commonly found hooked together, making fertile eggs, but are also found wandering around your squash plant single.  They like the leaves, the stems, and the squash and can also be found around the plant on the ground.  You'll find them when you're looking under the leaves for eggs.  Smash them.  They stink when they get smashed.  Maybe hire your kids to squash them.  Make it your family night activity to squash the squash bugs and their eggs.  We have.  Yeah, we're cool parents like that.  Whatever you do, don't let them live and propagate out of curiosity!  No good comes of it.

Catch Up--Mostly on the Garden

Holy buckets!  Things have been a little crazy here lately.   I keep thinking maybe after (insert event, month, etc. here) things will slow down, but it seems they never do.  Things just change and I get a different kind of crazy. 

The garden this year is fair.  I've got peas that have gone to seed so we'll collect some of those when they're all dry.  The peppers, onions, and tomatoes that I grew from seed are doing well, but nothing's ripe on them yet.  The late frost took anything that might have grown on our fruit trees--even our apple tree in the yard that always has little apples on it doesn't this year.  We'll be hunting some down come fall.  I was able to get a little box of apricots from a friend (who doesn't live around here) which we just ate because I love fresh from the tree apricots and haven't had them for a few years.  Also got some corn that was over-ripe, so instead of freezing it, it's drying in the shop for cornmeal.  Got a bunch of green peppers from the same friend and from the Bountiful Baskets food co-op that I participate in every other week or so and dehydrated them all.  They are so handy dehydrated.  I really don't like them well enough to get them eaten fresh before they go all slimy in the fridge and turn into chicken food, so for me, drying them is usually the way to go.  Yep, I'm linking you to posts from last year, some things are very cyclical--it's the same process this year as it was last year, just looks a little different because the peppers are a different shape and the corn is yellow.

I've got radishes going to seed that hubby almost pulled out as some kind of weed he'd never seen before and sure didn't want propagating in our yard.  Thankfully he asked me what they were first.  Same deal on the garden huckleberries I grew from seed.  He was ready to get rid of those as he had never seen them before and assumed they were some kind of invasive plant.  With as fragile as those seedlings were, I'm glad he thought to check with me before eradicating them.  A few of them are actually ripening.  They are small, black, really sweet, and seedy.  We'll probably make jelly with them.  As my son told the UPS guy, "my mom can make jam out of anything".

The beans I planted were supposed to be bush beans.  Bush beans work particularly well in my garden bed system.  Pole beans do not because I have nothing for them to climb.  Well, the two varieties of beans I planted next to each other that were supposed to be bush beans are shooting climbing tendrils out all over the place.  Turns out they must be pole beans even though they were advertised as bush beans.  I have nothing for them to climb except the stray tall weeds that I just pulled out, so now they're climbing each other.  What a mess!  I only have them growing for dry beans anyway, so I guess we'll pick through it all at the end of the season when they're dry to get the beans out.  Hassle, hassle, hassle.

Enough about my garden.  Just kidding.  There's more.  The carrots, beets, and swiss chard I planted are all doing fine.  In fact, the chard is crazy and probably needs eaten.  The beets are eatable also--I'll have to take a picture of these, they're some fancy variety.  I really don't need more beets in my freezer, but when I saw these special beet seeds I had to give them a try just for fun.  The purple beans are happily growing also.  Squash is way behind, but we're finally getting crooknecks out of them.  We've been doing pretty well with the squash bug patrol this year.  I despise those stinky bugs.

Okay, maybe that's all about the garden now.  Except the stunted corn that is growing and thankfully is a short season variety because we got it in so late, so it's possible we'll get corn out of it this year before it freezes this fall.  We also got a couple more fruit trees planted, both pears.  And amazingly (or not), the weeds are also doing fine.

Did you get a garden in this year?  How is yours faring?

The Garden Drip Water System (so far)

The garden is happily being water via our fancy schmancy drip water system.  Yes, right now.  We've used some variation of the drip system to water the garden for about 10 years now.  The drip system is fantastic for so many reasons.  One is that is saves water.  We only water what we want when we want and don't lose much to evaporation.  Another reason I love the drip system is that it can water a whole section of the garden at once without making a mess of the walkways.  Plus it makes watering easy.  I don't have to move hoses or sprinklers.  Just turn it on and off.  Ahhhh.  And not that I would ever do this, but if your town has water time regulations, nobody can tell that you forgot to turn off your drip system after 10:00 am so your neighbors won't report you to the city for watering outside of the water hours.  Yeah, that's never happened here.

