Harvesting & Canning

So, suddenly, every day Frank and I are harvesting full flats of tomatoes and peppers between my house and the Minnetonka garden.

This is a photo of Christopher Columbus tomatoes from just one plant.  It is a bit of a shock, with how behind things are this year, and then how suddenly every bit of counter space is being used for produce.

I still cannot bend over to pick up anything, but I can get around fairly well working on my knees around the beds to pick tomatoes and peppers.

Kids have been good helpers as well.  They enjoy picking tomatoes much more than they tolerate picking weeds.

Just a photo of a flat of Jimmy Nardello peppers and tomatoes.

Jimmy Nardello peppers ready for roasting, seeded and chunked.

Worked my way through 40+ pounds of cucumbers this week, whole, spears and slices.  All pickled and canned up for winter.

For so long the pepper plants were languishing, then the weather turned hot and what had been small green peppers plumped up and turned red.

This was the dining room table on Wednesday when I was through about a third of what I had to get done.

Processed red cabbage.  They are quite striking.

I turned it all into sweet pickled red cabbage.  Pork chops baked in it are really quite wonderful.

I turned about a third of the cuke slices into bread & butter pickles.  Photo shows them being rinsed of salt before canning in pickling solution.

Spicy spears going into the canner.   13 quarts of those.

And this is the dining room table today.  It is stacked 2 to 3 cans deep and I have to start hauling the stuff downstairs.  I have most of the shelves in the back full already.  I have about 200 cans of pickles, mixed veggies and red sauce needing places and that is where they are going to go.  For today I am going to make salsa.  After how much I have done the last 10 days this is going to feel like a break.  I have a flat of sweet peppers and tomatoes I could deal with, but it will not hurt them to wait until tomorrow.