wrote:
....
My tomatoes also look nice but still green. I like mine to come in around
first half of September in the belief the cooler weather helps them taste
better. I have mostly beefsteaks and Romas. I am getting lots of cherry
tomatoes. I did get a handful of tomatoes two weeks ago with some bottom
rot after several days of heavy rain. But that seemed to go way now that
rain has settled down. I do not believe it was due to calcium deficiency
but due to uneven watering.

we had one BER to start with and i found another
one buried in deep today when i was looking for
a worm. we grow beefsteaks too and they have always
done well and taste great. i'd like to try some
romas sometime.


My pickling cucumbers also came in nicely. I made 12 pints of Bread and
Butter slices and 12 pints of dill spears. The cucumber vines are spent and
ready for the compost pile. I think I will try broccoli in that spot and
see what happens this fall.

starting broccoli from seed?


In two week I should be freezing some green beans. I did not plant many
garden peas to freeze, so they are for fresh eating.

they are so good i usually raid them along
with the strawberries.

what kind of peas and beans have you planted?

our peas are Little Marvel and Alaska Early.

the wax beans are Top Notch Golden Wax Bush.

the green beans are Tendergreen Improved Bush
(i'm not a big fan of these, but don't have a
replacement picked out yet).

for pods next year i have Dwarf Gray Sugar
and Oregon Sugar Pod II, with maturity dates at
66-68 days that's two weeks later than the above
peas labeled at 55-60days. i'm not sure if they
are saying i won't have pods until that long,
but that doesn't seem right. i'm assuming they
mean until the peas are dry in the pod again.
they could add more to the label saying about
how many days are for pods, fresh peas and dry
peas. that would help. also funny, the days
to germination on the packages are 7-14 days
but that must be for cold spring soil as when
i've planted them they've sprouted in 3-5 days.


I do can some whole
tomatoes but tend to turn the beefsteaks into tomato juice and the Romas
into sauce and salsa. Since it is just me, I go for the pints and I tend to
pressure can all tomato products instead of the Boiling Water Bath.

does it cut down on time without messing up
the flavor or are you more concerned about the
risk of spoiling?

in the years of canning we've done tomatoes
we've not had any spoil lately (we don't grow low
acid types for canning). Ma has canned off and
on for 50 years. she's only had a little trouble
from using damaged jars that didn't seal well.
i bought her new jars a few years ago and she's
a happy canner. i like the quart wide mouth jars
because i can get my hand in them to scrub them
if they need it.

when she cooks for the families she can use
4-6 quarts at a time. for us we use 2 at a
time (most often for macaroni and tomatoes, in
the middle of winter it is our favorite).


songbird