Looks great! Do you leave the skins on the tomatoes? Can you double stack pints in that big pot in the background of the picture?
Salsa is one of the major food groups, fer sure! I put a couple of tablespoons on my morning eggs, so I'm going to need around 50 pints for the coming year, another...
Dang. Being with the chickens is a stress reliever. I sat with mine for a half hour today, and the dominant cockerel kept a close eye on me most of the time.
When I'm around the chickens, I let him be the boss. I'm just the guy that gives them food. I don't touch the hens when he's looking...
I think cold weather slows down tomato ripening more than rain does. I pick most of my tomatoes when they're just starting to change color and let them finish ripening inside. If there are tomatoes that are ripe or close to ripe in the garden when it rains they could split open.
I spent the first half of the day setting up the airless sprayer, painting all I could reach on the siding from the ground, then cleaning the airless sprayer. I was able to paint 7 or 8 feet from ground level all the way around the house.
I have about one gallon of paint left, need to get two...
He'll help when he can. He has search and rescue training this weekend, plus he has to drive over 200 miles a day getting to work and coming back home. That eats up a lot of his time.
That's why I'm busting my ### and trying to get most of the house painted this week. I just finished masking the final window on the house and my son is masking the skirting now. Tomorrow I'll paint, if I can move after all the work I did today. LOL
Rain is a good thing! My garden needs it and I don't feel like watering anymore.
Glad you found it. I looked all over for some paint stirring sticks yesterday and couldn't find them so I just used a little board. Today I found them, exactly where I put them when I brought them home.
Just...
Maybe the dog ate it???? LOL
I'm getting garden fatigue too.
I think that I'll just freeze all the tomatoes I need for making tomato sauce and can it later this fall when things cool down.
But I'll still need to make salsa with fresh tomatoes. I've made 14 pints so far, and I'm shooting for...
The charge controller you bought converts solar panel outputs of the solar panels to voltage ranges that are designed to charge 12 volt batteries of various types. The manual for your controller tells you all you need to know...
I puréed the skins in my food processor and added them to the salsa. I don't like the idea of throwing away all those nutrients. It gave the salsa a nice red color too.
Salsa day. I canned 7 pints and have a half pint in the fridge. This one is spicy. 5 pounds of tomatoes, one pound of onions and 2 pounds of peppers.
A half pound of the peppers were jalapenos and 4 habaneros, chopped fine with the seeds and membranes left in. The rest were bell peppers, red...
I started all my peppers in January so I'd have big plants to put in the garden. Relatively short and cool growing season here in SW Washington, so I figured they'd need a good head start.
As far as overwintering goes, which I've never done, I think the information on this website can be...
@Sally PB , how big did your habanero plants get? Mine are somewhat smaller than one foot spheres, small, bushy plants. Three plants and it looks like I'll get maybe 30 peppers from them in total.
I'm going to try overwintering one or two of them. Maybe they'll do better in their second year...
I wonder if somewhere along the line the typical cayennes were crossed with a habanero type pepper to get the yellow color, hence the fruity flavor?
And yes, it's definitely salsa and tomato sauce making season for me, starting tomorrow. Lots of partially ripe tomatoes in the garden too.
With my bad knee I can't walk far at all, but started going a couple hundred yards each day. For about half of that I walk sideways, I guess you'd call it. It works muscles not used with normal walking. And since I can't walk much I try to make the best of it...
Do they have the heat of red cayennes?
I think that next year I'm going to have a bigger pepper garden, with a lot more varieties than the three I'm growing this year... Jalapenos, New Mexico chilis and habaneros.