@Kevin, so you're almost 10 days into that hot sauce ferment, if you taste a bit of the liquid, it should be tangy by now. You can probably proceed to blending soon if you think it's enough. If there are still lots of bubbles forming and coming up when you press down on the solids, I'd let it go for a few more days or until it slows down. Did you get any Kham yeast or other unwanted 'growth' on the surface of the liquid?

I would not re-use the whole batch of liquid for another ferment, but a tablespoon or two of it might contain enough lactobacteria to inoculate it and kickstart the process, not that it's a trouble having it start from scratch as you likely noticed. I would not bother saving and storing (in the fridge) any of that liquid unless you plan to make that second ferment in the coming week. Even then, a dash of that first sauce itself would likely do just as well.

My pepper harvest has been terrible so far this year, so some of my other sauce ferment plans are likely up in smoke, like my 100% Jwala sauce. I may yet get to make a small batch if the weather and plants cooperate into late September. I should get enough Habs to make another batch of my recipe with lots of "filler" bell peppers and fruit though.

I won't have all the powders and dehydrated pods I wanted though. :(

LoneJack - Yep, SVB on my zucchini. Last night I decided to slice open the trunk of the wilty-looking plant. I found a borer. This morning the plant looks happier. We'll see how it looks after the sun blasts it this afternoon. I picked a couple zukes. The biggest of which weighed right at 8 ounces. It's on the big side of how I usually pick them. I also picked a 26.5# watermelon.

itsmce - I guess you do get 2 generations down there. I suppose it won't be long before we have 2 up here with the way our climate has changed of late. I didn't even consider looking for SVB frass on my zuke last night because it is much to late for the 1st generation up here. I just assumed bacterial wilt from the CBs.

I did manage to pick a few zukes in the 1/2 lb. range over the weekend because I was home. I don't mind if they get up to about 3/4 lb. because I just slice them into quarters lengthwise and slice out the seeds or if I am grilling zuke halves I'll use a grapefruit spoon to scoop out the seed cavity.

isgen - yep, I gave it a taste last night and it is definitely tangy and delicious - now I know why all my previous un-fermented sauces lacked that extra punch! I think I've noticed the bubbles decreasing so I'm pretty sure its done and I will be blending either tonight or tomorrow. No yeast or mold noticed on top ... what I did was place some saran wrap over the top of the open container and added a couple marbles on top to keep the solids (carrots) weighted down below the surface under the saran. Every day or so I would open it up and push everything back down to keep it all submerged.

I have plenty of peppers and this sauce making is addicting so I will probably make a couple more 1/2 gallons and inoculate each with a spoonful of the liquid on the same night I am blending the first sauce. Not necessary as you say but if the flavor is what I like I'd like to make sure the same strains are going on the future generations.

Jack - I am really excited about the tractor... I picked it and the attachments up for all of $550 - in my eyes even if the engine blew up tomorrow I would be able to recoup that cost by parting it all out. Of course hopefully that doesn't happen, I already bought some tire chains to go on it, have plans to do an engine and trans oil flush this weekend, and am looking daily on CL for other attachments/accessories to add. I had the buy-off to spend around $1k so I still have some money to put into this one if I can find the right deals.

@Kevin, good idea with the marbles and cling film! I use a contraption of my own making to keep the solids submerged. As I think I mentioned before, 5% brine seems strong enough to mostly inhibit Kahm yeast and other spoilage microbes, without slowing the lactobacteria. I'm glad it's working out and hope you enjoy the results!

The Tomato harvest is in full swing!

Babushka - That is a gorgeous arrangement of tomatoes!! What are your plans for them? They sure would make some fine salsa!

Kevin - be careful there and don't burn something important ;-). That stuff scares me from here just looking at it in pictures!

I've got a few potato sprouts in my fall potato bed but I'm not entirely sure if they are from the seed potatoes that I planted or volunteers from some tiny tubers that were missed when I harvested that bed in June. I am pretty confident that the Yukon Gold will sprout because they are starting to sprout in storage but the other 3 types I'm not sure. It's been almost 3 weeks since I planted them.

