Category Archives: Garden Advice

Garden Advice

Great Varieties for Canning

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Last week on the blog, we discussed ten tips for canning stress-free canning. Food preservation is an essential part of gardening, and canning is a popular way to put up extra food without needing to keep a large freezer running. When I’m not busy preserving food, I also like to take some time each fall to think about how different varieties performed and what I can do differently next year. This fall, I’m considering great varieties for canning.

While you can pressure can many vegetables, including green beans, peas, corn, squash, and potatoes. You can only water bath can certain vegetables and fruits that are highly acidic or are tasty when pickled or otherwise made highly acidic using vinegar. Water bath canning is easy and great for beginners because it requires little start-up cost. Below we’ll discuss some great varieties you can grow for water bath canning tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, cucumber pickles, salsa, and pickled peppers. 

Tomatoes

Canned tomatoes or sauce is one of the most versatile products in the pantry. I make pizza, pasta dishes, soups, chili, burritos, and more using home canned tomatoes. While any variety can be preserved, certain varieties produce less juice and more flesh making them more suited to cooking.

Indeterminate vs. Determinate

Tomatoes are divided into two categories, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes reach their mature size and yield a large quantity of tomatoes in a relatively short time. Determinate tomatoes can be convenient for preserving.

Indeterminate tomatoes are more vining and continue to grow upward and produce throughout the season. These can be a better option if you want tomatoes for fresh eating over a longer period, but you can also preserve them.

Here are five great options for canning tomatoes:

Amish Paste (Indeterminate)

You’ve probably run across Amish paste if you’ve looked into canning tomatoes. These tall plants produce heavy yields of large, coreless tomatoes with excellent flavor. Despite the name ‘Amish Paste,’ the juicy fruits are best suited to making sauce.

San Marzano (Indeterminate)

This Italian heirloom is famous for its use in Neapolitan pizza and other Italian dishes. San Marzano tomatoes are very productive, 6-foot-tall plants with good disease resistance. The long Roma-type tomatoes have thick, dry, low acid flesh and few seeds. They are ideal for canning in recipes with enough acidity. 

Heinz 1350 VF Processing Tomato (Determinate)

Developed in 1963 by the H. J. Heinz Company, Heinz 1350 is an excellent processing tomato for canning and cooking. It’s widely adapted, has a concentrated fruit set, and produces round 4-6 oz fruits with good crack resistance.

Yellow Bell Paste Tomato (Indeterminate)

Southern Exposure introduced this Tennessee family heirloom in 1986. These heavy-yielding plants produce 5-12 fruits per cluster. They survive better in cool, wet conditions than other sauce tomatoes and bear heavily until frost. Yellow bells are great for salads or making lovely tomato paste, juice, preserves, salsa, and yellow catsup!

Roma VF, Virginia Select Paste Tomato (Determinate)

Our neighboring farmer and Growing for Market writer Pam Dawling has been saving this locally adapted strain since 2001, selecting for high, early yields and tolerance to Septoria Leaf Spot. It was introduced in 2009 by Southern Exposure and produces 4-5 ounce fruits.

Cucumbers

One of the first recipes I learned to can was basic dill pickles. Cucumber pickles are easy to make and a great way to enjoy your garden produce even in the winter.

Arkansas Little Leaf Pickling Cucumber

The University of Arkansas developed this popular, reliable variety in 1991. It produces compact vines with multiple branch points that will climb a fence or trellis easily and are resistant to multiple diseases. Arkansas Little Leaf has small leaves that make finding fruit easier and parthenocarpic flowers which produce fruit under stress and without pollinators. It produces 5-inch long fruits that are good for slicing and pickling. 

Boston Pickling Cucumber 

A classic old pickler, this variety dates back to 1880. While not as rampant as some, it’s still productive, and the blunt-shaped fruits are crisp and mild, ideally sized for pickling.

Roseland Small White Pickling CucumberRoseland Small White Pickling Cucumber

In the early ’70s, Gordon Shronce’s sister Evelyn Allran received seed from a neighbor in the Roseland community near Lincolnton, North Carolina. Southern Exposure introduced Roseland Small White Pickling Cucumbers in 2016. It produces loads of early, blocky white cukes that are excellent sliced or pickled. Gordon likes to pick them at 3 inches or less, but they’re still mild and tender to 7 inches long.

Homemade Pickles Pickling Cucumber

Homemade Pickles produces medium green fruits with small white spines that are solid and crisp. These vigorous plants were specifically developed for home gardeners and have good disease resistance, including Downy Mildew resistance. They make delicious, robust bite-sized pickles, slices, or large spears.

