I'll be spending the day closing out the garden. Frost it hit Friday night, so it's done for the season. This is my second year gardening, and I'm really enjoying it. There's nothing better than picking fresh vegetables in your back yard and preserving them for future use. This year I planted a variety of tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, green beans and Sugar Baby watermelons.
I love sliced tomatoes with a little mayo. I freeze the green beans to use with green beans and corn for holiday meals and family gatherings. This year I froze a variety of peppers and tried my hand at pickling them. I have to say the pickled peppers are the bomb. I sent a few jars home with my daughter and in-laws and they received great reviews. They are so good the cleaning lady at my office chased me down as I was leaving with two empty jars asking me to refill them, lol.
I eat them on nachos, in chili and anything else that I can find to put them on. I made fresh salsa and canned it. It's a lot of work, but so worth it. I love being able to pull out a jar of garden fresh salsa during the winter and it tasting like I just worked down to the garden and picked the ingredients. I'll be munching while reading my kindle when the cold weather sets in. What I've enjoyed most is having my grandson involved in watering and harvesting the veggies.
Here's a picture of one of my prized tomatoes weighing in at 1.136 ounces. It was huge and delicious. I managed to harvest at least 6 colanders of green beans putting away 5 - 6 quarts in the freezer. Probably the same amount for peppers. In addition to the frozen peppers, I've canned (pictured below) 30 - 40 pints/quarts of pickled peppers, most given away.
I'm working on 12 pints of salsa this week-end. I'll be putting them in baskets along with salsa chips and homemade cookies and brownies for Christmas gifts. Do you have a garden? How productive was it? If not, are you interested in planting one and exchanging gardening techniques and seeds next season? Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts. You can find my gardening blog here