I've already selected some seed tubers for next spring and put them in the fridge in paper bags. 18 Austrian Crescent, 18 French Fingerling, and 24 German Butterball. I also set aside 24 more German Butterball for fall 2018 planting as an experiment to see how well/long they will keep in the fridge.

Nearly all of my carrots got laid flat my the monsoon rains Monday night but they seem to be pulling themselves out of the mud pretty well. I had to help a few unstuck themselves last night.

The remaining tomatoes sure are taking their time ripening. There are still a dozen decent sized OJs on the plants but no sign of O yet. Orange or not they are going to be picked labor day weekend so I can yank out the hideous looking plants. Cherry tomatoes are still going strong and I'm getting around a pound a week.

@Kevin, green sauce, nice! Did you use a blender or food mill to process it? Did you add any of the brine/liquid to adjust texture? Check on all containers, especially that mason jar, a couple of times in the coming weeks to 'vent' them, as fermentation might go on, albeit very slowly, in the fridge. My latest batch of sauce separates a bit because I added more than usual of the brine, but nothing a stir or shake of the bottle doesn't fix before use. Enjoy!

isgen - I blended it all in the ninja and didn't worry about straining or separating... it came out pretty homogenous but I'm sure it will separate a little. Thanks for the tip on burping/venting. I think I ended up using about 1/3 of the liquid and also added about 1/4 cup of fresh vinegar to try to remove some of the heat. Consistency is somewhere in between franks and sriracha - leaning towards franks.

This current batch is pretty simple - it was around 8 green sweet peppers, 4 habs, 1 ghost chili, and 6 or 7 carrots. A lot of my peppers don't want to turn color this year yet, so I have to settle for green sauce for now. I couldn't get myself to make the all-hab and ghost sauce just yet.

babushka - beautiful tomato spread!

Jack - glad to hear your getting potato sprouts! Thank you for reminding me*** about storing away some of the potatoes in the fridge - my harvest was so small this year that I will probably just put all the remaining spuds in the fridge.

*** = I feel like I've said this a hundred times this year - my garden should have a small plaque in it that says "this garden brought to you in part by LoneJack et all"!

My tomato count so far: 67 pounds. Amish Paste is outperforming every other tomato by a long shot. Second is Paul Robeson, third is Purple Cherokee. San Marzano lagging significantly behind Amish Paste with approximately half of what Amish is producing. My initial thought is to plant more Amish Paste plants next year. I have not yet done the taste test between the two but unless the results are incredible I cannot afford to lose space to an underperformer.

Babuska - I am with you on being diligent about culling the underperformers! My Roma's (unknown cheapo burpee variety) have been absolute crap at production at 1.3 lbs per square foot of planting space currently - compare that to the others like Cherokee Purple (which is the most at 7.7 lbs/sf right now) or Big Beef (6.6 lbs/sf) and its obvious which will be getting the boot! I'd like to try Amish Paste next year based on your and others' experience with great yields.

Kevin - glad to help out any way I can! No need for thanks but I appreciate it. No need for everyone to learn gardening for themselves by trial and error. There currently are and have been some really knowledgeable gardeners on GW that I have learned a lot from thru the years and from reading the old archived threads. I mostly just pass on what I have learned from others and a few things that I have learned for myself from trial and error(s).

Jack, I thought the only way to harvest beans was to pick 1 and eat 2? Am I doing it wrong? ;-) I didn't plant them as close as I thought, so I don't think I'll be getting inundated will loads of green beans. Glad to hear your beans are thriving! Hope the taters start coming up soon for you.

Babushka, wow!!!!! I love the tomato spread you've got going there. What an awesome picture. That should be on the cover of a magazine. Good notes on tomato production from the plants. Plenty to learn each year about how different plants perform for us in our respective areas!

