Last of the 2013 Garden Updates!

Some of the end of the season veggies!  Despite the odd rainy weather this summer, the late start of the plant blossoms, and lots of blossom end rot, my plants still produced enough delicious food for my family.  The most outstanding veggie of the season would have to be my bush beans of which I have a freezer full right now.  Next it would have to be the Yellow Brandywine Tomato.  The harvest was more than expected and the fruit was very good eating.  Saved lots of these seeds for next years garden.

Sweet Chocolate Peppers!  They were great tasting, but were late producers and did not produce abundantly.  But, I will still plant them again next year with seeds saved this year.

Sweet Banana Peppers!  Again, very good eating and will be planting them again next year.  

September 3 Garden Update

A mixture of lettuce and radishes in a tote bucket.  Still covering it with chicken wire because the squirrels are just plain weird!

More yellow brandywine tomatoes from my container pots.  They took awhile to produce this summer, but they are probably the best tomato I have grown and eaten, so I am saving the seeds from this one for next year!

Some more tomatoes yet to ripen.  They should have a few more weeks yet this season.

Red Marconi Pepper looking a bit disfigured.  The whole lot was this way so I don't think I will be saving these seeds. 

Last to the dollar store bucket bush beans this year.  Was fun and delicious!

Sweet Banana Peppers....tried to save some seeds from these, but the seeds turned brown which I thought indicated that the pepper was not yet ripe, so I will wait longer to pick to save the seeds because this is a great eating pepper!

A good looking pepper...think it is a chocolate sweet pepper.

Peppers did well this year in containers.  They did wait awhile to produce as did the tomatoes, think it has to do with the crazy weather!

Radishes in a pot....we will see what happens here...

Some lettuce that got a late start...again we will see what happens.

Last cucumber in garden waiting to get to the point to pick for the seeds.  This cucumber was from a couple plant volunteers from my bush bean garden and gave me plenty of "free" food this season!

Growing Store Bought Potatoes in a Tote Bucket....Fail

Well, first off I made a video of my harvest of the store bought potatoes in a tote bucket.  When checking my camera I found no video recorded.  Not really sure what happened....but since this experiment failed resulting only in the few potatoes above, there was not much to see anyhow!  I will use this as a learning experience and the next time I try to grow potatoes I will get the seed potatoes from the garden nursery instead of using some old ones from the fridge!!!! :)

Garden Harvest and Lots to See

Harvested Today!

Chocolate Mint--great in making ice tea!  I mix the chocolate mint with my regular mint plants leaves and they taste great together.  Love the mint!

Red Marconi Peppers...lots of peppers on this plant but still waiting for the Red....

Polish Linguisa...meaty little tomato, but has had a lot of blossom end rot this year.  I think it is due to all the rain.

My new favorite tomato....Yellow Brandywine.  Definitely saving the seeds from this one for next years planting.  This tomato has a lot of meat and that means fewer seeds...but there is enough for me to enjoy this great tomato next season!

Chocolate Peppers....not yet ready...supposed to have a chocolate color when ready.  Waiting for the chocolate!

Sweet Banana Pepper....like it...but this plant has only produced 3  peppers so far this season...that just doesn't seem worth all the seasons work.  I will try again next year with seeds saved from this years and will try again.

My one sunflower planted this year in a dollar store bucket.  Cute, huh?!

Directions for Freezing Bush Beans

Harvest beans and inspect for old or damaged beans and remove for compost pile.

Rinse in cold water and individually inspect them again for quality, making sure they are not too old or insect damaged, don't want to eat those!

After rinsing them all, turn out onto paper towels to drain a bit and get knife and cutting board to start cutting off ends of beans.

Cut off ends and damaged parts.

Save for compost pile!

Beans ready to blanch before freezing.

Use a large stockpot so all the beans can fit in one pot.  Bring to a boil and put in beans and leave in for about 3 minutes.

Beans need to be blanched before freezing to destroy all the bad bacteria and enzymes. 

Get ready two large bowls filled half way with cold water and add ice cubes to them.  The finished blanched beans will be immediately drained and put in the ice water to stop the blanching process.

So, you will blanch for about 3 minutes and when the time is up....

you will drain the beans before adding to ice water.

Let the beans sit in the ice water for about 3 minutes.

After the 3 minutes in the ice water, drain again.

Lay the beans out on paper towels...

pat dry...

and, to try to get as much water off of the beans as possible, I place a fan on them to help to dry them out.

After about 15 minutes or so, put the mostly dry beans in the freezer bag (I use the quart size) to about an inch from the top of the bag.

The freezer bag is full of beans and ready to have the air sucked out.....since I don't have one of those machines that do it for you...

I use a straw to suck out the air myself.  It works, but I think next year I will invest in one of the freezer seal machines.

Air sucked out and package sealed.

This mornings harvest:  some put aside for steaming tonight and the rest ready for the freezer to eat another day!

 

My Giant Dieffenbachia (Dumb Cane) Plant

Not my organic garden...but interesting just the same.  This plant is about 3-4 years old and is just huge!  I only water the thing and have added additional soil with fertilizer on the top and it seems to be happy enough to produce a few "flowers" just the other day.  They look kind of creepy now but they will open up and are quite interesting looking. When they open up all the way I will post an update picture here.  Note:  they are toxic to animals, I don't have any right now so no worries here.

Vegetable Container Garden Update August 9, 2013

Some Radishes Growing and Some Summer Harvest

Update:  Growing radishes indoors 
Update 8-5:  trashed the radishes....got tired of the swarms of fungus gnats driving me crazy from the soil used when planting the radishes.  Never had this many gnats before and will give up on indoor food growing until I get a good indoor organic fungus gnat control.

Food!

First of my yellow brandywines....first year growing these...great eating!