Mexican Sour Gherkin (Mouse Melon, Sandita) 

These tenacious vines bear many 5⁄8 in. x 7⁄8 in. fruits with skin like tiny watermelons. They bear until frost and can be pickled whole for a fund snack or conversation-starting garnish! Immature, they taste like cucumbers; when fully mature, they taste like pickled cucumbers.

Peppers

When growing a lot of your food, peppers are essential. They preserve well and add great flavor to many dishes. I love pickling peppers and adding them to salsa. My father-in-law also taught me to add hot pepper to some of my jars of pickles and spaghetti sauce.

Hungarian Hot Wax Banana Pepper

This very productive variety produces banana-shaped peppers with medium heat. They adapt well to the deep south and cool north and can be used fresh, canned, or pickled. 

Red Cherry (Cherry Sweet) Sweet Pepper

This pre-1860 variety is excellent for pickling, canning, stuffing, or snacking! The little bonbon-shaped fruits are thick-walled, sweet, and flavorful. Red cherries bear heavily and are disease resistant. 

Serrano Tampiqueño Hot Pepper

If you like your food a bit spicy, Serrano Tampiqueño is a great multi-purpose pepper. Plants reach about 4 feet tall and produce pendant-shaped, thin-walled fruit. They’re very hot, whether picked green or red, and are excellent for drying, salsa, pickling, hot pepper vinegar, and flavoring spicy dishes like chili. 

Sweet Banana (Long Sweet Hungarian) Sweet Pepper

Sweet bananas are excellent for fresh eating, frying, freezing, and pickling. I love using pickled sweet banana peppers on salads, sandwiches, pizzas, and nachos. This variety produces heavy yields and is a great choice for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Jalapeño Hot Pepper

These classic salsa chiles had to make the list. These thick-walled peppers are great for pickling, adding excellent flavor to salsa, smoked, or making Jalapeño vinegar. Jalapeños filled with cream cheese and fried are a Southern specialty. They’re often harvested green but can be harvested red or left to mature to red off the plant.

As you’re planning next season’s garden, it’s a good idea to consider how and if you want to put up excess produce. Planting a few canning varieties is a great way to stock your pantry beyond the summer months.

Garden Advice

Harvest Season Traditions & Lore

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August is a great time to be a gardener. It’s often hot and full of work but worth it. The harvests are coming in. Many gardeners will be picking and preserving squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, corn, and saving seeds this time of year. Today I thought I’d talk about some fun harvest season traditions and folklore.

If you’re growing a fall pea crop, watch for pods with nine peas.

The English believed that finding nine peas in a pod was good luck. Some traditions dictated that you must throw the ninth pea over your shoulder to receive the luck.

Other lore suggests that peas may be able to cure warts. In one tradition, if you found nine peas in a pod, the ninth could be touched to a wart and then tossed over the shoulder to cure the wart. Another bit of lore suggested that you could cure your warts by touching each one with a different pea on the first day of the new moon, wrapping them in cloth, and burying them separately. As the peas decomposed, the warts would disappear. 

Plant plenty of garlic to ward off evil, illness, and insects.

There has been plenty of garlic lore throughout the ages. This strong-smelling herb seems to bring out its own traditions in each culture it encounters. The ancient Greeks believed that Hecate, goddess of the underworld, favored offerings of garlic. Throughout European and Asian history, people hung it in doorways to ward off evil spirits. Its heavy use on the Russian front during World War II as an antibiotic and antiseptic earned it the nickname “Russian penicillin.” Today, many gardeners believe planting a few cloves around your fruit trees and roses will drive pests away.

That’s just a pinch of the garlic folklore you can find out there. Whatever you believe, we’re pretty sure it’s worth adding to your garden this fall.

Wassail or thank your fruit trees on the Twelfth Night.

This tradition was and is predominantly practiced in southern England. Groups, traditionally of young men, would go out to the cider orchard on the Twelfth Night (January seventeenth) night and Wassail the apple trees. This practice often included pouring some cider over the roots and leaving slices of bread on the roots or in the branches. People believed that wassailing would bless the apple trees to have a good crop in the coming season. 

Don’t pick blackberries in October.

Depending on where you’re located, blackberries generally ripen in July, August, or September. However, if you find blackberries later, tradition dictates you shouldn’t pick them. It was once believed that the devil pees on any remaining fruit after Michaelmas (the feast of St. Micheal) on September twenty-ninth.

harvest season traditions (wheat)Cut your first sheath of grain at dawn on August first.

We’re a little for this year, but some cultures celebrate a harvest day about halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox. 