This year we built the system so that it (hopefully) can be re-used "as is" in years to come and not have to be re-designed every year.  I don't think we're moving any time soon, so we won't have to re-design our garden area and when we designed the water system this year we made it easy to take apart and easy to use parts separate from each other as well.  Here's how it works.

First, we spent a lot of time in Dripworks' catalog.  We also spent a lot of time figuring out how we want the pieces to come apart for winter storage and how to hook it all up so we have the versatility we wanted.  We have 4 long garden beds plus an area for corn, an area for potatoes, raspberries, fruit trees, and an area for other berries that haven't been planted yet.  Each area needed its own water system section so we could water only the beds, only the squash, only the corn, only the fruit trees, only the potatoes, or any combination of them depending on what was planted and what needed water.  Crazy, I know, but it works so much better not to water the garden areas where nothing is planted.

So I drew a picture of each area and used the catalog to determine the parts we would need.  This is the garden bed area drawing.  Ugh.  Blogger uploaded it sideways.  You can get the idea anyway.

I totaled up the parts.  There are definitely more parts involved when you want it all to break apart easily and want to be able to turn each area on and off independently.  Then I ordered most of the parts from Dripworks and picked up the 1/2" tubing at Walmart garden center.  When all the parts arrived, I pulled them out to separate them into sections to match my drawings and I had missed a few parts, so I put in another order.

Here's what we ended up with:
3/4 inch PVC for the main framework (hubby had some of this from some other project)
Valves for the PVC to turn main sections on and off
1/2 inch black tubing (funny pipe) for running water lines down to the squash area and transitioning from the PVC to the dripline in the bed and berry areas.
1/4 inch drip line down the beds, potatoes, and berry areas plus around the trees.
Connectors, joiners, and caps for the 1/4 inch drip line
T-tape for the corn rows (could have used the dripline here also, but we had T-tape left from other years, so we used it for the corn)
Valves and connectors for the 1/2 inch tubing and T tape
1/4 inch water line (not dripline) to get water to the squash hills
Water emitters at the end of the squash lines.
PVC to hose and hose to 1/2 inch tubing fittings so we can take the whole thing apart in manageable chunks for storage at the end of the gardening season.

Here's a few pictures so you can kind of see how it is put together.  The start of the first bed showing the PVC leading to the 1/2 inch black pipe with driplines inserted in it and running down the bed.  We did 4 rows of dripline per bed, essentially soaking the entire bed since we planted the entire bed.  We want each bed lines to be able to be removed from the PVC for storage, so there are hose fittings between the PVC and the 1/2 inch black pipe on each bed.  We also put a valve at each bed so we could start watering when the early crops were planted without watering all four beds.

Another view of the connection from PVC to the bed.

Where we hook the hose to the PVC to water the beds.  Eventually we'll have a full main PVC line that connects all the sections, but for now we're just screwing the hose onto each section as we want to water it.  Plus another bed line branching off the PVC "bed section" mainline.

1/4 inch drip line in the carrots.

T tape connectors on the corn section of the PVC.  We didn't put a valve on each row of corn.  Maybe we will in the future, but this year we planted all the corn at the same time (late).

T tape.  This is less flexible than the dripline.  It comes flat and not tubular, but it rounds out as it fills with water.  It drips out slits on the top of the tape.

1/2 inch tubing runs down the middle of the squash area and 1/4 inch tubing runs to each squash hill.

The ends of the 1/4 inch line at the squash hill has an emitter.  There are lots of different emitters.  I would not get this kind again, but we had extras of it, so we're using it.  It is supposed to be variable, but is really difficult to set them all similarly, so some squash get more water than others and then when you're adjusting the flow it's real easy to screw the green part all the way off which isn't a real big deal, just kind of a hassle.

You'll also want a filter and a pressure regulator, but I'm not an expert on this, so contact the Dripworks people.  They're super friendly and helpful.  We've called them plenty through the years.  You might have an irrigation store near you you could also get the parts and information from.  We don't, so we use the magic of the internet and UPS to order what we need.

