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My goal this year was two-fold:

1. Grow enough veggies to make my own salsa
2. Find a salsa recipe that my family likes more than or equal to Pace Picante 

I am happy to report success in both areas! Here is the salsa recipe I found/altered:

• 24 pounds tomatoes (equals about 34 cups cored, skinned, and quartered)
• 2 pounds green peppers (equals about 4 cups seeded, chopped)
• 12 ounces hot peppers (equals about 1 cup seeded, chopped)
• 2 pounds onions (4 whole onions)
• 3 TBS tobasco/hot sauce
• 2 2/3 cups vinegar
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 TBS chili powder
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tsp pepper
• 1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 TBS oregano

Blanch, peel, core, and quarter tomatoes. Let sit overnight. The next day, drain the tomato juice off (and can it!). Seed and dice green and hot peppers (use gloves). Sit overnight and drain, discard liquid. Chop onions. Sit overnight and drain, discard liquid.

Combine everything in a stock pot. Cook for 3-4 hours. The longer it cooks, the spicier it will be. Pour into hot jars, leaving 1/2″ headspace. Process 45 minutes in a water bath canner (this is for 4000-6000 feet elevation, adjust).

p.s. I called this my “winning” recipe because it won my family over. No official awards to report.

In the end, my broccoli took up SO MUCH space! It didn’t produce as much as I had hoped. Still, I will do it again! The fresh broccoli was SO DELICIOUS it was worth all my time starting, tending, transplanting, and picking worms off the plants! Long live broccoli!

I enjoyed growing cabbage, but I had one major problem: we don’t eat “cabbage food” during the summer. All my really yummy cabbage recipes (borsch, cabbage rolls, etc) are foods we eat in the fall. So next year I need to make real efforts to grow cabbage in the fall, when we will actually eat them!

Cauliflower was not worth it. I don’t love cauliflower that much, they took up a ton of room, and hardly produced anything. Down with cauliflower.

Simmer in 1 cup of water:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup bell pepper, chopped

Add and simmer for 30 minutes:

• 15 ounces tomato sauce (or 2 cups)
• 2 TBS dry parsley or 1/4 cup fresh parsley
• 2 TBS lemon juice
• 1 1/2 TBS honey
• 1 1/2 tsp basil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 6 ounces tomato paste

One thing I learned here–definitely worth starting from sets! All the time and effort I put into starting from seeds was pretty much wasted. I harvested 6 pounds of onions, and used every last one in salsa! I planted them this year near my potatoes, but in the end they sort of competed for space.

Next year I want to try a sweeter onion variety–the ones I grew had me weeping as I cut them–and I’ll plant them next to plants that don’t have huge root systems, or root vegetables.

Potatoes

After the failure I expected, I was SO HAPPY with the potatoes I got. 17 pounds in all! Mine got some sort of a fungus, which I treated too late. But now I have the fungicide, so I’m prepared. I’m going to plant slightly more potatoes next year, and keep them all together. I think I’ll stick with red–loved ‘em!

Cucumbers

Okay, so I had TOTAL FAILURE with my cukes this year. Picked all of 3, and ate none! They were deformed and weird. I am determined to get some good advice, and really have success with these next year. I love bread and butter pickles, and I think nothing is better than home-made. I realized (too late) that one of my problems was that my cukes were sharing a trellis with an ambitious Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant. They never stood a chance!

Squash

This year I planted 1 mini-pumpkin, 1 regular pumpkin, and 1 zucchini. We harvested 7 small pumpkins and 3 large (one huge!). On one hand, we didn’t get a lot of pumpkins, considering the space it took up (it sprawled to cover almost an entire box, even though I trellised them through the fence). Still, it saved me the $10-15 we would have spent buying pumpkins!

We are virtually no zucchini this year. Last year my son was crazy about it, and ate a ton. This year, not so much. The truth is, I’ve never come up with recipes to use zucchini that I’m crazy about. I’m not sure I’ll plant it again (considering the space it takes), but maybe tag team with a neighbor who grows it.

Peppers

I must admit, I had RAVING success with my pepper plants. I planted 16 squares, plus a few more squished in there. Each plant tended to grow 3-5 peppers at a time, and I think I harvested 3-4 rounds of them. I had peppers coming out my ears!  I had more than enough for 2 large batches of salsa, and I still have a bag full in my fridge. I used the green bags to keep them fresh, and they lasted forever. Funny, because the plants themselves never got very big. When I pulled them up this fall I noticed some were root-bound.

