This is what happens when a homeless street rat lives long enough to have a home.
I went out to get a few tomatoes that are still going, and found four large cucumbers. I swear to god cucumbers are ninjas. They like wait, and just explode into existence on you. We had rain the last few days and that’s all it took.
I usually like to pick them about half that size or they get a little woody and more bitter. However, I made sandwiches with one, and I will make the others into refrigerator pickles. I’ll probably get another couple jars.
I love having a garden.
I did some tomato sauce processing this morning. I actually had two big giant batches. I had my dutch oven and my big pot going together at one point. The pictures below is after I cleaned it mostly up and it was just simmering down with the last batch. There was tom sauce literally everywhere before I cleaned, so I’ll keep that mess as a memory snapshot.
In hindsight, with ten 16oz jars I could have canned it up, but I think I need more research. Since I don’t eat onions or garlic because they are my mortal gastroenterology enemy, it makes finding approved and safe recipes harder. So many of them have so many onions in them.
I also don’t really want to add any acid to them, like you would do with water batch or pressure canning, because my wife has GERD already. I don’t need to throw more fuel on that fire.
Instead, I just blanched them like before, and peeled and cored out the stems. I then just cooked them down. I initially mashed them with a potato masher, and when I had cooked them down to a close to desired thickness, I used my immersion blender to blend the remaining solid toms, and some basil and green onions in from the garden. (Green onions don’t have it in for me, so I can reasonably eat those.)
Then I just filled the jars, labeled and froze them.
I am initially freezing them in the house freezer, but then I will take some out to the chest freezer later, as I won’t have to worry about them falling over then.
My last task fo the day is reheating some of the pickle brine I had left over from last time, and doing one last 16 oz jar of pickles with the last of my cucumbers from the garden.
I did not get a big enough harvest of these, or enough at one time to even bother with canning pickles. Refrigerator pickles work just as well, and are just as good.
Now, that I am done, I am going down for a good long nap. I am still exhausted from surgery. It’s very true, when you get over 50, these things take longer to come back from.
I had a small surgery on the 24th of August, so I haven’t been as up and around as usual. However, my garden keeps on going.
Here’s some update thoughts on where we are at with it.
The tomatoes have gone wild. Like I have more tomatoes than I can handle for two of us, especially since my wife has GERD. So it’s really like one of us, and occasional she has a bite. I got these Glacier Bush Tomato seeds from Botanical Interests, and they are a 55 day semi-determinate. They grew strong, fast, and blew up in my 8b area.
I definitely will be using some of these for next year, but less of them.
My cucumbers? Not so much. I just never got them off and running? I got a few cucumbers, but nothing to really brag about. I made a few refrigerator pickle jars, but it just was never enough to fully can them. I only got 2 or 3 at a time.
I got the Homemade Pickles Cucumber Seeds from Botanical Interests. I just don’t know if I know what to do with them much? The ones I did get, were amazing. Like I made some cucumber and tomato and feta salad with rice vinegar and olive oil and I could eat that for days.
I might have to figure it out this cucumber situation for next year. Some of my plants never really took off at all and I don’t know why.
My strawberries also went crazy. I need to research how to manage them because they went wild. My plans for them is to transplant them into the front yard into another blue raised bed. I have the bed, but I have not put it together because my health was not super great that last couple weeks.
I am wondering if I can combine one of these raised blue beds with a raised bed situation and have the strawberries cascade down from above into the bed below? It would look cool, and remove an entire grassy area. I hate lawn grass.
I got a misc beet mix from Botanical Interests, and planted that recently. I love beets, and I plan to make pickled refrigerator beets and some borscht with them. I should have enough for roasted veggies as well.
I’ve never grown beets, so I am just watching and waiting.
In all, for my first year here? This garden has done so damn well. I have not really ever had this kind of space and I am shocked at how easy it was, once I got the beds and green house set up.