As a final note, you may be thinking about using soaker hose from the store, but don't.  It is relatively inexpensive, but doesn't drip at a constant rate through the length of the hose and is prone to blowouts.  Plus it's not easy to get the hose the right length for your rows.  Cutting 1/4 inch dripline and putting a plug at the end is easy.  Putting a fitting and cap on your soaker hose and having a 3 foot piece left over is a pain in the neck.  It might work well the first year, but after that soaker hose is lots of trouble.  Just don't do it.  We have and it's not worth it.

There you have it.  The basics on the drip system.  Each garden area is going to be a little different and it may take you a bit of figuring and drawing to determine the parts you want for your area, but I can't say how much I love the drip system in my garden.

Super Quick Garden Update

Got most of the garden planted now.  I say most, but really we have a lot more to go, I'm just hoping it won't take too long--the prep work is mostly done.  Trying out a couple of new kinds of dry beans since we had so much fun with that last year.  They're not very pretty, but are supposed to taste good, so we'll see how they turn out.  All the parts for the water system are here, but not installed yet.

I planted my tomatoes, peppers, and onions outside before leaving for our little trip over Memorial Day and put soaker hoses on the whole planted sections of the garden hooked to our garden water timer that we only use when we take vacations.  It is a lifesaver.  Crazy thing though, when I got back about half the tomatoes had their tops frozen off and four of the pepper plants had frozen.  The tomatoes are all still alive at the base (although one is looking pretty bad).  Who said it could freeze at my house over Memorial Day weekend???  Tomorrow is supposed to be around 90 degrees.  Crazy weather here.  Hopefully the freezing is done finally because my first planting of beans is up already.  Ahhhh, the joy of gardening.  You never know what's going to happen, except weeds growing are almost a certainty!

Will it Live?

After snow and cold on Monday, I planted about half my bedding plants outside in the garden on a sunny 67 degree Tuesday.  Crazy, I know, but it really happened.  Gotta love spring.  I didn't have time to finish, so I took the rest inside.  Once a week or so I babysit a little 15 month old boy for a friend who works over at the school for a few hours and he was over today and discovered the plants that were sitting on buckets at just his level by the sliding back door where they could get some sunshine.  He only destroyed four pepper plants before I found him and scooted him out of the room where he proceeded to dump cheese-its on our piano while I repotted the scrawny baby peppers in a plastic cup.  (The plastic cup planting method is only temporary--these are going out to the garden hopefully this week sometime--if it were long term you'd want to poke some drain holes in the bottom of the cup.) 

I'm optimistic about the results of the repotting, but I'm not too sure about the one on the far left that the cute little guy plucked all the leaves off of.  It still has roots--we'll see how badly it wants to live, but I'm not holding out too much hope.

High Mortality Rate Among the Fruit Trees This Spring

We've got some baby fruit trees we've had in the mini orchard for three years now.  Last year we did a good pruning and staked some of the branches to get the trees to grow a little more balanced.  The apricot tree that had always looked a little sickly really thrived last year after the pruning.  It put on tons of new growth and we were so pleased with ourselves.  Well, this spring it is dead.  So is one of the peach trees.  That's two out of our 6 trees.  Actually the two better shaped of the 6 trees (of course).  The dead apricot tree on the right, happy plum tree on the left:

I called my extension agent to find out why they might have died and he said there was a lot of winter kill this year because of the exceptionally cold, long winter we had.  Older trees didn't have as much trouble as younger trees because the cold didn't get all the way to the core of the trunk.  He had a peach tree die also.

If you don't know your extension agent, they are a fabulous resource!  Ours is the USU Extension office, other states will be something else.  The horticulture agent is the go to guy for questions on all things gardening.  And the other gal, she's there for cooking, canning, food preservation techniques and whatever else.  They specialize in your area, so can give you local advice.  I also asked about good varieties of trees, grapes, berries, etc. as we're looking to add to our fruit collection and got some good suggestions.  The plants I almost bought at the store the other day are not the best varieties for our area.  Good thing the store was closed before I picked anything out.

Live Peach tree:

Dead Peach tree:

I did find a replacement apricot tree and two cherry trees to add to the orchard, but no replacement peach yet.  The ones at the store hadn't started leafing out yet, so I'm waiting until I can make sure they're alive before I buy one.

