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| Fall is so beautiful in Southern Oregon. Our own country road, about to take a sharp left to follow the blackberry fence. |
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| Late late season tomatoes, a surprise harvest from plants we didn't have time to pull before our wonderful Blues Cruise earlier this month. Late tomatoes are pretty much limited to Roma types. |
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| Pico de gallo. Definitely the year's last, and blurry! Off season, I use canned tomatoes. It's not fresh salsa, but still good! |
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We still have jalapenos and a few sweet peppers to add to salsas and stir fries.
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Winter Salsa
1 large can (one size up from soup cans) whole tomatoes, preferably Roma type. A quart of home-canned tomatoes will do
1/3 cup diced onion. Use green onions or a sweet onion, if possible
2-5 sliced, diced jalapeno peppers. Seed and remove white membranes unless you want a lot of heat
Pepper flakes to taste
Juice of a half lemon (depending upon size)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp sweetener, if desired
1/2 to 1 cup cleaned and dried cilantro leaves
salt to taste
Note: In the absence of fresh peppers, I use pepper sauces or flakes to add heat.
DIRECTIONS
Use a food processor. Place onions and peppers into the work bowl and process briefly. Drain the canned tomatoes and save juice for another use. (How about a bloody Mary?) Add whole tomatoes, lemon juice, cumin, sweetener, if using, and cumin. Process until tomatoes are how you like them. I prefer chunky. Add the cilantro and a pinch of salt, if using. Let salsa mellow for a few minutes. Then taste and adjust.
Fall photos below.
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Nearly all the garden has been put to bed, so to speak, except for this sad knawed-upon kale and some random (that means volunteer) lettuce and chard, The hardy and reliable volunteers. All summer we filled the garden trenches with grass clippings, compost and manure. In the fall, the trenches are shoveled atop the garden rows. Those nasty rotted tomatoes will end up here eventually. We hope someday to stop plowing and just plant in the compost.
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| Asparagus fronds cut and ready for dumping into the field for a little tractor-grinding action. |
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| A load of firewood to warm us through the winter. |
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| A chard volunteers for service amidst the cut leeks. |
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| Hope for the future! These are keeper tomatoes, not meant for summer harvest. Will they ripen for winter salads? Before rotting? We'll see. |
Wonderful photos! Does Paul stack all that wood? Lots of work to keep your property so beautiful and bountiful!!!
ReplyDeleteI wrote a long comment on the Blues Cruise post a week or so ago but something happened and it just disappeared. I couldn't write it all again!
I'm always happy to see a new post.
thanks, susan. paul stacked most of it with a little help from me.
Deleteas for the blues cruise comment, sorry i didn't see it! you would love blues cruise. or any other of the specialty cruises. there's just so much to do. i think you told me some cruises are devoted to fiber arts etc.
go for it!
Great garden photos. I did pull up the last of my tomato plants before we left for Mexico on Nov. 6. They would still be producing if I hadn't. We also have not had a hard frost...very unusual. Normally the tomatoes would be done by mid October at the latest. I carefully draped hundreds of unripe cherry tomato vines over an Ikea clothes drying rack the day before we left and when we came home...voila! We're still eating the ripened fruit and no end in site. We now make a new 'lasagna bed' every year where we heap a raised bed with compost fodder all summer, then about this time of year, pile 6 inches of seaweed on it, layer it with chopped maple leaves to mulch. Come spring, I'll shovel a couple inches of top soil on to top it up and plant directly into the composted bed. We get SUPER veggies in these beds. I call it 'The Lazy Hippy' approach to gardening. :)
ReplyDeleteHi grace~ i am so jealous of the seaweed! i'm assuming you have a close-by abundant affordable source? planting directly into the composted bed without tilling. that's the ideal.
Deletequestion: do you have to remove some of the soil to make room for all the new composting material?
this year we dug most of the soil from one bed that just wasn't producing well and replaced it with a mix of garden dirt and composted manure. most of our efforts go into the garden rows, but it is great to have the 3 raised beds, two of which are planted in strawberries.
I have to drive 5-10 miles to pick up the seaweed along the eastern shore of Vancouver Island near Campbell River. I haven't had to remove soil yet from the raised beds. I put so much compost/tilth in the soil mix that it shrinks a lot over the course of the summer as everything decomposes leaving about 5-6 inches of space available for leaves and seaweed in the fall. So far, anyway. The beds are anywhere from 16 to 24 inches high. Three of my beds are now planted with strawberries, garlic and asparagus. I'm building some over the winter for more strawberries, blueberries, currants and raspberries. (if the rain will let up for two minutes)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Sorry, the dog jumped on my keyboard and added some random keystrokes to my name.
ReplyDelete