Drew Lawson wrote:
> As I've admittted before, my garden year started later than it
> should. But it is good to finally have something in jars. I'm
> small fry for this group, but enjoy that it exists.
>
> Tonight's actual canning is just 14 pints of Blue Lake beans (a bit
> more mature than ideal -- had to string them).
>
> But I also have about 30 quarts of tomato puree heating on the
> stove. I'm guessing after it cooks down, and I add meat, it will
> make 12-15 quarts of pasta sauce. With life and work demands, that
> will probably be canned next weekend.
>
> Otherwise, I am sitting here, separating seeds from stems in a bowl
> full of freshly cut, dry standing, dill seed heads. While my
> cucumbers on hand are marginal, they are better than last batch,
> so I hope for dill relish this weekend. Maybe in the morning.

it's so nice when things start coming in. we've been doing
pickles for a long time and are almost done with them for us
but other people want cucumbers as long as we can grow them so
we'll just take them around.

i'm assuming you are pressure canning the beans and
sauce?

i have a new bean variety. i started growing them last
year and they were noted as a bush, dry bean, but said
nothing about fresh eating. as usual, with any bean, i
will always sample them at the fresh bean stages to see
if they are good that ways too and these were very tender
and sweet. i didn't eat too many of them last year since
i wanted as many seeds as i could get. this year i grew
a lot of them because i really was hoping to eat some
along with getting a lot more seeds so i can give them
away. they're one of the most beautiful bean plants
and have a lot of good traits. the plants are upright,
bear a ton of pods all at once, bright purple flowers,
beans are purpled so they're easy to see to pick and
they are up farther than a lot of my other bush beans
so the beans aren't dragging in the dirt. nice dark
leaves and red stems. the only negative so far is
that they're a Japanese Beetle magnet. still i'm
looking forwards to seeing how these will cross with
my other beans i grow here.

we cooked up the first batch of them yesterday, 8
minutes in the microwave and they were just right.
i don't plan on ever using them as a canning bean, i
suspect they may turn to mush when canned because
they have almost no fiber at all in the pods. they
were good. if Mom can eat one raw and say that
it was yummy then we've found a keeper. cooking it
just enough and a bit of butter and we were both
happy.

tomatoes are just coming in. i think we'll be
pretty busy with those. rather large crop by the
looks of it.


songbird