There are a few things to consider when purchasing baby fruit trees.  First is the size.  There are standard trees, semi-dwarf trees, and dwarf trees.  It should say on the tag.  If it doesn't say, you can assume they're standard size trees.  Generally you don't need to plant dwarf trees unless you've got a really small lot.  Standard trees can easily get so large that you won't be able to reach the fruit at the top when it's ripe even with a very tall ladder.  We've settled on Semi-Dwarf trees that get about 12-15 feet high and 12-15 feet wide depending on the variety.  That way we can get a number of different varieties in our somewhat limited space and still get a good production of fruit on each tree.

Another thing to consider that I didn't realize when we first bought our trees, but did realize after sweet husband took a pruning class last year, is the shape of the tree.  For fruit like apricot, cherry, peach, you want about four strong side branches evenly spaced around the tree.  A strong central leader is not necessary.  You don't want all four strong branches on one half of the tree like our peach tree that survived has.  We're trying to train some of the branches to come to the other side of the tree with ropes and stakes.  But a naturally balanced tree is better.  Apple trees want a strong central leader.  Why, I don't know.  That's what our pruning packet says.  What you don't want is a tree that looks like a stick with no branches or one that is obviously lopsided.  If you're buying your tree from a greenhouse, nursery, or similar store you can pick through and get a nice, healthy looking tree.  If you order from a catalog or online shop, you get what you get as far as shape, but sometimes can find a particular variety or size that isn't available elsewhere. 

So there's what I've learned for fruit trees.  Next time we have a hard winter, I'm making them some sweaters.

Garden's Up--Cute Baby Plant Pictures

Here's some garden fun.  Baby plants!  Almost as cute as baby animals, but not quite.  I can hear you all ooo-ing and aaaahh-ing already.

Radishes.  The section planted with Hometown Seeds' radishes are doing better than mine as far as germination rate, which I suspected would happen since I don't think my seeds matured enough, but I do have one radish up in my section so far, so my collected seeds are not a total flop.

Spinach.  Yeah, it kind of looks like grass, but it's really spinach's first leaves.

Peas.  These are the peas from the seeds I harvested from the garden last year.  I also planted some pea seeds from 2002 and they are coming up fine.  They were not stored any special way.  In a sack open to the air since 2002.  Pea seeds appear to have quite a long "shelf life".  I planted old pea seeds last year also and had no problem with them.  Most seeds do not last that long in storage.

And raspberries.  Fun stuff.  Just a couple of days ago I planted beets, lettuce, and swiss chard.  I'm not a chard fan, but the kids like it cooked up like spinach with vinegar on it, so I guess if they'll eat it I'll grow it.  If there's too much I might try my hand at dehydrating some and them powder it and put it in something like brownies when nobody is looking.  I've never tried that, but it might work and you know it would be worth a giggle watching my kids and husband eat them. :)

Saturday Progress and the Ham/Bean Soup I Grew

Saturday came with some really nice weather, so we headed out to accomplish some things in the yard.  The kids and I shoveled a bunch of manure from the edge of the neighbor's horse corrals and wheelbarrowed it over to the garden beds.  If you're going this route, try to get the old stuff that's broken apart.  It kind of looks like dirt already.  It doesn't look like horse droppings anymore.  If it's too fresh, it makes more heat as it breaks down and can burn your plants.  Not good. 

The neighbors are very kind--they don't mind if we take their horse manure away.  In fact, if you know someone with horses, they might not mind you cleaning out stalls either.  We'd like to get a tractor actually in their corrals (at the back of the picture) and dump a bunch over the edge so we can work it into the rest of the garden area (to the left of the beds).  We'll see what we can do.  Nothing like free fertilizer.  I also cleaned around, weeded, and fertilized the raspberries, strawberries, and fruit trees.

Sweet husband spent most of the day cleaning out the chicken house, laying new subfloor and putting in linoleum flooring.  Now the chickens are uptown with easy clean floor in their house.  We got the vinyl as a remnant from a flooring place for about $15.00 last fall.  Bargain.

Because the chickens were pushing at the bucket in the doorway to their house trying to get in and flying up to the window that hubby had open for some ventilation as he was working, we had a crazy idea to put them in the yard.  We could have just let them out to totally free range, but the garden/shop/driveway portion of our yard is not fenced and the neighbor's dogs cannot be trusted.  So we put the chickens in the fenced part of our yard around the house.  After getting over their initial confusion, they happily pecked around the rest of the day.

They really liked the pile of snow (yes, still snow) on the north side of the house.  I'm feeling like that snow may be there until June.

