Another busy week here and time for an Urban Update already. This week flew by here in the garden and mostly in the kitchen. We finished up processing all the grapes and found a new way of preserving some of that yummy grape goodness. I harvested more veggies from the garden and got a few garden beds ready for the next season of rest. With fall here I am feeling a little sad that summer is over but also a little relieved and ready for things to slow down a bit.
October 7, 2023
In The Garden
Sweet Potatoes
We harvested our sweet potatoes and what a disappointment that was for sure. We bought 24 slips from our local nursery, amended the soil. I put up animal protection, fertilized when needed, and still only ended up with about 6 nice sized potatoes.
Our first problem was some of the slips didn’t make it, so they didn’t even get planted. Then most of the ones that did get planted were either eaten by animals or the pills bugs. We were left with 5 healthy plants and those are the one that produced. I also think that the yard just gets too much shade for sweet potatoes which like hot sunny locations. I truly don’t think we will try another year of this it’s just too much work for such a little end result.
Peppers & Tomatoes
This week my California Wonder bell peppers were ready to pick another great harvest. This was harvest number two for the season. The first harvest was at the beginning of August. I chopped this batch up into bite sized pieces and froze in Ziplock bags for future meals. This variety has been the best bell pepper I have ever grown. I did start them indoors a little earlier than my other peppers. I planned to collect seed from them and using that for next season. This worked out perfectly. This was the first pepper to set fruit and I was able to collect enough seed to save for nice next year’s growing season.
With this last batch of peppers, I made some freezer meals and froze some in strips for fajita. The plants still have some fruit left but I don’t look for them to size up much bigger. Temperatures are predicted to drop this coming week. Still very thankful for all the peppers this year. I do believe that I will cut down on the different types of peppers I grow next year and stick to the California Wonders, and my Jalapeno peppers.
We didn’t have a great year with our tomatoes which was so surprising and disappointing for sure. I only grew two varieties this year. Tomatoes are usually so easy for us to grow here and I really expected to get a lot of them. Wow this year was definitely not our year.
This year I really wanted to grow lots of paste tomatoes for sauces and salsas. I purchased an Amish Paste variety from Baker’s Heirloom Seed. These were huge paste tomatoes and exactly what I was looking for in a paste tomato. Unfortunately, a lot of our plants suffered from a fungal infection early on in the season. The tomatoes took the worst of it for sure.
This isn’t unusual but it usually happens later in the season here for us in Ohio. With it effecting the plants so early the yield as well as the quality of the fruit was very poor. I had two plants that were able to resist the blight for a bit and those plants produced large healthy fruit and lots of them. This was a good comparison for us to see just how bad the other plants were compared to the healthy one. Those fruit were half the size and were blemished. Still, we had enough to make lots of tomato products for the pantry shelves and were lucky enough to be gifted some as well.
Cut Flower Garden
I haven’t discussed my cut flower garden much this season. So I thought I would share some thoughts and show some pictures of how this experiment turned out.
There is a video on the making of this new “cut flower bed” over on my YouTube channel if you would like to see the beginning of this experiment. I have to say that I am a little disappointed with the end result now that the growing season is almost over. In the beginning my vision was a little different. But because of all the animal pressures we have here in the city……. yes I said animal pressures here in the city, my vision was definitely different then the end result.
This was due to having to protect my new plants from critters eating them or just digging things up. I put up T-posts and secured a grid twine as support for the plants as they grew. I then covered this will bird netting to keep chipmunks out. They like to dig up the seeds. This wasn’t enough so I tried to put up additional fencing around the entire perimeter. This was no easy task because the plants were growing at this point. Then we have the deer that would come in and eat the tops off of everything. So, bird netting lightly draped over everything is what I ended up with. Needless to say, none of this worked and I think it was more work than I originally thought it would be.
The End Result
But I did end up with some beautiful cut flower arrangements to bring inside which is what I really wanted. I was also hoping for a beautiful garden, but it really ended up being struggling flowers, lots of messy netting and twine, and a garden that you definitely couldn’t walk or even step into without getting tangled up in all that mess. Totally fine, lesson learned and now I know. I will be doing things differently next year.
In The Kitchen
Grapes
Oh the grapes! 149lbs is a whole lot of grapes to process by yourself. This took days in the kitchen for sure, but the end result was worth it. I made so much grape juice concentrate, grape jam, unsweetened grape juice (for later use), grape ice cream, and had 25lbs to process into concord grape wine and lots of fresh eating. We are not big drinkers, but my daughter thought she would experiment on wine making since we had so many grapes and honestly, I was glad to get rid of the 25lbs.
We ended up with 13 1/2-gallon jars and 17 quarts of sweetened grape juice concentrate. Almost 11 gallons of grape juice concentrate total. I have to say that we all could definitely tell a difference in the flavor this year compared to last year’s harvest. The owners did tell us that this spring they had a late frost that caused a lot of bud damage and damage to the foliage. This is what caused the harvest to be much later than last year as well. I can only guess this is why the grape seems to have a tarter flavor. The grapes still made great grape products (he he), but I did have to add more sugar this time then my original recipe, which was altered to a less amount anyway, so I really didn’t feel too bad about adding what the original recipe called for.
I also canned 4 pints of unsweetened grape juice to make some grape flavored syrups. My daughter makes coffee syrups and informed me that this is a nice flavor to add to teas and lattes and add some spices to it for a “mulled wine” flavor for the holidays. We will be making some of this for her business. We also used the unsweetened juice to make a new addition to our grape preserving, ice cream which is now a new family favorite!
The grape jam was canned in pint jars this year because I ran out of 8oz jars with all the preserving we have been doing. This is probably a good thing because we use this up pretty fast. Everyone loves jam and definitely prefers jam over jelly, so no jelly was made this year.
I am so glad we were able to use all the grapes in some way and feeling accomplished for sure. Sometimes when we get produce and maybe bite off more than we can chew, things may go bad before we can process it all. This time I plowed through everything and didn’t lose any precious grapes. Everything will be used and gifted to family and friends and I’m sure we will do this all again next year.
Wrap Up
Another week has passed and closer to the holiday season. The summer gardening is coming to a close and I am very thankful for all the garden goodness we received this year. We look forward to the fall garden and what It will have to offer us. I hope your gardens did well and you are getting them ready for some down time and rejuvenation. Look for next week’s Urban Update. Stay motivated and Happy Canning!
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