Kevin, awesome eclipse pic! Congrats on your purchase of a mower! A classic never dies :-) Your hot sauce is looking awesome! On a scale from 1-10, what does this rate at for you?

itsmce, nice harvest! Sorry to hear about the SVB damage. My squash plants are completely covered in powdery mildew, but I just don't care anymore haha. I'm ready for Fall! Hope you finish off the season with lots of melons!

Sunflowers, sorry to hear about the flooding :-/ That's A LOT of rain. It's all hands on deck for Fall crops! I'm planting out kale and spinach seedlings this weekend.

isgen, sounds like you know quite a bit about making hot sauce! I will refer to your advice when I make my own next year.

This forum truly is a dream come true for garden fanatics. There is so much knowledge here, from starting seed to canning harvests! Love it!

@Chris, thanks. I've been fermenting (lacto and booze) for a few years now and while I'm no expert yet, I think I have a good handle on what works for me. I've learned a ton from others online. I've yet to make a cooked vinegar-based sauce though, there is always more to learn! :)

Just picked some more, now up to 74 pounds! Lots of Amish Paste in this batch as well. Cooked some Amish Paste this morning for eggplant parm. They are DELICIOUS! Highly recommend.

Nice bunch of fish tomatoes, 12 of them on a single 2-branch cluster:

The messy harvest counter space, it'll get worse before it gets better, plus closeup of the tomato box:

isgen, your harvest looks great. I've not heard of fish tomatoes before. Yours have certainly set fruit well. It's nice to see another counter getting taken over by the harvest. I have to get some processing done tomorrow before my counter disappears entirely and the tomatoes start to rot. Too bad I like growing them more than cooking them :) I think I'll dry all the smaller ones. That should make the processing more doable for me.

Are those ground cherries in the bowls and front right?

@naturegirl_2007, thanks! "Fish tomato" is the name I was given the seeds under from visiting family in eastern Europe, all I can say! I'll have to do some processing before long too, but perhaps I'll oven roast a bunch of the fish tomatoes over the weekend, so tasty! Yes, these are ground cherries. I've been having a plentiful harvest of them for several weeks now, out of my 4 plants.

@Katharine, cool harvest! I like the looks of the little yellow tomatoes in the middle there.

Katharine and isgen, very nice harvests! Great variety!

Katherine - how do you grow a yellow light bulb? lol What variety are the apples?

Isgen - time to make some sauce! My tomato counter is getting pretty sparse but that is OK because all we need is enough for fresh eating at this point. I do plan to dehydrate some cherry tomatoes this weekend.

Chris - the rule is pick 10 and eat 1 on green beans! You'll never have enough to freeze if you do pick 1 eat 2! And eating too many raw beans is not good for the health.

I am kind of enjoying the harvest lull right now. Just a few tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers here and there and pole beans every few days. Looks like my fillet beans may not be ready for the first harvest until late next week which is perfect since I have a 4 day weekend planned and will have time to both make dilly beans and freeze them.

Thanks isgen and Chris!

Jack, you grow yellow lightbulbs by putting a crazy growing indeterminate yellow pear tomato plant in your community garden bed and then fighting with it all summer to keep it from taking over! I've always grown tomatoes in containers, never in the ground, and I had no idea it would get so huge!! LOL Only determinates in the garden from now on (the garden has a height restriction on plantings, but they cut me some slack this year as the newbie).

I don't know what variety of apples those are. We have three apple trees in the communal section of the garden and I noticed this tree was getting picked clean already, so I thought I should grab a few to give them a try.

6 gallons of sauce and 1.5 gallons of Annie's salsa today. I'm pretty sick of canning!

Up to 250 lbs of tomatoes total and the plants seem to have found some sort of second wind... not sure if it's the TTF or the cooler drier weather we've Been having. I was expecting them to all be close to dead from septoria by now.

The close to 2 lb-er was sliced today. That's an 8 inch santuku knife for reference.

Pepper bed

Broccoli and beans in background

Got the tractor a little cleaned up and putzed with the plow for a little. Trying to talk the wife into letting me get a tiller and adding a 400sf garden in the back yard!