Our dog was really well behaved with the chickens.  She's a crazy bird chaser, but also luckily very obedient and smart, so when she looked at one of the chickens and we told her no, she didn't pay them any more attention.  The trouble is, now there's chicken droppings all over the yard.  I like to be able to go out barefoot if it's warm enough and even if I have shoes on, I like to think my yard is fairly free from anything that will track into the house.  The kids are good about checking their shoes if they go out to the chicken coop, but not if they were just playing in the yard.  So this won't be a regular thing--we won't be yard ranging the chickens except as necessary.

Dinner was one of those magical, satisfying meals.  I used the crockpot to cook ham/bean soup so I didn't have to cook anything when we were done in the yard.  That is magical.  And what's very cool is that we used the Calypso beans we grew in last year's garden and the ham was from last fall's pig.  Yep, I grew that soup.

Here's the beans before soaking and cooking:

In case you don't know how to make ham/bean soup, here's the quick run down.  Soak the beans overnight in a big bowl of water, then drain and rinse them and put them in the slow cooker pot with ham (we used ham hocks, but usually we'll use the scrappy stuff stuck to the bone when you're about done with a ham) and enough water to cover it all by a couple of inches.  Then cook all day on low.  Or at least 4 hours on high.  Or until it's done.  I'm not sure how long it actually takes, but if I've got it going before lunch, it's always ready for dinner.  I added a little salt and garlic powder at the end, but I really like the flavor of just beans and ham.  The beans were really good--smooth and not a strong flavor.  The black faded out to a tan in the final product, but these were really tasty and a productive bean variety, so we'll be planting them again this year.  Yummy yum yum.

Got Seeds in the Dirt

Finally the snow has melted and the garden dirt is workable, so yesterday I planted some of the cold crop seeds out there. I put in two varieties of peas. One of them strictly from the seeds I collected last year.  We'll see how they do.  I'm actually relatively confident they'll be fine because as I was digging in the dirt, I found quite a few pea seeds that hadn't been collected last fall and had spent the winter under the snow.  A couple of them were actually in the dirt and looked like this:

That's a good sign.  In fact, I almost planted the peas in a different location than last year, but when I saw the number of "volunteer" plants I was going to get, I realized that it didn't matter whether I put pea seeds there or not, peas were going to grow there. Quite a few other old peas were on top of the dirt and looked like they had tried to sprout under the snow then dried out when the snow was gone.  Like this:

I also put in carrots, spinach, and radishes.  I let a couple of radishes go to seed last year and planted some of my own radish seeds.  We had a freeze hit before I think the seeds were quite done last fall--you can see the difference in my seeds on the right and the radish seeds from Hometown Seeds on the left.  Yeah, a bunch of mine look a little green.  I planted them in a different section than the Hometown Seeds radishes and I'll see how well they do.  By the way, I've been really impressed with the survival seeds packet from Hometown Seeds.  They were not skimpy in the amount of seeds they sent.

It was sure a nice day to go dig in the dirt and get some spring garden going. :)

The Beginnings of the Garden--Onions are Sprouting

I put a bunch of seeds in peat pots last week and the onions are up already. It's always amazing to watch plants grow. We've had some warmer weather lately which has melted all the snow off the garden and left me with a bunch of mud. We'll get cold weather plants in as soon as I can work in the dirt out there. Looking forward to growing some fun things in the garden this year.

Seeds!

Hooray for Spring!  Friday is the official first day of spring even if there is still snow on the ground.  I've been collecting seeds to plant in the garden this year.  I got some I collected from last year's garden I want to try out, some from Hometown Seeds, some fun varieties from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds, and a couple packets from the regular old store.  These are the Baker Creek seeds that arrived yesterday.

It's too bad the garden still looks like this:

Yep, you can almost see the planting beds.  Almost.  Since starting my own seeds last year really wasn't that hard, I'll be getting the starter plants going in the little peat pots here in the next couple of days.  Maybe sooner if my kids get their way.  We're starting the tomatoes, peppers and chichiquelite huckleberry.  Never tried that one, but I'm always up for trying something different so we're going to give it a shot.  Planting now will give the plants about two extra weeks indoors than they had last year to maybe get them a bit bigger before heading outside.  Last freeze can come here as late as Mother's Day, so not much else can get planted before that.  Any fun plans for your garden this year?

