And, some jam she calls “black and blue”. The blueberries are some we got from our niece who gave us a bunch of them in bulk, and the blackberries are from our wild brambles and some from that we picked at the orchard back in August. The flavor is a bit too blackberry to me, but not too bad. It’s kinda hard to see the jam as they are in purple tinted jars, but it is still very dark. Lots of antioxidant goodies in there!
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Some folks may have already posted some canning pics for this year, but thought I’d revive this thread with a new title.
Today, I picked some more tomatoes (about 25lb), along with some bell, jalapeño and Habanero peppers and we made some salsa. We also added onions, garlic, cilantro and made it with apple cider vinegar. To give it a bit of a kick we added some Bulgarian Carrot pepper flakes. It was quite a bit of work, but we ended up with 14 pints of somewhat thick salsa. We processed it in a 23qt canner using the water bathing method.
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Looks great! Did you grow all the peppers, onions, garlic and cilantro?
I planted some pepper seed with the idea of having it for salsa but for whatever reason the seeds failed to germinate. Ended up just using the mixes for about 25 quarts. Yeah, I know that is cheating.
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Hey, thanks Sam, haven’t heard from you in a while, hope you and your teeth are doing well. Wow, 25qt is a lot, were your tomatoes home grown?
Well, no, we didn’t grow the cilantro or the onions, we bought those. We tried to grow the cilantro from seed (coriander) in the garden and it didn’t even sprout. None of the herbs we tried came up. Next year we’re going to try herbs in a big feeding trough we recently bought, using different soil. They just doesn’t seem to want to grow in our garden soils.
I think we did grow a bit of garlic, but had to buy more. But, all the tomatoes and peppers are home grown. We still have about 10lb of 'maters left, I think we’re going to can that today. I planted 6 jalapeño seedlings, and they haven’t given us a lot of peppers, but our 3 Habanero plants are loaded this year with quite hot pods.
We made two batches, the first batch had the usual tomatoes, onions and garlic, with about 6 sliced up jalapenos, and 3 Habs, plus some hot pepper flakes. It was was medium spicy, so I wanted the next batch to be hotter. So, I put in about 10 jalapeño and 5 Habs, plus the flakes. To thicken it up we added a couple small cans of tomato paste per batch. Now that they’ve cooled off and thickened a bit, I’m curious to see how they turned out. It’s just 14 pints, so that will have to do for this year.
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Bob, it took me six months to get completely over that wisdom tooth extraction. Finally the last bits of the tooth root worked its way out and it healed up. That reminds me that I need to call my dentist for a dental cleaning. Thanks.
Yeah, I had 37 Better Boys this year. Too many really. Meant to grow peppers and trying to make some real salsa but the seeds did not sprout. It seems dubious to me to buy fresh peppers, onions etc from the grocery store rather than just buy the mix. I did look at the mix ingredients listed on the Mrs. Wages list. It lists onion, green bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, chili pepper, garlic, salt and spices. The Ball Fiesta salsa mix has about the same except they added sunflower oil. Speaking of which for the heck of it I had six 10 feet sunflower plants this year. Guess I could get the oil out of my sunflower seeds for next years try at real salsa. Oh well, I had better learn how to grow peppers too.
Or maybe, I should just start a new thread titled “Whats your favorite store-bought salsa mix?”.
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Glad to hear you’re over that wisdom tooth ordeal. I had one removed about 5 years ago that was impacted and had broken. It also had impacted the molar next to it, which caused it to be damaged and it had to be removed a year later. I still have another sideways wisdom tooth on the other side of my mouth, but it’s not affecting any other teeth, so it’s staying where it’s at.
Wow, that’s a lot of one variety, guess they must be really good to plant that many of them? Next year we are going to have to mix in some hybrids to go with the heirlooms we grow. The latter just seem to not last very long in our climate, maybe the hybrids wouldn’t either, but we need to try. We did about 13 varieties this year, and about 40 plants. We have been really lucky to not have a lot of deer raids on our gardens and fruit plants this year.
Sunflower oil?? Yuck. Seems that it’d make it slimy, we never use oil in our recipe, which we got from our Ball canning book.
We bought a lot of pepper plants (21?) from the nursery, I only grew 9 from seeds this year. The ones we bought were jalapeno, bell peppers of different colors, and Habanero. Peppers are harder for me to get to sprout, compared with tomatoes. I sowed jalapeno seeds in about 10 pods this spring and none came up, so I guess the seed is bad. Same thing happened with some bell pepper seeds. All the ones I sowed that are in the garden I got from a generous member on here.
