Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Weeds, beetles and homemade salsa


Yesterday was unseasonably cold. It got me thinking about harvest season and all the canning I will be doing in the not-too-distant future. This year the garden was all my doing. I started out strong, but I am not very good regarding maintenance and weeding. Before long our garden looked like this:



It has also become a haven for Japanese beetles, an invasive species. The kids and I enjoy collecting them in jars and feeding them to our chickens. The chickens gobble them up like they are candy!


Yes, despite the weeds the vegetables are still in there and still producing.  I planted lots of things, including Roma tomatoes. I picked Romas because they are good for making sauce. Now that the tomatoes are starting to ripen I decided to mulch around them with old newspaper. At least their little section of the garden is less weedy now.

We harvest our first seven or so tomatoes this past week. They had been sitting in my windowsill for a couple days and looked very ripe. It wasn't enough to make spaghetti sauce so I found a salsa recipe that used Roma tomatoes specifically.

Lil Sis was napping and Big Bro was eager to help me cut things up. Remembering that I made him pose with ingredients in the past, he saw me taking a photo of my salsa ingredients and offered to say cheese.


The salsa was amazing. Big Bro thought it smelled bad, but his father and I ate it up! The recipe is here if you want to make your own.


A new group of reddish tomatoes are already ripening on my windowsill for the next batch. I can't wait!





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