Fabulous Homemade Canned Salsa

I was going to write something fantabulous about Christmas or winter or something, but to be honest, my brain's about done, so I'm pulling out the Salsa post I've been wanting to write.  It's kind of Christmasy because some people I love are getting some of my salsa as gifts this year.  There you go.  A Christmas post after all. :)

To make salsa, you need a good recipe.  If you don't have one, don't worry, I'll share mine.  Salsa is a staple around here, at least for my husband and son who like spicy stuff.  The ingredients are easy to grow in your garden, and if you don't grow them in your garden, they're pretty easy to find at the market.

Here's the magical salsa recipe:

For every 1 quart tomatoes add:
1 onion
1 Bell pepper (or equivalent other mild pepper)
1 jalepeno pepper (or equivalent other hot pepper)
1-2 cloves garlic (optional)

Boil until thick, skimming juice, then add:
1/4 c. vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 TB sugar

Just before canning add:
1/8 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp ground cumin
dash cayenne pepper (optional)
Cilantro (1-2 bunches/10 quarts tomatoes)

Process 10 minutes in your boiling water canner.

Now, for the step by step.  First you need some tomatoes.  Growing your own is vastly superior to buying them at the store for cost and quality, but do what you can.  The good thing about this recipe is that it can be made with a few tomatoes or a lot of tomatoes.  However many tomatoes you have, that determines how much of the other ingredients you'll need. 

If your tomatoes are romas, wash them and cut the stem end off.  You don't need to peel them because their peels don't separate when they are cooked.  If they are another variety, follow the first few steps in the canning tomatoes post (up to getting the tomatoes peeled).

Wow, missing a few pictures here.  Anyway, after your tomatoes are prepped, pop them in your food processor and chop them to the desired consistency.  Measure as you pour it out of the food processor and into the pot.  The pot needs to be one that doesn't burn stuff again.  I like my pressure canner pot.  It's huge, so I can do a big ol' batch of salsa plus it has never burned anything I've cooked in it.

Next add the peppers.  One bell pepper and one jalepeno pepper for each quart of chopped tomatoes.  I usually have about 12 quarts of tomatoes, so I add 12 bell peppers.  Core them and get all the seeds out.

Then pop them in your food processor (yours is probably nicer than mine--I got mine from my mom when she got a new one--I'm pretty sure it's 50 years old, but she says it's probably only 30). 

And proceed to chop them to bits:

Add the pepper chunks to your pot of chopped tomatoes.

Now, if you like your salsa hot, go ahead and chop and add the whole amount of hot peppers.  If you don't, add about half that much and work up from there after it's cooked for a bit and you can taste the hotness.  I'm just shortening your learning curve here.  Peppers from the store are not nearly as spicy as peppers from my garden.  One year I didn't grow jalepenos, so I bought some from the grocery store.  I used 1 1/2 peppers per quart of tomatoes and it was perfect hotness for me.  The next year I grew my own jalepenos.  I put in 1 1/2 jalepenos per quart of tomatoes just like the year before and when I went to taste it before canning it, it was so hot my throat tried to swell shut.  I about cried.  I didn't know what to do with that giant pot of salsa I'd been working on all day.  I just wanted to throw it away and go cry myself to sleep (must've been one of those days, but I vividly remember how I felt when it was so much too hot).  Anyway, sweet husband came home before I got so crazy as to throw it all out and he tried it and declared that it was perfect, so I canned it all up and he ate it.  Thankfully I got another round of tomatoes and I did a mild salsa batch with it that year.  So since then, I've stuck to the "half the hot peppers rule" and I'll add more at the end if it's not hot enough.  It's worked out pretty well.

Another thing about working with hot peppers is that the pepper oil gets on your skin.  I did not know this when I first made salsa.  I cut the jalepenos and cored them by hand without gloves.  Yeah, dumb.  Don't do it.  My hands suffered chemical burns and I had to wear rubber gloves to take my contacts out that night so I wouldn't burn my eyes.  Now I wear gloves and just cut the tops off the hot peppers and throw them in the chopper without coring them.  I know they're hotter that way, but really, the less I have to contact them the better for me.

This year we didn't have jalepenos, but I had LOTS of these other hot peppers, so I used those instead.  Turns out they are so hot that half the hot peppers was still too much.  Ugh.  Another pot of salsa for sweet husband this year.