Next year I may tame it down a little. But, if I have tons of tomatoes, I might need all the peppers! I loved the jalepenos (though they were small) and the bell peppers. I’d like to plant more sweet, non-bell peppers next year.

I planted 3 vining tomatoes with a trellis. Well, I thought they were 3 vining varieties. Turns out I mixed up some plants somewhere along the way, and I ended up with two Sweet 100 plants (which I intended) and one Roma (which I thought was a Better Boy). I planted these alongside my cucumbers. First, the Sweet 100’s were HUGELY prolific, and took over the entire trellis. Certainly DID NOT need two! Fortunately, they didn’t compete with the low-growing Romas. I harvested more cherry tomatoes than we could eat (the Sweet 100), and the Roma produced pretty well too.

In the future, ONLY ONE Sweet 100, give it plenty of room–3 or 4 squares and an entire trellis (unless I want to faithfully prune it).

Growing several Roma and trellising them might be a fantastic option. They were definitely firmer (when I made sauce, or salsa) than the other varieties. They didn’t take up a lot of space, and if I was faithful at tieing them up, could have been kept to one square.

I planted 6 plants in 32 square feet (4×8 bed). Roma (D), Champion (D), Celebrity (D), Better Boy (I), and 2 Super Fantastic (I). Maybe because I was wanting TONS of tomatoes, I preferred the indeterminate varieties. I felt like they grew and grew and produced and produced. If only the season had been longer, I think I would have realized my dream of more tomatoes than I knew what to do with.

My Roma here struggled–some blossom-end rot and yellowing leaves. Still, I got a fair amount from this plant. They ripened faster than the one in the other garden.

Instead of a trellis, staking, or caging I built a huge contraption that WAS AWESOME! I used PVC and nylon netting laid horizontally to create three layers of support. This worked so well! Very little of my fruit was on the ground (none for the indeterminate plants–the determinate never got past the first level). In the end, the PVC was not stable enough. It ended up tipping to one side. Next year I want to build this again but with aluminum pipes.

On my first harvest, I picked 15 pounds of tomatoes. I would estimate that I got a second round of 15 pounds, and two smaller harvests of 5 pounds each. So I probably grossed 40 pounds of tomatoes. It made 2 batches of salsa (36 pints), and 2 batches of sauce (2 quarts)Sadly, I threw away 15 GALLONS of green, frozen tomatoes. I covered them, but the weather was just too severe.

In the future, I am tempted to grow all indeterminate varieties. I was really pleased with both the Better Boy and the Super Fantastic.

Line cookie sheet with foil. Wash and quarter tomatoes (take off stems, but no need to peel, core, or seed) and lay skin-side down in the pan. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake at 400 for 1 hour. Cool until you can handle them, then blend. Pour into freezer containers and freeze (I also do ice cube trays, then put in baggies). When you are needing marinara sauce, just defrost and add to sauteed onions and garlic. Season–enjoy!

Vegetable Lasagna

Cook 1 box of lasagna noodles according to instructions on the box.

Saute in 2 TBS olive oil until soft,

• 1 diced, peeled carrots
• 1 stalks of diced celery
• 1 seeded, diced green pepper
• 1/2 diced onion
• 2 cloves pressed garlic

Add and simmer 10 minutes,

• 1/2 cup chopped broccoli
• 1/2 cup chopped cauliflower
• 1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 2 sprigs chopped fresh parsley
• 6 chopped fresh basil leaves
• Oregano

While the sauce simmers, combine,

• 1 container ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup parmesean cheese
• 2 eggs
• 2 sprigs chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 3/4 tsp salt

You will also need on hand,

• 1 pound shredded mozzerella cheese

Layer in greased 9×13 pan,

• noodles
• ricotta cheese mix
• mozzerella cheese

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes

Potato Soup

Saute 1 cup diced onions and 1/2 cup chopped celery in 2 TBS butter until transparent. Add 2 cups peeled, cubed potatoes, 2 cups chicken broth, 1 tsp salt, and pepper (to taste). Cover and Boil until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Add 1 3/4 cups milk and 1/4 cup heavy cream. Heat through (do not boil) and serve.