Tag Archives: cucumber

Canning part 2

I canned some salsa, green beans, and more pickles this weekend. For the pickles, I used the same recipe as before. For the salsa, I used a recipe from the Ball website. I like salsa that is mostly vegetables. Basically, I won’t make any with a recipe that calls for sugar or anything extra other than spices. I found the bean recipe from a Costco magazine. It contains essentially the same thing as dill cucumber pickles with cayenne pepper added. I can’t wait to try these in a few weeks!

More canned goods

More canned goods

Gone for a week

I left town for a week and harvested this (plus four extremely large zucchini) when I returned. I think I am going to have to can salsa and pickles this weekend or else give some of it away.

Harvest 8/6/2010

Harvest 8/6/2010

Canned some stuff

I attempted to can some of the cucumbers and zucchini last weekend. I followed the instructions exactly, but am still leery. The top are still down, so that is a good sign. I guess we’ll see if I am still alive in a few weeks when I get to open one and give it a try. The blueberry jam was made from berries picked at a pick-your-own farm in Iowa City.

Grape Jelly and Dill Pickles

First attempt at canning.

Cucumbers and broccoli

Putting the cucumber plants behind (to the north of) the broccoli plants I think caused them to be a little delayed. The broccoli basically shaded the cucumbers until the broccoli plants were pulled out. Also, eight broccoli plants was probably too much, but I don’t know what a suitable early maturing replacement would be to get something out of the vacant spaces around the squash before they get too big.

This week

I’ve been harvesting something about every other day recently, most of which has been zucchini. I have been updating the Plan page with the yields as they come in, which so far are what I expected. The bean plants still look a little off, but I am harvesting something from them now so I think I will just take what I can get and not worry about it this year. The tomatoes look awesome, and I actually have peppers this year!

The broccoli and pea seeds I planted for the fall have already sprouted which makes me excited for what I might be able to get in the fall.

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Weekly update – May week 1

In the last week, I haven’t done much with the garden. It rained a few days so watering hasn’t been an issue, and everything seems to be growing well. The plan for this week is to get the cucumber, bean, and dill seeds planted, as well as to transplant the tomato, squash, and lettuce  plants. After that, it looks like I will be close to being done with planting.