One is Lammas or “loaf mass day,” a Christian holiday celebrated by some English-speaking countries in the Northern hemisphere. Another is Lughnasadh, celebrated around the same time in old Celtic and pagan traditions.

Sometimes as part of these celebrations, it was customary to cut the first sheath of wheat at dawn. Those celebrating Lammas would use this wheat to make a loaf of bread for the church. Sometimes people would make dollies from corn or wheat for Lughnasadh.

Save a turnip for Halloween.

Pumpkins weren’t the first carved vegetables of Halloween. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common to carve faces into turnips and other root vegetables in Ireland and other Celtic nations to celebrate Samhain. Folks believed these terrifying creations lit with candles would protect them from harm and ward off evil spirits known to roam on Samhain.

Use up the end-of-season surplus by canning chow chow.

Chow chow is an essential southern food preservation recipe. It’s sort of a relish or condiment and sort of a side dish made from all the garden leftovers like green tomatoes, peppers, and cabbage mixed with spices and vinegar. Many families have their own chow chow recipes and insist that there’s a right way to do it. 

If you don’t already have a recipe, check out this one from Kevin West, the author of Saving the Season.

Find the red ear at a husking bee.

For those unfamiliar, husking bees were common social events until the 20th century. These festivities often included food, music, stories, and gossip. They were an opportunity for rural families to come together over shared hard work.

These festivities were just one of the traditions passed from Native Americans to settlers. One common aspect that was included from Native American tradition was the significance of finding a red ear of corn. Often whoever found the red ear could kiss whoever they wanted or was rewarded with a cup of cider or whisky. 

While many of these traditions and other bits of gardening lore have fallen out of use, they can still be fun to remember or even try. What garden or harvest traditions does your family practice? 

Garden Advice, Seed Saving

6 Steps to Save Pepper Seed

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Many gardeners are getting large pepper harvests in August. Maybe you grew jalapeños or sweet bananas and are pickling them, or Aji Dulce spice peppers and are drying them, and perhaps you’re freezing Carolina wonders. Whatever the case, you might also want to save pepper seed. It’s a simple process. Peppers are an excellent crop for beginner seed savers.

Consider Isolation Distances

Peppers will sometimes cross-pollinate. Meaning that if you want to save seed from a Brazilian Starfish (pitanga) hot pepper (pictured above) and have it produce the same peppers next year, you need to keep them isolated from the other peppers in your garden. 

We recommend you isolate sweet varieties by 150 feet and hot and sweet varieties by 300 feet. Another technique you may want to try is hand pollination. You can keep your peppers from crossing by covering blossoms with pollination bags and then hand pollinating them, ensuring they are only pollinated with the peppers you wish.

Of course, we have also discussed promiscuous pollination’s advantages on the blog. No law says you can’t save seed from peppers that weren’t perfectly isolated. You may end up with peppers that display little change from their parent, or you could end up with a fantastic cross between those Brazilian Starfish and the habaneros in the bed next door, but that’s part of the fun!

Consider Population Size

You can get viable seeds from a single pepper plant. However, to preserve genetic diversity and a variety for years to come, you should aim to save seeds from 5 to 20 plants each year.  

Harvest the Peppers When Fully Mature

Harvesting to save seed isn’t the same as harvesting to eat or preserve. You want your peppers to mature fully, which may be about two weeks after you usually harvest. They should be fully ripe in color, either red, purple, or yellow, depending on the variety, and beginning to soften.

If frost threatens before the peppers appear to be fully mature, pull the whole plant. Shake the dirt off the roots and hang your plant upside down in a cool, dry location. A garage or outbuilding may be suitable for this. Most of the peppers will finish maturing. 

Process

Work in an area with good ventilation. Especially if you’re dealing with very hot varieties, it may be best to wear gloves to process your peppers and avoid touching your hands and face. If you’re doing a lot of peppers, it may also be necessary to work in a dust mask or respirator.

One of the easiest ways to access the pepper seeds is to cut around the top and pull it out, using the stem as a handle. Then you can gently scrape off the seeds with a knife or your fingers. Rinse your pepper seeds and remove any unwanted material.

If you’re working bare-handed, wash well with soap and warm water.

Dry

Next, dry your seeds on paper, paper towels, coffee filters, or dehydrator screens (don’t put them in the dehydrator). They will need to dry for several days out of direct sunlight. When they’re fully dry, you should be able to snap one in half with your fingers. If it isn’t dry, it will bend instead of easily snapping.

Store Properly 

Once completely dry, store pepper seeds in an airtight container out of direct sunlight. If stored properly, they should easily last for three years, giving you many future pepper harvests!

Saving pepper seed is easy! Follow these steps and have quality, viable seeds to start your crop next spring.