The urban gardener

Since I have been home from Mexico Susan and I have spent a lot of time processing vegetables from our small (350 square feet) garden. When I started picking green beans I was amazed at how many there were, For the past three weeks we have eaten green beans for dinner every evening. But one day I picked seven pounds of beans (flat beans and traditional green beans). That was way too much for keeping for meals. So I canned seven pints for this winter. But now two weeks later there are almost as many again. So, it might be time to can again.

The big beef tomatoes have been going into sandwiches, mostly BLTs. The cherry tomatoes go into salads, sauce and for making small skewers with fresh mozzarella and basil with dinners.

A quarter bushel of roma and san marzano tomatoes, that’s 27 pounds. These were all canned. We know have a full pantry shelf with quarts of tomato sauce.

Now, here we are today. Three days, or more of green beans. A tremendous number of cherry tomatoes. I am seeing a lot of tomatoes with dinners in the future. But there’s more.

There’s about 20 pounds of tomatoes waiting for being made into sauce. And…

Fifteen pounds that we picked today before the predicted storms arrive. So, that’s over thirty pounds in total.

Hot peppers have been doing pretty well. Most of these will be dried and used for ground hot peppers.

Susan would never forgive me if I failed to mention the kale. We have so much kale that we will be eating it through the winter. The leaves over-winter well. We ofter dig down through the snow to get leaves. Yes, there are still a lot of tomatoes on plants – so canning season is not nearly over. Oh, and then there are the butternut squashes.

More tomorrow…