When the peppers are in the pot, add the onions.  Quarter them and put them in the food processor and chop them to bits.  I figure about 1 medium onion per quart, so if I have giant onions or smallish onions, I adjust the number accordingly.  If you're adding the garlic, toss them in with the onions so they'll chop up nicely.  My food processor doesn't like chopping a few small things, it likes to have some volume to work with.

You  might open the window when you're chopping the onions.  Really.  Put the chopped onions in the pot with the peppers and tomatoes.  It should look something like this:

Yummy.  Now let it boil down.  Stir it occasionally so you know how thick it really is because the juice comes to the top and the chunks kind of sink, so you might get it boiled down too far if you're not stirring and checking the consistency.  If you used romas, it won't need to boil as long because they don't have as much juice.  Romas are really the way to go.  I just didn't grow any this year.

When it's boiled down to salsa thickness (however runny or thick you like your salsa) add the vinegar, salt, and sugar.  We tried a little something different this year and substituted lime juice for the vinegar.  You CAN substitute lime or lemon juice for vinegar in a salsa recipe, but you cannot substitute vinegar for lime or lemon juice because the vinegar is less acidic and you need a certain level of acidity to make the salsa safe.

Then add the oregano, cilantro, cumin and cayenne pepper if you want it (I leave the cayenne out).  My crazy little store didn't have cilantro on my salsa day, so I used dry cilantro.  Not quite as good as dried herbs usually aren't, but it worked.  Thanks to my mom for bringing me a whole bunch of cilantro that she grew and dried in her dehydrator so I have some for emergencies like this.

You can taste your salsa once everything is in it--take a spoonful out and put it on a little plate or bowl and let it cool down.  If it's not hot enough, chop up a few more peppers.  If it's too hot, send it to my husband, he'll eat it.  Seriously, you could make more salsa without the hot peppers in it and mix the two together or something like that if you wanted to salvage your too hot salsa.  I briefly considered that when I made that one crazy hot batch, but I didn't have any more tomatoes at the time, so I thought I'd cry instead.  Crazy girl.

After it was all in the pot and I was happy with the flavor, I heated up the boiling water canner and a little pot with lids and filled the pint jars with salsa.

Wipe the rims, apply the lids, put the jars in the canner and process for 10 minutes.  Voila.  Salsa.  Yummy delicious too-hot-for-me salsa.  :)  I tried bottling it in quarts once (process 20 minutes), but we didn't use it fast enough once it was opened, so we've stuck with pints.

Contrary to canning tomatoes, this is definitely cheaper than buying salsa and much better tasting than any store salsa I've found.  When I don't make it too hot that is.

Freezing and Dehydrating Corn: Choose Your Own Adventure

You know I could post this as two posts, but the only difference between freezing and dehydrating corn is the last step, so for simplicity I'm just doing one post with two possible endings.  Kind of like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  You read those didn't you?  I really liked the original #8 if I remember right.  I figured out how to get through the wild west town, I believe it was Deadwood City, without dying and then just chose the same adventure every time I read it so I never died.  Yep, I'm that adventurous.  Anyway, back to corn.

First thing you'll need is a bunch of corn.  However much is fine.  Depending on the variety of corn you grew, it can lose it's sweetness pretty quick after it's picked.  There's an old saying that goes something like "don't pick the corn until the water's boiling".  That never works around here, so we just get what we get when we get it.  It's also best for flavor to pick your corn first thing in the morning or late in the evening, not the middle of the day.  Ummm, yeah.  I pick it after I get the kids to school.

Shuck your corn and wash off all the little stringy corn silks as best you can.  Some folks are real particular about getting the strings off (me) and some don't really care much about getting every little string (my kids).  Then boil up some water and blanch the corn on the cob by dropping it in the boiling water for 6-8 minutes.  Mine didn't want to stay down so I put a bowl on top of it to keep it in the water.  (this new blogger typing thing is going to take some getting used to)



Pull the corn out of the boiling water (I use tongs) and put it into some cold water.

Once it's cooled off, you can cut it off the cob.  There are some fancy tools out there to get the corn off the cob.  I'd like one.  I just use a knife and cut down the cob in strips.  I do it on a cookie sheet so it will kind of hold the cut corn kernels and I can get a pile of them before moving to the next step.  Don't cut too deep or you get nasty tough cob bits in your corn.

