Originally posted by SaltwaterSlick
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Thanks Slick!! I’m really proud of my garden this year after last year’s disaster. Put up 18 quarts of dill pickles Monday, all picked last week, along with 6 pints of salsa from my tomatillos from this years garden, and jalapeños from last year. Picked just enough of this year’s peppers to pickle 3 pints. The cucumbers and squash are what I picked Monday afternoon after getting the canning done. -
Well gang, we had our biggest overall harvest yesterday... Squash/zukes and now peppers are starting to kick it in high gear! In the next 2 weeks or so, it'll be mater pickin'/cannin' time.
We planted another round of purple hull peas yesterday too, another row of okra (Star of David), and another row of cukes, all in the in-ground garden. In about a month we are going to start new seeds in trays for the Fall garden, and may try some Fall corn if we have room... Haven't had any rain in a WEEK!!! This old prairie land will grow anything if you can control the water. I am set up for drought, but nuthin' I can do for too much water, so we got our fingers crossed that the summer will go well for us.
We ordered a new greenhouse earlier this week. It's supposed to ship mid-week next week. Getting a 12 X 16 foot steel frame with roll up side curtains, vented doors, with racks down both sides. I will start the dirt work for it today or tomorrow... pretty excited about this project.
The freeze dryer has been running constantly since we got it going. It takes a long time do freeze dry berries... On our second load, first full load of berries actually. It takes about 32-40 hours for a load of berries... Had the grandsons this week so we played around with freeze drying candy mostly... That was a fun experience... some did great, and some basically did nothing. My favorite was Bit-o-Honey!! It blows up like cotton candy and just disintegrates in your mouth, but the flavor is very intense. Did some apples too and got the same results from them... The slices felt light as a feather, were crunchy, but had a heightened "apple" flavor. Had 2 quart jars full and me n the grandsons have pretty much wiped them out! The astronaut ice cream was a hit too...
Anyway here are a few harvest pics. First order is to make our very first batch of jalapeno jelly!! Soon as the current load of berries come out of the freeze dryer, we're gonna try a load of sliced squash to see how that goes.
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Took advantage of the slave labor we had with the planting!
From the Freeze Dryer (Harvest Right, Large)
This started out as 5 ziploc 1 quart bags of berries that had been in the freezer for over a year. Kept one quart of whole berries, ground the rest up into powder... We've mad some really good smoothie drinks with the powder!!
The load we have in now is fresh picked berries that went from the field to the sink for washing and onto the trays for freeze drying (we froze the berries in our upright freezer over night before putting them in the freeze dryer.)Comment
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ROCKY REPORT!!! Man Rocky sent me some great pics of his garden, harvest and pickle making outcomes. I'll post the pics and let Rocky jump in to explain what is what, but his dang mater plants are over 5 feet tall and just now kicking into high gear!! Oh yea, and each one of those rows is 70 feet long!! That translates into a LOT of whatever is planted in each row!!
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Pickled another 24 quarts of jalapeño dill pickles today and 8 pints of cayenne dill squash pickles. I used a 5 gallon bucket for reference to show how large my plants are. Squash, tomatoes,cucumbers, peas and beans, and peppers. Tomatoes are about a week out from being a daily picking. Have a goal of 100 quarts of pickles this year and after week 2, we’re at 42 quarts. Just got a nice shower and more rain on the way, so things are looking good. Banner year for my garden so far. Picking tomatoes could be a challenge due to how large they’ve grown. I will persevere. So far, few bad bugs, and only 2 cottonmouths.Originally posted by SaltwaterSlick View PostComment
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My best growing tomatoes this year are Juliette’s. This tomato wasn’t supposed to be able to be grown from previous tomato seeds, but I put them under my lights, grew the plants and put them in the ground. Several of them have over 100 tomatoes on them. Very prolific.Comment
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We freeze dried some squash and cucumbers. Was told the squash skin and seeds were hard to get dry so we removed them. Rehydrate the texture is a little rubbery raw but cook out ok.
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That’s awesome @rocky!
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Man, yall gots some rock-n gardens this year!
I might have a handful of dwarf okra this next week.