My tomatoes, too, are having a second wind. I did some light pruning on one of the Super Sweet 100s to clear the branches up off of the ground. I'm hoping the tomatoes and flowers that have set around the middle of the plant will ripen.

I picked up a few lettuce and cauliflower starts from the nursery on Friday, so those will be nice come fall! Gourds and squash are still coming in slowly but surely.

I have a few friends on my parsley plants. Swallowtail caterpillars!

@Sunflowers - I tend to think of the black swallowtail caterpillars as foes. This is what one of my parsley plants looked like yesterday.

What's consensus here about when it's not worth picking tomatoes any longer? My mother used to say that as soon as nighttime temperatures dropped into the 50s, tomatoes really weren't very good any more. I'd love to hear what others say here.

Kevin - that's a lot of canning for one weekend! I'm sure that you will think it was worth the time and effort when your enjoying the sauce and salsa this winter. You garden tractor setup is looking good. Are you expecting snow soon? LOL That huge tomato looks fantastic! It's making me crave a BLT and it is not even 6 am.

There is a market grower that posts on Tomatoville that swears TTF will bring tomato plants back from the brink of death. I haven't fed anything other than my cherry toms and peppers with TTF since late July. I'm pulling the slicing toms out next weekend.

Itsmce - Tomatoes that ripen in cool weather are OK but not near the quality as those that ripen in July and August. The skins will be tougher and the bug damage is usually greater. I don't think I have ever left plants other than cherries in the ground much past mid September here.

Sunflowers - I've had those swallowtail caterpillars tear up dill plants before but I don't mind because it is late in the season. I've also seen them on my Asparagus. I've got a few caterpillars showing up on my carrots which is unacceptable. I started spraying them with BT last week but there is not much leaf for the BT to stick to. Need to spray again tonight after yesterday's rain.

Some little varmint has been sampling my Butternut squash. There were several that made just a few nibbles out of them. I suspect mice and put a couple traps out on the edges of the bed yesterday.

I only upped my harvest by about 18 lbs. over the weekend but that got me over 700 lbs. total. The only thing I preserved this weekend was a couple trays of dehydrated garlic. It took about 22 hours at 135d. My fillet beans are getting close to picking but I am going to try to hold off until at least Thursday evening. I have Friday off for a long 4 day weekend so I will have plenty of time to make some dilly beans. yippee.

Yay! I'm finally picking more than a few beans at a time. This morning I picked almost 1/2 pound and when I pick again on Wednesday I would bet I get 1.5-2 pounds based on the number of beans I left behind that weren't quite big enough today. Take a look at how nicely they're blooming.

Here's a group shot of all 4 kinds of tomatoes I'm growing this season.

Clockwise from top left: "giant" orange, no name pink/red (seeds labeled "black"), fish and yellow pear (actually orange).

Here's what I made with one of them, with my own cucumbers and sourdough bread of course. :)

I've passed 10lb of tomatoes, with a lot still left on the plants. The powdery mildew on them is getting pretty bad though, I hope it does not end up affecting any existing fruits.

So, I went away for 8 days and came home to a disaster of a garden. Happens every year, but this year is worse than most. Powdery mildew and septoria had already set in when I left, but they decimated my garden in my absence. What PM didn't do in, the SVB did. Still, I pulled quite a bit of harvest today, and the cherry tomatoes still have so much fruit that I can't see pulling them. Brandywine and Cherokee Purple are toast, though.

As always, I'm thinking about next year. I think I'm done growing winter squash as I really don't seem to get enough yield for the space they take. You all have inspired me to grow some habaneros next year to make hot sauce, and I think I will expand my bean plot so I can start freezing and canning more.

Everyone's harvests look so lovely. I'm dreading the weeks of winter to come.

Jack - glad to see you pass the 700 lb mark! I just looked at my spreadsheet and I am 7 lbs shy of 500 total, 275 of which are tomatoes.

