They turned out very nicely. But this is only the beginning. I have tons of green tomatoes just waiting to turn red.
Today I noticed that the tops of two of my tomato plants have been completely stripped of leaves. I looked and looked and finally found this monster of a caterpillar munching away. Here is a picture of the condemmed prisoner awaiting my dh's return from a business trip.
I've since then noticed four more plants with the top leaves munched, but I haven't found any more caterpillars. They are very hard to see. I'm sure I will find them when I go to pick tomatoes. I hope I don't ever touch one. I know that God made insects and made them to have useful roles in life. I just wonder why He made them so ugly.
Now to a beautiful picture. Here are our grapes, ripe and ready to eat. We've been eating some of them already. The insides are sweet but the skins are not. You have to eat them in one bite otherwise you end up with just the skin in your mouth and that doesn't taste good by itself. They should make great grape jelly when I get around to that!
3 comments:
Ah, the dreaded tomato worm. We've had our encounters with him in years past, too. He hasn't been a problem for us this year, but we ARE having some kind of rot on our tomatoes. The bottom of them turns black, or sometimes white. The internet has suggested both overwatering AND underwatering as possible causes, as well as extreme heat or unusual cold. Sigh. Take your pick of explanations, I guess. At least we're still able to enjoy most of the tomatoes.
One quick question. Is it always necessary to blanch corn on the cob before freezing? I have some ears to preserve, and I'm looking for the quickest, most painless way to do it. :-) I obviously don't have your extreme patience in preserving the garden bounty.
I will send you that recipe for violet jelly, as well as another one I have for corn cob jelly.
Betsy
We get black spots sometimes near the top of the tomato near the stem. I've never been able to figure out what that happens either. On the canning tomatoes, I just cut off the black spot and can the rest of the tomato.
You can either blanch the corn quickly or you can put raw corn in a freezer container and fill it up with water so that the kernels are covered. i prefer to blanch it so that I can put it into ziploc bags and stack them in the freezer.
I don't really blanch the corn per se. I cut it off the cob, put a bunch of it in my electric skillet with a half a stick of butter and a couple tbsp of sugar. Then I heat it up and stir until the corn starts to glisten. It usually takes about 3 minutes or so. Then I turn it off, put the corn in bags, let it cool on the counter and put it in the freezer.
I'd love to try the corn cob jelly. What does it taste like?
I think I'll go with blanching the corn quickly on the cob. Cutting it off the cob is another task I don't usually relish. I'm also bad at cutting mangoes and fresh pineapples.
I haven't tasted the corn cob jelly, but accordingly it tastes a lot like apple jelly. You use red corn cobs, so it turns out a reddish amber color. Should be pretty!
On to blanching...
Betsy
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