Tasks:
Harvested, made, and canned tomato soap, pickled cucumbers (4 quarts), and pickled okra (2 pints)
Harvested, blanched, and froze pole beans and bush beans
Froze cantaloupe
Watered heavily
Harvested, roasted, made, and canned tomato sauce (27 quarts)
Mulched
Filled 550-gallon tank
Spayed sulfur on trees
Built the fire pit stand
Picked basil flowers
Notes:
Pickling Solution: For a reliable and simple pickling solution, use a 1 cup vinegar, 1 cup water, and ¼ cup salt ratio. The solution should be heated to a boil and then poured into the hot jars packed with fresh cucumbers (or whatever is being pickled) fresh dill, mustard seed, dill seed, peppercorns, and garlic. This simple recipe works well since you often have to make more solution for half filled jars.
Bee’s Wax: After every honey harvest there is always a mass of wax and honey. It cannot be used as wax or honey! We take the mass and cook it inside a double boiler (one large pot filled with water and another pot placed inside of it for the honey-wax). Once the mass has completely solidified we take it off the heat and let it rest. Within three hours the wax will solidify on the top as a disc and the honey will be waiting calmly below.
Tomato pulp: Before using our tomatoes in sauce, soup, or salsa, we first cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze them over pot. You are left with one bowl of crusted tomatoes (with significantly less water content) and one bowl of seedy slop. By doing this we save ourselves the trouble of cooking our sauces down for days or adding any sort of thickener.
Grilling tomatoes: To lower the water content even further, we grilled all of our tomatoes on our outdoor grill. We were left with drier tomatoes and a nice smoky flavor.
Tomato cages: For indeterminate tomatoes build the cages to be 10 re-mesh squares (approximately 50 inches) in circumference. Make them the full height of the re-mesh. Once you have bent and crimped the flat piece of re-mesh into the cylindrical cage shape, remove one of the rings on the end of the cylinder- this will leave you with 10 mini stakes to go into the ground and hold the cage erect. But they will still fall over. To keep tomatoes manageable and upright, place tomato cages in rows so they are touching. After every fourth cage add a 6-foot metal stake. Then tie the intersecting points of the cages and tall stakes together with twine. This practice will yield a strong tomato wall, accessible from two sides.
Mulched peppers: Our peppers were drying out and wilting so we decided to mulch them heavily and water them more frequently. We should probably apply mulch to pepper and tomatoes as soon as they are large enough to withstand it. The exposed ground, especially where frequent watering leaves it hardened and cracks, loses moisture quickly.