What will you be canning?

I do a lot of canning, Shin! I both love and hate it. Love it because it brings a lot of satisfaction and saves money and health, hate it because it takes so much time and energy (especially while pregnant).

This year I canned tomatoes and made sauces, soup, diced tomatoes and ketchup. I dried a lot of them too.

I also canned green beans, carrots, pickles, and few other things. I also pressure can fish and venison.

I froze some broccoli, soup and peppers.  I wish I could freeze some squash but the squash bugs wiped me out of everything.

I've got some wonderful canning recipes for soups and sauces. If you'd like, I'll post them.

Shin: do what the amish do, plant flowers between the rows of veggies and the bugs will be happy and off your veggies?

Ok, I'll post those recipes tomorrow.

I'm very interested in the companion planting for pest control. I've read quite a bit about it, but the planning aspect of it overwhelms me. I planted marigolds this year in one part of my garden hoping to deter some pests, and the plants seemed to thrive in their company.

We've experimented with companion planting for weed control and saving space, and have seen some success with that.

For the squash bugs, I've heard many say to plant a decoy plant that you don't care about to distract them away from the plant that you do care about. Maybe that works for some, but it sure didn't work for me. I planted squash is several places, and each place was completely decimated. It made me SO MAD!

The slugs took our tomato harvest down by about 1/3 this year. It was abnormally wet here, so I'm sure that played a role in it. I should have been more proactive early on with the diatomaceous earth and salt. This year I learned that if you pick the slugs off and sprinkle them with salt they'll fizzle and pop then die. Sure enough they do. It took some time, but I was surprised that a couple of days of slug hunting pretty much took care of the problem. That indicated to me that one slug can do an alarming amount of damage to one tomato plant. Next year I'll be ready.

A lot of the problems we suffer in our garden could easily be fixed if we were willing to use pesticides and herbicides, and various chemicals to treat certain conditions, but we're not. Our garden is 99% organic and non-GMO. I say 99% because I started the seeds in miracle grow.

Ketchup:
3 Tbsp Celery seeds
4 tsp whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks (broken into pieces)
1 1/2 tsp all spice (I omitted this from the recipe- to pungent for me
3 C Cider Vinegar
24 lbs of tomatoes, cored and quartered
3 C chopped onions
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 C granulated sugar
1/4 C pickling or canning salt

1. Tie celery seeds, cloves, cinnamon stick and allspice in a square of cheesecloth, creating a spice bag.

2. In a stainless steel saucepan, combine vinegar and spice bag. Bring to boil over high heat. Remove from heat and let stand for 25 minutes. Discard spice bag.

3. Meanwhile, in a large stainless steel saucepan, combine tomatoes, onions and cayenne. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and boil gently for 20 minutes.  Add infused vinegar and boil gently until vegetables are soft and mixture begins to thicken, about 30 minutes.

4. Working in batches, transfer mixture to a sieve placed over a glass or stainless steel bowl and press with the back of a spoon to extract all liquid. (You can also do this with a food mill). Discard solids. NOTE: Instead of doing this, I ran it ALL through the food processor. Skins, seeds and all. You can't taste the difference, it adds nutrients, and it gives you more product. And it's faster and easier to clean up.

5. Return liquid to saucepan. Add sugar and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring frequently, until volume is reduced by half and mixture is almost the consistency of commercial ketchup, about 45 minutes. It takes much longer than 45 minutes, believe me. More like 3 or 4 hours. I got imapatient, and I cooked small batches in a frying pan on high, stirring contantly and it thickened much quicker. You get a more thick product this way, too. No one likes runny ketchup.

6. Lade hot ketchup into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headpace, if necessary by adding hot ketchup. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, the increase to finger tip tight.

7. Hot water bath for 15 minutes. Make sure you jars are completely covered with water.


I got 11 pints from this recipe. If I had removed the solids, I probably would have got 7 or 8 pints. Also to be noted, this recipe is not for the faint of heart! It took me all day, and I was so tired and frustrated by the end of it. I remember stating to my husband as he came home from work, "If you don't REALLY like this, I'm never making it again!!" haha. We both really liked it and both agree that I need to make twice as much next year. Homemade ketchup is the best, it's totally worth it. It has far less sugar and far less sodium. It has no preservatives, and has that wonderful fresh tomato taste.

Tomato Soup (recipe from my 90 yr old homesteading friend)

15 lbs tomatoes
1 Pepper
1 Onion
1 Bunch of celery
1 clove of garlic (I use 6 cloves
1 C Sugar
1 Stick of butter
3/4 C of flour
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
2 Tbsp Salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Water bath for 20 minutes.

I throw all of this into the food processor and liquefy it, then heat it until boiling. I freeze it instead of can it, because I have doubts that this recipe is safe to can. I've canned it before and never got sick, but I don't think it would meet safety requirements.

I didn't like tomato soup until I made homemade tomato soup. Now I really like it. It's an excellent Friday meal. When not a Friday meal, it's excellent with some rice and crumbled bacon.
I use this not only for soup, but I use it as a base for enchilada sauce and taco sauce. Just throw some chili powder, cuмin, and cayenne in there to your liking (and any other spices you feel like) and you have an incredibly tasty Mexican sauce.
I also use it in shepherds pie instead of spaghetti sauce.

Thanks jen! I copied down all these into my recipes notefile!

4. Working in batches, transfer mixture to a sieve placed over a glass or stainless steel bowl and press with the back of a spoon to extract all liquid. (You can also do this with a food mill). Discard solids. NOTE: Instead of doing this, I ran it ALL through the food processor. Skins, seeds and all. You can't taste the difference, it adds nutrients, and it gives you more product. And it's faster and easier to clean up.

I'm going to get a food mill one of these days God willing, in the meantime I can use the blender.

Some folks don't mind seeds, some folks do. I haven't made up my mind yet. I am meaning to try some low seed heirloom tomatoes in the future. Have you heard of the Amana tomato? I'm looking at low seed heirloom paste tomatoes lately.

I like the ingredients of these recipes! I can tell already they're worth a try for me!

Some folks waste a lot of time on the internet surfing useless sites, for my part I've discovered the way to good fun, I read gardening catalogs and nursery sites, it's a neverending entertainment. There's always new and interesting plants I'd like to try to grow and learn the uses of.

And as I set up my LED grow lighting and glass shelf window gardens, year round entertainment.

I'll let you know what I think after I've cooked a batch up!