Have you canned anything else for the year? We have done about 28 quarts of pole beans, 40qt of various cuke pickles, 7qt of diced tomatoes, some pickled okra, and this salsa. Needless to say, we’re not growing much if any cukes or beans next year!
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I see a lot of people make salsa here. This is the recipe I base my salsa on. I put in a little bit extra tomatoes which I peel, drain slightly and cut a little on the chunky side. I also omit the sugar, which is completely unnecessary due to the high sugar level of the home-grown tomatoes. I guess maybe it’s cheating to include store-bought sauce and paste in the salsa, but it works. Since I put in more tomatoes I put in slightly more vinegar. Also, this year I’ve started adding citric acid. You can buy a 5 pound bag of the stuff for $14 on Amazon, and this is enough to last me a very long time. This salsa gets very rave reviews with those I share it with. Definitely a keeper for us.
I don’t use a water bath or pressure canner for this. I just sanitize/heat the jars, put the hot salsa right in the jars and then wrap the jars in a large towel overnight when I’m done with them.
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Yeah, I am partial to the Better Boys. My late great aunt swore by them. And Dr. Carolyn from that garden site we were all on before this site came into existence called Better Boys “The Standard” for tomato plants. And it seems to me that I read somewhere that Better Boys has the record for the most pounds of tomatoes for one tomato plant. Some other tomatoes varieties I concur has better taste but I am convinced that Better Boys are the best all-around tomato. They seem to do the best in the hot dry humid summers that I have here. I no longer experiment with tomato varieties.
Oh I canned some concord grape jelly. Most of my grape vines bit the dust from Pierce’s last winter except for one concord vine. The raccoons, possums, tree rats, crows and worms got most of my apples this year. However, I did have one apple tree in my dog pen that I did get enough to can some spiced apple rings. Strangely enough, the worms did not get to it so bad. I thinking that next year to have my dog pen around all my apple trees. No dried apples this year. April freeze got my plums. Bad year.
Need to look at getting pepper plants from Walmart next year to set out. Maybe onions too.
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What does wrapping the Jars in a towel do?
Keeps it hot for a longer amount of time, helps with sanitation. If there were germs at the top of the jar after I wiped some spillage from it with a wet paper towel, there’s no way it survives the hours in this heat. This is just the way I learned how to can from making jam with my grandmother.
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Thanks!
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Sample from this summer.
Upper row L to R: beets, onion pepper relish, lacto fermented garlic pickles
Bottom row: Yellow tomaotes, roasted red bell peppers, Dragon tongue bush beans, and Dilly beans using Calima bush beans.
Also dehydrated garlic, paprika peppers and tomatoes.
Things are slowing down now and will use the stragglers in peach salsa and maybe some pizza sauce.
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Wow, such a diversity of strange stuff (at least to me). Are you sure you did not forget something? What did you do with your rhubarb?
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Too funny. I’ve never had (or grown) rhubarb. 
Not shown are canned potatoes, celery, carrots which I did in the spring - maybe less strange sounding. 
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A story that I once heard was that this fellow that lived in my area - well it must have been back in the 30’s,40 or 50’s that whenever he was in a store would ask the store guy if he/she had rhubarb seeds. Of course he knew that the store guy probably had never even heard of anything called rhubarb much less had any rhubarb seed. I’ve always thought that was funny. Your post with all the different veggies that you canned made me think of that story.
But after reading today about all the health benefits of rhubarb (which is a celery like vegetable), we might ought to be growing it.
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I think that folks in the south can grow rhubarb, but as an annual not a perennial. You could plant established roots in the spring, just before first frost, and then harvest the stems as soon as they get big enough, no need to let the plant build up strength for the first year as it likely won’t have a second. Probably would only have a short window to harvest, as rhubarb goes dormant and dies back as soon as it gets hot (around July here).
One could also start some from seed indoors and plant it out too. That might be more economical given what they charge for rhubarb roots these days, I’m just not sure if a seed started plant would get big enough there for harvest.
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I grew rhubarb as a perennial in York Harbor, Maine and in RI for the past 15 years.
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Hmm - I bet your rhubarb pies are wonderful…
That is/was for 25 seeds (at least it was last spring, who knows what it will be next year). Sounds about right for a seed packet. Pine Tree Seeds also carries the seeds. The roots are $5 to $10 each typically…
Or you could just ask one of the members here (or another northern gardener you know) to collect some rhubarb seed for you. I’d be glad to do it. But you need to let whomever know at the start of the season. Otherwise we typically cut off all the flower stalks as they come up. It’s too late for me this year, but perhaps another member has a plant or two they let go to seed.
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