Home Made Tomato Sauce

Today we made tomato sauce. We bought a food mill that basically strains out the seeds and skin so all you need to do to prep the tomatoes is wash them and cut them. We cooked them in a pot for about 20 minutes and then just put it in the mill. Ron turned it into spaghetti sauce by adding onions and basil.

Pest Control: Squirrels

Our tomato, tomatillo and pepper plants were finally looking beautiful. We had so many little baby fruits starting on all the plants we were already thinking about the number of different sauces we could make, learning about how to can tomatoes,thinking about whether we should invest in a pressure canner.

Then one day, Ron went down to check on the bounty that was our garden, and he saw the dreadful squirrel hole right in the middle of a row of tomato plants. After successfully battling the earwigs and other six-legged pests, controlling the moles underground, keeping out the rabbits, the squirrels could not be stopped. They will enter the garden from underground, get through any chain linked fence or just climb right over it. Not only did they make a hole inside the garden, but as if to taunt us, the squirrel left a half-eaten tomato right outside the fence. You may have won this battle my friend, but the war has just begun...

Half-eaten tomatillos left outside of the garden by squirrels

Vegetable Garden Update: Tomatoes and Peppers

The vegetable garden is going great these days. We've got tons of tomatoes and peppers growing in the garden and squash and melons growing on mounds outside of our fenced garden in some mounds we made.

The peppers and tomatoes had a tough beginning, but are doing great now. Here's a summary of what we learned our first year.

1. Starting them in pots in the house worked well. We bought a warming mat and some lights to get them going.

2. When we first put them in the garden, they were getting devoured by the earwigs. We learned NOT to put mulch in the garden when the earwig population is at it's height, which seems to be winter and spring. Of course we had an unusually warm winter this year, with days in the 90s in January and February. The earwig traps worked well at that time too.

3. We didn't stake the tomatoes or peppers and some of them broke with the heavy rains we finally got in May and with the wind. Next year, we will want to be sure to stake them.

4 .Once the nights start getting warm, the plants will go crazy! Another reason to stake them, the tomato plants are so big that they are spreading into the walkways and I am not sure how we will reach all of them.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (and tomatillos)

The tomatoes are gorgeous, I sure hope that no one comes to eat them before we get them!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Our garden is coming along quite nicely.  We have peppers, tomatoes and basil that Ron started from seeds indoors. Some of them are being eaten by some kind of bug, mostly the basil, but some are thriving. Hoping for a lot of big, juicy tomatoes! We also have some beans growing that we planted from seeds early on. They are beautiful and producing lots of beans.

The pictures below show some of the beds that are almost ready for planting. This area was just an flat space with nothing but weeds. Now we have raised beds and vegetables!

There is still a lot of work to be done. We need to figure out what pests are eating the basil and how to deal with them. We also planted some carrots, beets, lettuces and spinach and those never made it. As soon as they came up, something ate them. It seems to be an insect, not the rabbits or squirrels, because we can see holes in the leaves that are left.