no harvest

20 years ago

Here I am at a harvest forum with no harvest.

The last week in August a tornado when through my neighborhood. My house is Okay but the neighbors houses to the south and east are gone and others in the area have significant damage. What this leads to is my garden is in the south east corner of our lot. It ended up on the wrong side or the yellow disaster tape.

After I was able to get into my garden to out the garbage. There wasn't a whole lot left.

I salvaged enough tomatoes to make 10 qts of spaghetti sauce, and that's about it. Cucumbers are gone, bean are gone, and squash might have a few left it the vines aren't to damaged to support them. (so far so good) One watermelon survived. Half or my Brussels sprouts are left.

This weekend I plan on cleaning out the garden Except the Brussels sprouts. And getting ahead start on the fall clean up work. Usually I'd be making pickles, and salsa, relishes and canning beans this time of year.

So now what do I do. It won't seem like fall if I only have one day of canning.

I'm at a loss, I need to make something.

Any ideas of what can be done with purchased ingredients that aren't too expensive.

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Comments (5)

annie1992
20 years ago
First, I'm sorry about your garden, but at least your house is intact and your family is safe. That's the most important.

So, what is available locally right now? I would think at least apples and pears. Apples can be made into apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie filling, Linda Lou's apple pie jam, Nancy's maple apple jam, a nice sweet/spicy chutney.

Pears? I love pear mincemeat although I don't care for the traditional kind, and I make several batches of pear preserves. I also like pear chutney with pork and my girls like me to can "pink pears", pear slices in a syrup with cinnamon sticks and those cinnamon imperials, the tiny red cinnamon candies. I canned pears in port for my mother last year and she just loved them, although I don't like port.

Carrots are pretty much always cheap and plentiful here, although I never do much with them except can them with potatoes as "stew vegetables" or can them in an orange juice and brown sugar syrup/glaze.

Onions, maybe? Onion relish, pickled onions, french onion soup, I'm sure there must be more.

If you can get red peppers, there's the roasted red pepper spread and plums can be jam, jelly, plum sauce.

In fact, early anything can be jam or jelly, as my great-nephew Dylan proved with his Blue Ribbon winning root beer jelly at this year's fair.

Oh yeah, there are all kinds of things to can. Is there a farmer's market nearby?

Annie
dgkritch
20 years ago
Are there any farmer's markets close to you?
See what they have an abundance of right now! That should keep the prices down.
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dgkritch
20 years ago
Annie...

Great minds........... 'nuff said.

We must have been typing at the same time!
Deanna
CA Kate z9
20 years ago
When I lived in Minn. and Wisc. I found that I could find cheap, fresh produce just by driving down some of the country roads and finding farm stands selling beans, carrots, etc. by the bushel.
morz8 - Washington Coast
20 years ago
Oh, I'm so sorry about your tornado....I've never seen one myself living where we have a lot of gray but not much in the way of weather extremes :)

Just one more plug for local farmers markets...

I don't have room for a veggie garden, so I buy produce and fruits to can every year. It's a little more expensive than growing your own, but your pantry will hold all the familiar things this winter, and you can feel confident about the quality. Not a perfect solution if you've been used to raising your own ingredients, but doable for this one year :)