Its - nice beans! I can't wait for mine to start coming in. Just flowering now so will be another week or two.

isgen - pretty maters! That looks like a great snack!

allison - sorry to hear about the downhill slide your garden went through. I am with you about winter squash - this year I have pumpkins that I just let sprawl out the back of the garden in a spot that is normally just grass and not used and that's not bad but it's still a ton of space taken up for what, like 2 or 3 pumpkins!? Don't talk about winter - I am dreading not having the garden to check up on! We have plans for a greenhouse at some point but I don't know if it will be this year. I'd like to try some indoor stuff and also want to experiment with overwintering some kale and maybe other stuff in coldframes/hoophouses but that just not the same!

Peppers are in full swing.

More food hung as decoration:

Habanero pepper jelly - YUM!!

hops were a little disappointing even for their first year but if they give me an excuse to brew then it's worth it. I think I'm going to grow them out back somewhere instead of on the porch pergola. They were very ugly and I dont think they liked growing on it.

@Allison B, sorry to hear about the garden issues. I've pulled my cucumbers this weekend because of a triple assault of PM, bacterial wilt and aphids. I hope you still get some cherry tomatoes and other crops to fall back on!

@Kevin, nice peppers and jelly, which reminds me I should make a batch with my Habs!

Kevin - from how many tomato plants have you gotten 275#? Nice haul!

i ought to start pulling my tomato plants that aren't going to produce much anymore...but it's hard to commit to doing it! I did pull out my dozen or so corn plants on the weekend. Now that end of the garden looks pretty bare. Hmmm...I wonder if my garden center has those broccoli plants yet?

Itsmce - I have somewhere around 30 plants jammed into about 60 square ft of bed space. So my lb per plant is not all that high but for the footprint I'm pretty happy with it. Think I'll be able squeeze another 50 lbs or more before the whole thing topples or succumbs to disease, whichever comes first lol.

Allison - sorry to here that your garden took a turn for the worse. It can be very hard to keep them going in late summer.

Isgen - Great looking tomato sandwich!

Itsmce - You win the great fall bean race ( or maybe that was Chris ). My fillet beans are trying my patience in how slow they are forming. It seems like they are only growing 1/4" a day. Still expecting to get the first harvest sometime over Labor day weekend. I need about 4 lbs. to make a batch of Dilly beans.

Kevin - Your harvest really zoomed up in the last few weeks! It looks like you have plenty of peppers to make several more batches of hot sauce. How many kegs of beer can you make from those hops?

My tomatoes are doing the same thing as last year....still green with a lot of leaves left on the east side of the plants and burned up, Septoria ridden ugliness on the west side. Next year I'm going to experiment with planting them in a bed that runs east-west to see if it makes a difference. Thankfully, I won't have to look at the plants much longer as they are coming out this weekend.

My Sweet Success cucumbers just don't want to give up. I picked another 4 fruit totaling 4 lbs. last night. I've never had cucumbers that were planted in April still producing in late August. This is the first year I have grown SS and they are a little different. Very long tapered fruit with a tendency to curve a bit. I picked one over the weekend that was 16" long and weighed 2 lbs. and was just as sweet as one half it's size. In total I have picked 56 fruit weighing 53.5 lbs. from the 6 plants. And to think I almost pulled the plants after they were severely pruned back by deer in mid June.

I'm having a soaker hose revolt. Just in the last week 3 50' hoses have sprung leaks or broken fittings. I should be able to mend 2 of them with duct tape to get them thru the season. I need to look into drip tape for next year.

Here's my tomato bed. I've removed yet more foliage last night, mostly dead or dying from powdery mildew. Fruits are ripening from the bottom up and I'll probably get more than I can eat fresh soon enough, might have to do some canning.

Jack - The problem with using homegrown hops is you don't truly know the alpha acid (bitterness) units so its difficult to use them to replicate any known recipes. Also "wet hops", which is what they call freshly picked hops like I have, are needed at a ratio of approximately 4:1 (by weight) when compared to 'dried' hops (the stuff you'd get when bought in a store or kit).