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My goodness as stated y’all have some fine gardens this year. That being said I know they didn’t just happen by themselves and includes allot of work. The ground/soil prepping, watering systems and of course the planting/harvesting. The drip watering system I find most interesting and it looks like the way to go.Comment
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Anybody tried electroculture? Using copper as antenna to stimulate plant growth? There are a few channels on yt about it.
Still doing research as I just found out about it about an hour ago...lolComment
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Juliet’s has been a great producer over the years. I planted 2 Juliet’s and I’m picking 3 or 4 lbs. every other day. I should have planted 6 and I could had plenty for salsa and spaghetti sauce! Great taste and nice size as well.Originally posted by rocky View Post
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Rocky, would you share your pickle recipe? Have alot of cucumbers that I'm having to give away, not able to eat all of them.Originally posted by rocky View PostComment
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Rocky and Charlie, you guys have some impressive gardens. I don’t always post after every update, but I enjoy following along with the pics. Please keep all the pics and updates coming
Things are moving along nicely over here as well, just not quite at the level you guys are putting out.
With the heat and a crazy bug infestation my plants got a couple weeks ago, I decided to harvest my brussels. Got them all vac sealed and put away. I had two cabbage plants act like they were going to start spinning another head, but that seems to have petered out in the last couple of days.
Of the plants I over-wintered, my bananas got a faster start than most. I’ve been pickling them as they’ve been ready.
Nada Penos are coming along nicely. I have 5 or 6 plants of them.
Corn is looking good.
Kentucky Wonders have been doing much better than last year.
I’ll be picking a ton of shi****os this week. (Sheshe tos, dang filter
) Every one of those plants has been super prolific.
Cuke plants are throwing a bunch right now too. I’m enjoying eating fresh cukes every day
. Still have lots of pickles from last year so I don’t need to make as many this year. Canned some kraut with my last couple cabbages this last week. I’ll be canning some green beans and pickling more peppers here in the next couple of days. Shi****os, thai chilis, and bananas all will be ready soon as well.
Squash and tomatoes are coming along. Wife’s loofah plants are growing like weeds. I picked up some elderberry and blackberry plants this spring and both are growing well also.
Lots of great things happening, but I’ve had 3 disappointments so far this spring.
1) One of the pepper plants I over-wintered was a ghost pepper plant. It was a good-sized plant and came out of winter in good shape. Received the same treatment as everything else I over-wintered. This spring though, it just never got going again for some reason, and ultimately died. Same sunlight, watering, feeding program, and treatment as everything else. It was the only plant I lost through the over-wintering process
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2) Carolina Reaper plant that I also over-wintered. This plant survived the drought last summer, over-wintered well, and immediately started putting on new growth this spring. However, it’s never produced a single pepper pod in the 2 springs that I’ve had it
. It flowers like crazy, especially this year, but just wont produce for some reason. I have pollinators buzzing around, tried the hand-pollination thing, lightly shaking it, etc. No dice. I have between 40-50 pepper plants of all different kinds and every one of them is throwing pods except this one. I have some different reaper plants that I just started this year that are doing better than this one is.
What strange is the ghost pepper plant in #1 never threw a pod last year either, and I had multiple plants of each species. They grew well and flowered a bunch, but never grew a pepper pod. I got both plants from Home Depot last spring. Not sure if there’s anything to that or not. Maybe just a goofy batch of plants or something, but everything else I had/have produces. I started different peppers of each this year from different seeds, so going to see how those end up.
3) My cattle tub container onions. I’m growing two different kinds of onions in 3 different places year, just tinkering around. I have a couple rows in a raised bed, some in 1-3 gallon pots, and some in the cattle tub. The tub onions started the fastest and were the best looking group of them all with the tallest and most blades for a while.
All the rains we’ve had have really done them in and I think they just stayed too wet for too long. Smaller pots and in-ground onions are doing great though. I’d try this experiment again though and see how they do in a drier year. Not going to catch me complaining about rain, even if I lost a few plants to it!Comment
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In a pan large enough, 3 quarts of water, 1 quart of vinegar, and 1 cup of salt. Bring to a good boil for 10- 15 minutes. That’s the brine we put over cut up cucumbers, jalapeños, or squash. We put jalapeños in some of the dill pickles, and a clove of garlic in all of them. Obviously you will need to add some dill to the jar before pouring the liquid over them. That’s simply a matter of taste to each person.Originally posted by Silvey View PostComment
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