Now you have your corn cut off.  If you'd like to store it in your freezer, continue reading.  To dehydrate it and store it on a shelf, scroll down a little more.  (You won't die with either choice, I promise.)

FREEZING:

Scoop the cut corn into freezer bags or vacuum seal bags in a quantity that looks like one meal's worth for your family.  A little less for a couple, a bunch for a big family.  Or you can measure and do each bag at about 2 cups and have around a pound of corn per pack.  Whatever works for you.  Seal your bag, sharpie your date on it and put it in the freezer.  Easy.

DEHYDRATING

Put your cut corn on your dehydrator trays and dry until it's hard and crispy.  Remove and store in a jar, vacuum pack bag, bucket, whatever you like to use to store your dehydrated goods.  Mark the date on it.

This dry corn is for rehydrating in soups and whatnot, not for grinding into cornmeal.  If you want to dry corn for cornmeal, just let it dry on the cob without doing any blanching like this.

There you have it.  Choose Your Own Adventure #379: Corn ;)

Growing and Harvesting Dry Beans

Here's a post I put up on Utah Preppers about Growing and Harvesting Dry Beans. Check it out. Maybe you'll want to give it a try in your garden next year. :)

Hot Peppers Part 2: The Saga Continues . . .

Our poor chickens need a house. They had a house that we borrowed from a neighbor, but it was really too small and had no nest boxes and no good access to the interior except through the chicken door which is a bit small and nasty for adults, and although not too small, it's just plain ol' nasty for the kiddos. (really, this post is about peppers, hang in there.) So Saturday sweet husband had the day off and we decided to work on the new chicken mansion. We've already put a couple of good afternoons into the project and had the cement footings poured, the floor built and the walls framed. Now, the way the coop is set up, we had to remove the little dysfunctional house from the inside of the coop before we could erect the chicken mansion on the west wall of the coop or we'd need a crane to lift the old house out after the mansion was built, so Saturday morning we took the little chicken house out of the coop and set about working on the new chicken mansion.

As we were working and "hanging out" with the chickens all day, I was doing a horrible amount of coughing and sneezing, as were the kids and even sweet husband. He thought it was chicken dust, but something was seriously burning my throat out there! Everybody that came near the coop that day started coughing or sneezing.

Then it dawned on me--we had fed the chickens the hot pepper scraps--tops, seeds, and plants--just a couple of days before! So here's my theory: chickens eat nasty hotness, then it comes out the other end and they scratch it around on the ground of their coop and voila! CONTAMINATED CHICKEN COOP DIRT!

We ended up hosing the whole coop down so we could finish working that afternoon. Seriously folks, I won't be planting those particular varieties of hot peppers again! Sweet husband tried some (I told him I thought they should sit and "pickle" for a few months or something, but he really wanted some peppers on his sandwich) and they are SO HOT he about can't eat them. Now he's thinking of all the family and friends who need a bottle of pickled hot peppers for Christmas this year.

On a side note, the chicken mansion only got about half put together Saturday, so the chickens are now homeless, living in a box (the original chick box on it's side) and laying eggs in a pet porter until we get another day off to finish their new house. I'm seriously considering bribing some of sweet husband's friends to come help finish the coop as neither of us are much experienced at wood construction. Maybe they'd like some hot pickled peppers . . .

Super Short Check In and Garden Update

I am not a super gardener. I am happy when things grow that don't require a lot of effort on my part. I suppose when my kids are grown and I need something to nurture, my garden will get the effort it really needs. Anyway, the garden is still alive, and here's a few things I'm especially pleased with this year.

See those peppers? I grew those from seeds. Yep, no nursery pepper plants here this year. I can't remember what kind they are though, so I'll have to find my garden map and figure it out. I don't even like peppers--they're for salsa and my husband, but I GREW THOSE! :)
Now look at these fantabulous tomato plants. I grew those from seed also. And they're still alive. Strange but true.
And ditto on these onions. Grew them from little black seeds. I usually get the starts at the nursery.
The peas I grew from seed also of course, and right now some of them are happy to dry up and die and some are still trying to live and grow peas.
The ones that are drying are filled with PEA SEEDS that I'm going to plant next year! I grew those and am now harvesting seeds! :)
I'm getting all kinds of satisfaction from my garden this year and I've hardly gotten anything out of it yet. Every time I go out to water or weed, I say, "Look, I grew that from a seed." Amazing.