The only downside, is I have had a squirrel incursion into my garden cage. I am not sure how they are getting in, but I plan to really go over the area once I am done for the season and patch up any holes in my perimeter.
My cucumber plants had a lot of flowers, but not so many cucumbers. They are proving more challenging than my other crops. I just am not getting enough cucumbers to be worth trying a full canning attempt at pickles.
I feel like my plants are trying to sneak cucumbers at me when I am not looking so they can die off too! I swear I will be out every day just looking, and BOOM! one day there is a big cucumber, that literally wasn’t there the day before. I have had two giant version show up out of nowhere and I am sure I didn’t miss them.
I got a few little ones and a big one today, and so I decided to make Alton Brown’s Kinda Sort of Sour refrigerator pickles.
The only alteration I made was two use dill seed instead of celery seed because that is what I had on hand. I am recovering from eye surgery, so I am not into going to the store right now.
I made way too much brine, with a double batch, so I am just going to refrigerate it and save it for the next few cucumbers that come up. This three jars will add to the other two I made last week before I went into surgery.
I know my wife will be happy. She loves pickles, and I just don’t think grocery store pickles have much of a flavor at all. These do, and I am sure it’t because of the apple cider vinegar and the spices used.
I am experimenting. The first two jars I made last week, I weighed down with my sauerkraut weights, and these I am not. So I will see how it all turns out.
That’s all I am up for today. I’ll go back and nap as I let my eyes heal, but at least I will have pickles waiting for me when I am up and about again.
I managed to make Jam last Friday. I took it easy all week, so I could do it.
This is fifteen jars of strawberry rhubarb jam. I could not have done it without over six pounds of rhubarb my real estate gal brought over to me. I got up super early and hit the business version of Costco at 7am, and grabbed the strawberries. So far, in my area, Costco has better fruit than anywhere, and it’s cheaper in bulk.
I was up and jamming, done by 10:30am, and back to bed for the rest of the day! That’s definitely a success because I got it done. Baby steps!
As for the garden? See for yourself.
My garden is looking good. You’ll notice I am missing broccoli in the upper left bed. I harvested it, and then all it was doing was attracting cabbage moths like crazy. I decided to pulled it. It will compost it down for next years beds. My bush tomatoes are going crazy in the back. Even with careful pruning I am no match for them.
My cucumbers on the lower left are also doing amazing. I hope I have a lot to can as pickles!
This is my old broccoli bed. It was planted with beet seeds that I soaked overnight. I also laid out some of that Rainbird irrigation tubing so I can keep them watered with the rest of the garden.
I was using the dripper ends on the broccoli going to each plant, but honestly, I prefer the drip lines. They provide enough water, and may not go to each plant, but setting up individual drippers takes time, and is hard on me to hunch over and get it sorted out. This takes minutes and works just as well.
This right here? That is the first tomato of the season. Getting the 55 day tomato seeds from botanical interests really allowed me to hedge my bets. I got a version called Glacier from Botanical Interests which is a semi-determinate, whatever that really means is up in the air for me.
I have ordered seeds from a few different places, but I find Botanical Interests has way better packets, and has information on the plants inside the packets too. Plus, I feel I get a higher germination rate on their seeds. One of the guys who runs that business has a Youtube channel called Epic Gardening. He has good videos, and tutorials, and explanations on there, with a generous side of sales. That’s how I learned about Botanical Interests, so I guess it worked out.
I am in zone 8b, and am closer to the coast. I am in a weird little microclimate that is always breezy too. Like you could be blocked on either side, but our little valley is constantly just a little breezy to outright windy. In this heat, that is a bonus.
While I am not a fan of temperatures above 70F, my garden is loving it. I have been in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, and we hit record temps all July, and are looking to do it for August as well. I figure since this is happening, my beets may get a good bit of sun and warmth to grow up.
This is the first time I have ever had this much space, and a lot of the plants I am growing are first time plants. I am shocked and pleased at how well it’s all going.
Garden Rat 