tomatoes – Peacock Orchard

Mulching the garden, my positive and really negative experiences

My beautiful niece and nephew came over to assist with some farm chores for cash. I picked a terrible one for them. I tend to pick pay tasks by how little I actually want to do them. I have a 5 year old hay bale in the lean-to I’ve been picking away at over the years. I finally want it out of there and moved to the garden areas for mulching.

I love mulch for it’s ability to suppress weeds (as I’m a lazy gardener) and it’s ability to hold in moisture. I’m terrible at watering too. My tomatoes and peppers are valuable to me. There is nothing like home canned spaghetti sauce and salsa. I need these things to really take off. So mulching them is worth paying for, and not hauling hay, more so.

I am nervous about this though. I mulched our largest garden last fall in the hopes of suppressing a lot of weeds. What we got instead was an infestation of ground squirrels. When dead babies started showing up we actually worried about the plague. That garden has been completely abandoned at this point. It did have a high point though. One snowy day we looked out the window to find this:

Isn’t it the most glorious stoat you’ve ever seen! That little stoat spent a week murdering every ground squirrel it could find. We haven’t seen one in that garden since. Hasn’t stopped me from abandoning the garden though. The ground squirrels will repopulate the tunnels, it’s just a matter of time. Still, we have some anti-squirrel around and that feels pretty darn amazing.

So you can see why I would be rather nervous about mulching the new gardens. It is done though, or at least part of it is. The tomato and pepper part at least.

Nice in progress picture. It’s a tire surround and makes the entire thing a raised bed. Tomatoes in the middle and peppers in the tires. Nice soaker hose running through the entire thing.

I made sure to leave plenty of room around my tiny plants. They would be larger but I prune off most of the leaves and plant them as far up the stem as possible. I had amazing results with it last year and I’m not messing with success!

Stay tuned for a story about the sleep over hysteria that followed this mulching chore!

First tomatoes and peppers- delicious salsa

There is so much beauty in a harvest. The colors, the smells, the flavors. My kitchen is a cacophony of natures amazing bounty. Peppers, tomatoes and herbs right now. I’m loving my harvest this year. The tomatoes, oh the tomatoes. So beautiful and so plentiful. The peppers have amazed me with their size, quantity and flavor. This is a partial tomato harvest and a full pepper harvest. I asked Daughter to pick the red peppers and she just went to town grabbing them all so…..I let her. I picked only the ripe tomatoes for this. So many tomatoes!

I can’t even name the varieties of tomatoes I have grown this year. Many were given to me unlabeled. The seeds I grew are San Marzano and Black Krim.

The kitchen is making me SOOO happy right now. The sink has been a godsend in prepping produce for canning. I don’t think I could have done much of this in the old kitchen. I certainly couldn’t fill up the necessary pot. I’ve had colanders full of produce being washed in the sink by my little angels who seem as excited by this process as I am.

I did look up salsa recipes and I did base my salsa off of a particular recipe, however, I didn’t follow the recipe practically at all. I’ve simply never canned my own salsa before and I was looking for a guide for doing it.

So, here are my peppers and onions getting washed Delicious!

The tomatoes receiving the same treatment.

So I removed the skin using the hot water method. I did it incorrectly though. Some of the tomatoes were perfect, as below. Some were left too long and were mushy. Those tomatoes I hand chopped, the nice ones were run through the food processor.

Chopping over cooked tomatoes here.

Salsa! It’s a bit watery but I’m ok with that. Cilantro was an easy grow for me so I had a plethora of that.

Hot water bath canning. I did not have the correct tools yet. My mother had a bunch of canning stuff and I did retrieve it from her later. The gloves worked great for this though. You can find them Here. Husband bought the gloves for our pig roast (see here) but they have been hanging out with my pot holders and I enjoy them quite a bit in the kitchen.

As for taste, perfect. Not too hot, very flavorful. I’m very happy with how this worked out.

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Zucchini Tian- An amazing way to use squash

My husband and I stopped at Safeway to pick up a few things on Monday. A few things turned into me spending our entire lunch in the produce aisle picking over the vegetables. I had no real idea how I was going to cook anything, just that I wanted to try it all. Husband just shook his head as I loaded up our basket and told him I’d look online for recipes later. That is why I love Pinterest. I find some of the best recipes and ideas there.

Zuchini Tian — This is one of my favorite finds now.

This Recipe from feastingathome.com is absolutely amazing. I’d never made anything like this before and I didn’t have high expectations. The recipe was easy to follow and thanks to my nifty Mandoline,
prep was quick. Just make sure you wear these gloves. I’ve harmed myself pretty severely with the mandoline before. We made it in our fairly new cast iron skilletas suggested and it worked pretty well. I think I might slowly transition all of my cooking pots and pans to cast iron. The cast iron dutch oven I have is a dream! I also really love just going from the stove top to the oven.

I used 2 small yellow squash, 1 zuchinni, 1 super large black krim tomato, 1 yellow onion and parsley picked from the new planter box. My quantities didn’t match with the recipe exactly. I don’t tend to be great about following recipes to the T. Still, turned out amazingly well!

The squash was served with grilled pork tenderloin and wine, of course. I got distracted looking at all the peppers I have growing and the pork got overcooked. It was pretty darn dry actually. My husband should be sainted for eating all of the food I forget I’m cooking.

We are all about making enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch at work. This packed up beautifully and reheated really well. I did under cook the squash slightly so it would not be too soggy when microwaved. I will be doing this again for sure!

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