Putting it by on a Saturday

Yesterday afternoon we picked enough green beans from the fall garden to
pressure can six pints today. I think I'm getting better at
controlling the gas range now. After the allocated time of steaming
through the wiggler vent, I started the canner going at the highest
setting, cut back a little when the pressure hit 8 psig, then started
cutting back more as the pressure approached 11 psig. Nailed it on the
head at the 2 setting on our stove, that is the next to lowest setting
on the big burner. The big burner produces 16,500 BTU's at the highest
setting, didn't look at the manual to see what it produces at the 2 mark
but it's not much.

I think this afternoon we will side dress the beans with some 8-8-8
fertilizer and hope the rain we're expecting this week will soak it in
instead of washing it away. At this rate we should get six to eight
pints of green beans a week to eat or can. Those will join the beans we
canned in the summer as our winter provisions. Just in case of famine
you know.

The weather has cooled off considerably down here and we're getting
adequate rain for a change.

The Fuyu persimmons are ripening, the first year we have actually had a
crop and we had to net the tree and tie the net at the trunk to get
that. !@#$% squirrels, grackles, and other pests tend to bite once, peck
once, or just knock the fruit off the tree for the hell of it. I still
have one quince on the tree so will pick it as it ripens just to see
what a quince tastes like. Probably in the next week or so we will begin
the annual pruning of our fruit trees. In our temperate climate even
dwarf trees get too tall unless pruned. I try to keep all the fruit
trees trimmed to six to ten feet tall so we can net them, pick the fruit
without a ladder, etc.

The fall garden is completely planted now, green peas, green beans,
sugar snap peas, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and
Swiss chard, our "winter" crops. We hope all are having a good time
storing up the harvest.

"George Shirley" <[Only registered users can see links. ]> wrote in message
news:[Only registered users can see links. ] ...

At the peak of my green beans, I was getting 6-8 quarts a week, but as of
yesterday, the beans are done. Temperatures at night are down to the low
40s and tonight it's actually supposed to drop to 39. I canned my last
three quarts of green beans for the year this morning. I think it brings my
total to around 45 quarts.


I picked what might be the last of the yellowing tomatoes yesterday.
There's a few green ones left and if they start to yellow in the next couple
of days, I'll pick them and bring them inside to ripen. Last night I canned
7 quarts of tomato juice and when the ones I just picked get red, I'll
probably juice them, too.


Our garden will be getting pulled up in the next couple of weeks so we can
amend the soil, rototill it and cover it with blakc plastic for the winter.

My husband and I took a little time to sort the jars of jam, jelly and
preserves so that they would be in a logical order with the oldest in front.
I'm going to have to start giving more of it away because there's WAY too
much.


--
-Marilyn

Marilyn wrote:

I suspect your garden is much bigger than ours, ours is 17 feet wide by
24 feet long. We grow enough veggies to feed the two of us side dishes
throughout the seasons. When we were young we had a large garden, about
a half acre, that we tended and grew large amounts of stuff. Of course
there were four of us then but, Thank God, the kids grew up and moved
away and our grocery bill and needs dropped by about 90%. <G>


May I ask why you cover it with black plastic? I was always taught to
cover with clear plastic so that whatever weed seeds were under there
would sprout, come up, and then be killed by the suns heat on the clear
plastic. Doesn't work the same with black plastic. If you're in a cold
climate I can see the black plastic to keep the soil somewhat warm
during the winter.


Our pantry is stuffed, mostly with jams, jellies, and pickles. We're
adding to the vegetable part this fall. The 15 cubic foot freezer is
also full and we're coming up on citrus season. We still have six quart
bags of lemon cubes in the freezer but will probably make another ten to
twenty bags starting in December. Of course we have a small pantry too,
nine feet by six feet.

"George Shirley" <[Only registered users can see links. ]> wrote in message
news:[Only registered users can see links. ] ...

I'm trying to think of exactly how large our garden is and I think it's
probably close to the same size as yours. The difference is probably you
grow a larger variety of things. I plant a lot green beans, tomatoes and
peppers and then one or two squash plants and a small amount of other things
like leaf lettuce, spinach, beets, bunching onions.


I'm not all that concerned with the weeds. In the spring, everything in it
is dead when we take the plastic off. It gets rototilled again. How do we
keep the weeds down? Simple. We use the weedblock landscaping fabric which
lets the water in and keeps the weeds out. For the bedding plants like
peppers and tomatoes. My husband will cut a hole in the fabric and plant
each plant, He makes an X in the fabric with a knife, then pulls back the
edges to plant and then brings the edges back together around the base of
the plant. For the things that are planted in rows, we wait until the
plants are up and then lay weedblock between the rows.

Why we buy the black plastic, I don't know. Maybe it's cheaper than clear?
One year we just used blue tarps.



I only have a 9-cubic-foot freezer so it doesn't get used for freezing
garden produce very often. I just put pictures of my food-storage shelves
on my Flickr account this morning:
[Only registered users can see links. ]
You can't see my freezer but it's to the left of the shelves.

--
-Marilyn

In article <[Only registered users can see links. ]>,
George Shirley <[Only registered users can see links. ]> wrote:


Let me see what I remember from science classes. . . . doesn't the sun
make the chlorophyll that the plants need to keep growing? Something
like that. Black plastic would block the sun and the growth.
--
-Barb, Mother Superior, HOSSSPoJ
[Only registered users can see links. ] - Yes, I Can! blog - check
it out. And check this, too: <[Only registered users can see links. ]
newsatfour/newsatfour_article.aspx?storyid=823232&catid=323>

Melba's Jammin' wrote:



Half right. Clear plastic encourages the weed seeds to sprout,
then the heat and dryness kills off the sprouts. With black
plastic, sprouting is inhibited until the plastic is removed,
then you get an overnight weed patch.

gloria p

"Gloria P" <[Only registered users can see links. ]> wrote in message
news:[Only registered users can see links. ]...


I'd like to blame it, in my case, on the fact that we have bird feeders
right directly behind the garden so a large portion of what we get sprouting
is millet and black-oil sunflower :-)

However, the plastic is removed right before rototilling and then weedblock
is put down around the bedding plants and rows of seeds once they sprout.


--
-Marilyn