Cans, Cans, & More Cans (Plus, the Oxford Comma)

Seven o'clock hits like a brick. But somehow we managed to scamper out of bed into the warm light of the kitchen. First, we make maple syrup and oatmeal bread, minus the maple syrup and with an addition of honey. Then moved on to our good friend Appleacea Butterus. Commonly known as butter of the apple. We successfully canned nine pints and accidentally gave one to a fellow Garden Crew member. Never start a conversation about your canning success with, "Look what we made!" Believe us. Please. Oh, I wonder who it could be...

So moving right along, we then learned about potential energy while learning how to pump water into the water barrels. They are now full and ready to be used to water the plants. Since our watering system is a low-pressure system, Brad Sturgeon suggested that we utilize an irrigation system such as troughs and/or drip hoses. Considering for next year.

We then harvested about seventeen pounds of tomatoes and having our share of picking, we we went inside to continue our canning venture. But while outside, we discovered that on top of the spotted cucumber beetles attacking our squash, they are now attacking our greens. Weird thing: we also discovered squash bugs on our tomato plants.

We aren't too worried about the squash bugs on the tomatoes; our main concern pest-wise is the spotted cucumber beetle. Still looking into how to deal with that problem....

But back to our canning venture: we canned spiced apples using a recipe given to us by Trudi Peterson. It includes eight parts water, two parts lemon juice, ginger, clove, allspice berries, cinnamon, cardamon pods, and salt. Do not cook the apples too long because they get soggy and fall apart (they still taste great). After canning all of the apple slices, we canned the remaining juice for apple cider (we ended up getting 2 quarts)! We also used five apples to make apple chutney, but used white sugar instead of brown sugar. The final count was two and a half pints. With the tomatoes we harvested, mentioned above, we made two types of barbecue sauce; the only difference between the two is the color of the tomatoes, though, red and yellow. Not having chili peppers, we used Hungarian wax and habanero peppers. We charred them over the open stove. We also added Giardiniera and chili pepper in addition to our recipe (which can be found in Put 'em up! by Sherri Brooks Vinton). The sauce tastes wonderful! First, the sauce soothes you with a sweet fist, then it knocks you off your feet with a hot one! We are going to puree and can the sauce soon. This will probably make us about eight pints. Also, it all looks like real BBQ sauce...

That's all we have for now, folks!

With Love,
The Jolly Gardeners (Will & Emery)