Preserving Tomatoes!!!

At this point, we have about 130 lbs of tomatoes in the refrigerator. When in a normal fridge, a ripe tomato will only last 2 to 3 weeks. After this period the entire tomato rots and becomes inedible. One easy way of preserving this food is to freeze it entirely. This is the method that we've choosen. First, we removed all the vines and stubs from each tomato. Then each tomato is thoroughly washed and dried with paper towels. The tomatoes are then sequestered into special zip lock vacuum seal bags, 5 lbs to a bag. The air is then pumped out of each bag, sealing the tomatoes tightly within it. The bags are then stored in the freezer. Using this method, the tomatoes can be stored for up to 6 months. We did this for 50 lbs of tomatoes tonight.

Cool Season Gardening

This weekend has been a whirlwind of activity. The garden's denizens are now adapting to the cooler seasons. The tomatoe plants in Garden bed 5 are still growing as if summer will never end. My job is coax the most out of the plants before the first hard frost. The squash and cucumbers are largely gone due to the cooler weather. The bitter melon and pepper plants have taken their place in Garden Beds 2 and 3. The cool season beets are doing not so well in Garden bed 6, though the beans there are still producing abundantly. The beans this year has been badly damaged by both Hurricane Hannah and 2 species of pest beetles. Both the Japanese and Mexican beetles have ravaged my pole bean crop. Though unlike last year, the Mexican beetles proved to be the greater adversary. Still, the beans have somehow managed to survive and are producing abundantly. The onions and garlic in Garden bed 4 are now making a come back after the squash cover had died down. The asparagus plants are growing like crazy now, everyone of them is a small green bush. The sweet corn has done very badly. The beetles had stunted their growth already, and the hail basically destroyed half of the stalks.

My father and I spent hours harvesting from the garden. We picked 55 lbs of tomatoes, 34 lbs of beans, and 5 lbs of bitter mellon. This is a massive harvest by any standard. So now we have a couple of hundred pounds of vegetables in the refrigerator. We need to figure out a way to preserve all of it.

Last fishing trip of the year!

America seems to be sliding into a second great depression. New York city was in a state of shock on Wednesday, so I decided to take 2 days off to go home to Pennsylvania. The garden in my parents' backyard will need a massive expansion if economic conditions continues to worsen. I also wanted to implement a few other preparations to weather this coming storm. So I got home and had a long chat with my father about what is happening in the markets and around the country. Afterwards, we decided to go fishing. The weather was getting cold and fishing will be nearly impossible in a couple of weeks. We drove to our favorite lake and begain casting the lines.

The first few hours were quite uneventful, nothing seemed to bite. Then, beginning around 5pm, we begain getting catch after catch. The volume was so high that we soon lost count of the all the fish that we were catching. White perch, northern crappies, yellow perch, there seemed to be an infinite supply of those. We caught so many that our container couldn't fit them all. Then, around 7pm, as the temperature sank with the sun, we caught our first giant carp fish. This invasive species had apparently migrated along the waterways down to southern PA. As you may recall, my last encounter with this fish(2 years ago) ended in dismal failure. The carp is a strange looking creature, it's face is so much more expressive than normal North American fish. Up close, it looks almost mammalian in origin. In anycase, after we got home, we spent hours gutting and cleaning the fish. We ended up with 48 pounds of cleaned fish, and another 25 lbs of fish offal. The guts we put directly into our compost bins. After checking the freezer, I noticed that we had at least 65 pounds of fish left at the end of the season. Not a bad haul at all!

Autumn Hurricanes!!!

The fall came with a bang this weekend. It is very possible that our recent spate of storms and hurricanes is a part of the long term climate change affecting the planet. In any case, our little garden has suffered some structural damage from Hurricane Hannah on Saturday. Several of our bamboo trellis structures were knocked out by the high winds, this has effectively destroyed about 30% of our pole bean crop.

The bio-intensive garden bed has survived, but the tomato bushes have been badly battered with scores of green tomatoes rotting on the ground. I would say that at least 20% of the tomatoes have been lost. My poor calabash bush has been entirely destroyed by this storm, it's main trunk broken in two. The squash plants have fared better due to their larger, lower profile, though 2 large yellow squashes were lost due to Mildew rot. My onions are entirely gone, the earth underneath their shallow roots had given away due to the rains. The garlic with their larger, deeper roots seemed to have survived. The corn, turnips, and beets are all holding on.

All in all, the damage to my garden has been serious but not fatal. I would say that 15% to 20% of this garden's yield potential has been taken away by this storm. We still managed to harvest 13 lbs of beans, and 4 lbs of tomatoes last week.