I didn't weigh the hops (I know, tsk tsk), but I like hoppy beers so chances are both bags will go into a single batch (I do 10 gallons or 4 cases worth) as a 'flameout' or flavor addition - which should impart the hoppy flavor but does not add any measureable bitterness. It'll likely be a higher gravity American Pale Ale. I'll use similar regular hops with known Alpha acid units for the bitterness additions.

The two plants that produced the best were Cascade and CTZ (Columbus, Tomahawk, Zeus - all names interchangeable). Willamette and Crystal produced in such small amounts that I just threw them in with the Cascade bag.

Interesting about the east to west difference and septoria - I'll have to see if I notice something similar in my garden.

Isgen - Looks like a valiant effort there to remove foliage - and you still have plenty of fruits to go! Seems weird but I kinda like the look of the 'tomato trees' when pruned like that.

Aww aren't they cute when they get all grown up?!

Success! I caught another mouse (#5) overnight.

Jack - I confirmed I have the same thing going on with the septoria on the west sides of plants....My bed runs primarily north to south too. I suspect its due to that side of the plants holding onto the dew/moisture longer in the morning - is that your take too?

Kevin - that definitely could be a contributing factor. I think that after the leaves get severely infected by fungus, the hot afternoon sun from the west may just finish them off and burn up the leaves.

The 3 new beds that I will be putting in this fall will all be 4x10 and run E/W and I am going to put 4 tomatoes in one of them. It will be interesting to see if just the west side of the plant on the west end of the bed suffers the worst from disease.

Itsmce - congrats on the latest capture! I put out a poison 'snack bar' near my butternut squash bed to try to get the critter that is chewing on them but after 2 days nothing appears to have touched it. I need to start thinning the squirrel herd around here. It is not safe to walk around in the areas of my yard that have a lot of Hickory trees because the dang tree rats are harvesting them at a frenzied pace.

Jack you should be able to grow some serious tomato trees in those beds - 10 square feet per plant and texas tomato food - what are you going to use for supports - railroad ties?! lol

Kevin - I'm definitely going to be making some bigger cages during the off season instead of using the doubled up cheap cages. I'll probably make them out of CRW and stake them with t posts.

I usually plant 5 plants per 4x10 bed but I'm going to give them a little more space next year. I'll plant some lettuce , leeks, or onions on the edges of the beds too. I'm planning to use 2 beds for slicing tomatoes and a 4x4 bed for a single cherry and put a trellis up for that.

I don't know for sure, but I'm thinking mouse #6 died from a heart attack. This is how I discovered him this morning next to the bean plants.

I posted it in the 2017 large tomato thread, but here it is as well. These were all on a branch that broke off. The big one is most likely my heaviest this season, with one other contender that looks about as big still on the vine.

That's a whopper Isgen! Hopefully all of them have blushed enough to ripen well.

Itsmce - That mouse looks kinda blue in the picture...maybe it suffocated!

Itsmce - hey whatever you gotta do to get the deed done!

Isgen - that is a monster!!!! Is that a pink brandywine?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's the biggest we've seen on here this year (I might be wrong, did jack crack 2 lbs?)

I have been working late all week so hadnt gotta to harvest in a while - so had a real nice haul tonight - big milestones were hit - up over 500 lbs total (523.36 to be exact but who's counting), and 300.08 lbs of tomatoes!!!

Poblanos for days

@Kevin, yeah, it's quite the big 'mater! I have no clue what variety it truly is. My seeds were given to me in Europe and are likely the result of decades of seed saving at a family farm. This variety averages 12-14oz from what I've picked so far. LoneJack did crack the 2lb mark, perhaps someone else too over in the "big tomato" thread on the tomato forum. I have another one that might hit the 28-30oz mark. Your pepper harvest looks great!

stunning harvest kevin!!!!!

Thanks!

If we keep posting in the August thread do you think summer will continue forever?

Nights are a bit on the cold side right now, perhaps we should resurrect the July thread instead?