It's hard to believe it's been about two years since my last post. Vet school will do that to a blog. It will also induce gastric ulcers and stress colitis... My friendly ulcer has caused my doctor to recommend a reduction in ingestion of acidic foods: citrus (no! my favorite fruits, very unfair to a Floridian) and tomatoes (no! we have loads of tomatoes ripening in the garden this summer, very unfair to a vegetable gardener). So despite doctor's orders, tomatoes must remain on the menu, but in an effort to reduce consumption as my poor stomach heals, I decided to save some for winter! In the past we typically haven't grown more than we can eat throughout the season, mostly because we don't have the space (once we have some land I foresee growing at least enough to stock for the winter), but this year we planted 4 varieties to share with our neighbor and we are inundated! One of Andy's coworkers recently gave us a large canning pot with basket, so today I put it to use canning tomatoes. The varieties in the garden this year: fox cherry, black cherry, roma, Wapsipinicon peach, plus "the deadly nightshade" sungold cherry (no one freak out, it's just a sungold that sprouted unexpectedly from the compost, not a wild nightshade!).
I haven't taken the time to look this spider up, so for now, just calling it the zipper spider.
We had a really mild winter (not sure if it even froze once), which made the insects really happy, and the humans really annoyed, in the winter garden. (Normally the winter garden is easy in Florida - warm enough to grow great veggies, cold enough to keep away the pests). But so far this summer, we have been relatively pest-free, thanks in part to our biological pest control! So far we've only seen two tobacco hornworms, and both were parasitized - way to go wasps!
The unripe-looking tomatoes are the Wapsipinicon peach. They are ripe. They are a nice yellow color in real life and are quite good little slicing tomatoes. The black cherry are purplish and are very sweet. I think the fox cherries are my favorite, though.
I miss the days of picking berries and making preserves with my dad. Canning the tomatoes was not very different - lots of cleaning and sterilizing, working at a steady pace to keep the process moving, and lots of boiling. I am so thankful my parents shared their knowledge of growing and preserving food with me. If something crazy happened and our careers went up in smoke, at least we could subsist on a plot of land somewhere :)
I haven't taken the time to look this spider up, so for now, just calling it the zipper spider.
We had a really mild winter (not sure if it even froze once), which made the insects really happy, and the humans really annoyed, in the winter garden. (Normally the winter garden is easy in Florida - warm enough to grow great veggies, cold enough to keep away the pests). But so far this summer, we have been relatively pest-free, thanks in part to our biological pest control! So far we've only seen two tobacco hornworms, and both were parasitized - way to go wasps!
The unripe-looking tomatoes are the Wapsipinicon peach. They are ripe. They are a nice yellow color in real life and are quite good little slicing tomatoes. The black cherry are purplish and are very sweet. I think the fox cherries are my favorite, though.
I miss the days of picking berries and making preserves with my dad. Canning the tomatoes was not very different - lots of cleaning and sterilizing, working at a steady pace to keep the process moving, and lots of boiling. I am so thankful my parents shared their knowledge of growing and preserving food with me. If something crazy happened and our careers went up in smoke, at least we could subsist on a plot of land somewhere :)
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