This week, our local news station made a huge deal about a frost coming in. So I spent several hours harvesting everything I could. My husband came out and helped me get all the tomatoes harvested and sorted. Then we got all our peppers covered. It was so stressful trying to figure out where to put everything and to figure out what I was going to do with all the produce brought in. And then, we didn’t get any frost. So I have a box of green tomatoes slowly ripening in my kitchen, 2 half-gallon jars filled with dehydrated green beans, and a huge basket full of peppers to preserve.
I started in with tomatoes this week. Everything got thrown in my roaster oven to cook down. I made crushed tomatoes, pizza sauce, and a batch of ketchup. We use Heinz for dipping sauce, so the canned ketchup is for recipes like meatloaf and sweet & sour pork/chicken. I also blanched and dehydrated all the green beans we had. I’m still working my way through the sweet peppers.
All the hot peppers we have harvested have been divided up to make hot sauces and more cowboy candy.
With the frost coming, I built a raised bed hoop house out of PVC pipe and 6 mil plastic. Inside I got the broccoli, cauliflower, and onions I started about 8 weeks ago. They are loving it. I have one more smaller one to make for lettuces, spinach, turnips, radishes, bok choy, and arugula.
I finished up the week pulling everything out of these 4 raised beds to get ready to plant garlic. I decided that I’m planting garlic here for next season. I am having to do too many amendments in the market garden, I have no space for the garlic this season. Next year I’ll have a garlic bed.
