Busy weekend at StonePath

We spent a very busy weekend at StonePath. We are remodeling our front room (a subject of a future blog), which caused my wife and I to split forces so that we could get work done on the room, the ton of canning that needed to be done, and some chores around the farm.

We canned nine quarts of our much praised salsa using tomatoes and peppers grown here at StonePath. We did need to supplement with some locally grown green peppers but only a few.

We also were able to can thirteen pints and 6 1/2 pint jars of zucchini relish. This recipe could be our favorite thing we can each year and the most requested item from our friends and family. We are tthankful to some of our friends up the road who provided us a bunch of zucchini so we could get this project done.

In an earlier post I talked about the complete loss of all my squash, zucchini included. We were planning to replace the lost harvest at our local produce auction, however, our friends wonderful gift got us moving in the right direction.

We also managed to freeze seven 4 cup packages of shredded zucchini to be used later in a variety of ways.
The spring lettuce, in the kitchen garden bed,had run it's course and bolted in this heat. Normally, I replant lettuce in this bed and we take advantage of the micro-climate the house creates. We had lettuce into the second week of December last year (not bad for North-Central Ohio) largely due to the house, exterior walls providing warmth and shelter.

I decided to plant a second zucchini crop as an experiment. I am not ready to throw in the towel on zucchini, it's too much of a staple for us. So I ripped out the lettuce bed and planted three hills of zucchini Costata Romanesco, which is a 52 day heirloom variety, and three hills of Zucchetta Rampicante, which also is an heirloom and around 55-60 day. I will have to trellis the rampicante, it runs fairly long vines.

 

Tonight I intend to harvest our beets and use that bed for our fall lettuce crop. I doubt it will produce as long in the lower garden as it has in the kitchen garden, however, I am more interested in the squash then the lettuce at this point.