Potting Up the Seedlings

In yesterday’s post I showed some of the crowded seedlings that I have growing in my seed starting area under lights.  [In 2009.  In 2011.]

Below I have transplanted a group of purple cabbage and am in the process of splitting up bell pepper siblings:

Crowded Seedlings Need Replanted

I have been neglecting my seed starting room!  I need to get this jungle tamed soon and then start some more things!

Meanwhile, the weather man is forecasting a low of 37 [edit: 35!] with possible frost tonight!  I guess I’ll be covering as many flowers (strawberry, cherry, apple, berries) as I can with old sheets and blankets.

Peppers with Bacon and Cream Cheese

I grilled up this platter of a bunch of the last peppers of the fall.  I stuffed jalapenos, pepperoncinis, poblanos and sweet green bell peppers with cream cheese and wrapped them with bacon.  They turned out very nice this evening. What are you eating from your garden?

 

Plenty Pleased with my Peck of Peppers

Pepperoncinis

Banana Peppers

Unknown hot chili peppers

 

I picked a peck this weekend, for sure.  The pepper plants are doing better than they ever have for me this year.  I ended up canning quite a bit.

 

30+ jars put up, including my famous pepper jelly!  I love that stuff, but my wife loves it more.  Some cucumbers that had been hiding in the crisper are visible as well, in the form of dill and sweet slices.

 

 

Barbecue Sauce – Canning a Condiment

I had been looking for a good barbecue sauce recipe for a long time. This sauce is pretty good. I wanted a tomato-based sauce that I could make from my own garden and for the most part I found it. I did end up using one canned ingredient, because I had used up half the can two months ago and the rest was in my freezer…chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.

I wanted my sauce to be very sweet and reasonably spicy. As I was cooking the recipe I found in the Ball Blue Book (1987 edition) I could taste that it wasn’t going to be NEARLY as sweet as I wanted, so in addition to the 1/2 cup brown sugar I added a heaping half cup of molasses as well. If I were going to make this again tomorrow I would jump right in with 3/4 or more.

Then again, I think if I really wanted this to be sweeter I would have to start with a sauce with less tomatoes in it. The last thing I wanted to do was to put in corn syrup. Yuck!

My biggest concern as I was cooking this was that it was going to be CRAZY spicy. There was a time while I was cooking it that I thought I had ruined it with the chipotles. After processing and opening a jar and having it on some ribs yesterday I was pleasantly surprised at how much the spiciness had settled down.

The usual disclaimer about canning at your own risk applies here. I am 100% sure that this modified recipe is a safe recipe, but I know that I have used acidic tomatoes and quality vinegar, and that all substitutions were done with like-quantities of similarly p.h.’ed items.

Give this a try and let me know what you think.

• My garden: tomatoes, bell peppers
• Local: onions, molasses, garlic
• The store: celery, brown sugar, dry mustard, paprika, salt, peppercorns, vinegar, canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

Sweet Relish – Canning a condiment

Above is a modification of a recipe I found online, originally for zucchini sweet relish. I made lots of changes and notes when I wrote down the recipe on the card, but I always kept all the ratios of acidic elements and non-acidic elements essentially the same, so I still trust this as an “approved” canning recipe.

I canned some of this a couple weeks ago and it is truly awesome. It beats any store bought relish I’ve ever had. We had it on buffalo hot dogs with our homemade ketchup.

If you’re going to can this for storage outside the fridge, make sure you know the procedure, as I have massively glossed over the canning instructions here.

My photo did not capture the impressive contrast in this product with white onion, light green cucumber with dark green skin, bright green, red and yellow peppers flecked with brown mustard seeds and black celery seeds.  The red is what really makes it fun.

I grew the peppers and cucumbers that went into this, and used onions from our favorite organic farmer.  The other ingredients came from the store.

I will be trying a double batch very soon using mostly green tomatoes.

Wouldn’t you like to be one too?

My lovely wife was kind enough to plant my peppers for me last weekend. In this 11 foot row (it’s diagonal!) we put in a mix of peppers.  There are bell peppers that we will eat mostly as green peppers but which will ripen to either red, yellow, or orange (that part is a surprise, the seeds were mixed). There are also pimiento peppers and banana peppers, both of which I plan to pickle this year when they are ripe.

The bigger plants in the row I grew from seed and potted up once. They are greener because they are happier. The little things that look like weeds in between them are from the six packs I bought. They’ve been in their containers too long, but should bounce back.

2009 Tentative Garden Layout

8 ft x 6 ft beds.  The lettuce at the top will be planted on/in 20 inch high bales of straw, thanks to a few awesome bloggers who taught me this trick in their posts.

I’m going to do a broccoli experiment this spring.  I’ll plant two whole beds of broccoli, one with a closer spacing than the other, all other things equal, and we’ll see how it affects yield:

I’m guessing the bed with 35 plants will outperform the bed with 24, but it’s worth checking.  Maybe I’ll be surprised.