Your Late Summer Garden
Preserve Your Late Summer Bounty
August is usually a busy time in the garden. Harvest is underway and if the plants are healthy, the bounty might overwhelm you.
Tomatoes are the #1 fruit grown today, and they have so many ways they can be preserved. Dried, chutneys, salsas, frozen, canned, as a soup base, or as an ingredient in delicious, refreshing summer cold soups. But first you have to get them to harvest!
Here are a few tips that may help your plants stay productive. Daily inspection will reveal any diseased leaves. Remove them ASAP. Cut off any leaves touching the ground to increase airflow, which will cut down on disease incidents. Mulch! Use whatever organic matter you have, to mulch around the plants. This helps retain moisture and keep the soil cooler. Be consistent with your watering. Blossom end rot is the result of not doing this because it restricts the flow of calcium. Water at root level only. If you have fruit sitting on the ground, put a piece of cardboard or papers underneath them to keep the bottoms from rotting. Feed once a month with a good organic fertilizer. Don’t be afraid to prune leggy unproductive branches.
The biggest insect issue is the tomato hornworm. You can’t miss him! If you have barnyard fowl, give them a snack!
Green beans are coming on well here. I hope yours are too. This is another versatile vegetable that may be preserved in all the standard ways, as well as eaten as a side dish to your summer meals.
When I was growing up my grandparents didn’t have freezers. Although they canned lots of green beans, they had another way of preserving that I got to help do. They called them “leatherbritches” beans. We strung them as usual but we didn’t break them, and only the nicest beans were chosen. After washing them they were laid on a towel to air dry. Mamaw got her biggest sewing needles and some coarse thread, and fixed a needle with the thread for each of us, and tied a big loopy knot in the end of the thread. The needle went through the middle of each bean pod, taking care not to break the bean. It was slid to the knot and more beans followed until we had strings of beans almost as tall as I was. They were so pretty! Mamaw hung them on hooks along the fireplace, and that’s where they stayed until they were shriveled, dry, dusty, and covered in soot. They were hung in a closet until Mamaw decided she wanted a “mess of leatherbritches”. The beans easily slid off the thread into a sink of spring water, and thoroughly washed. A pot was on the stove with a piece of thick homegrown fatback sizzling in it. Mamaw added spring water to that then slipped the dried beans in and covered them with a lid. They slow-cooked all day on the back of her wood burning stove.
Dinnertime came and the table was laden with all manner of freshly sliced vegetables, a golden crispy pan of cornbread, and the pot of leatherbritches. The smoky, tender-chewy deliciousness along with all of the other wonderful veggies is a taste I’ll never forget!
How did your squash do this season? That’s a tough veggie to keep the pests out of. Cucumbers, squash, zucchini, melon, winter squashes all fall susceptible to vine borers and others, as well as mildews and diseases. Ways to prevent this is to give them something to climb and keep the airflow coming…which is difficult in July and August when the air can become so still and stagnant, and there’s nothing you can do except vigilance. If a borer makes into the stem of a plant, cut the wilted stem off. Hopefully that’ll keep the rest of the plant safe for now.
If slugs are a problem, use beer traps, and diatomaceous earth (DE) around the plant. Slugs don’t want to crawl across it because it shreds their tender skin. DE can also be dusted onto the plants for other pest issues, but do it late in the day after the pollinators have gone home. DE will kill them as well. Pests are sneaky. Check the undersides of the leaves for egg masses, and “puff” DE there.
What to do with all that squash?? Other than grilling, roasting, frying, and salads, I like to freeze it, but not like you think. I wash and cap them – all kinds – and run them through my shredder. This makes the perfect consistency for soups as well as breads and muffins. I put 2 cups in quart freezer bags, because that’s the measure I need for most things. They flatten out nicely and get stacked into the corner of the freezer. They’ll make a nourishing addition to my cold-weather dishes.
When I have fruits that have gotten too large, my chickens and goats are happy for the snacks!
