Tomato Babies

Now what's that old saying?  You can't be too rich, too thin or have too many tomato starts....right? That goes for peppers, too!

Here in North Idaho I have learned not to put the tomatoes out in the garden until June 1st and still there are nights that I have to cover them up due to sub-freezing lows.  I usually start them from seed the first day of Spring. 

My favorite medium to start tomatoes and peppers in are those little peat pellets that you have to expand with water before they are soft enough to place a seed in them.  We have a very small shower stall in our basement bathroom and I put a small space heater in there.  It doesn't take much to heat the stall up to 90F degrees and that is where I place my tomatoes and peppers.  The germinate very quickly in this hot environment but you have to have them in covered containers like the mini greenhouses you buy at any big box store like Walmart or Home Depot or else they will dry out. 

As soon as the seeds emerge, I move them to a sunny, south-facing window sill.  Waiting to move them is not a good idea because in the darkness of the bathroom they will grow very long, and leggy QUICKLY.  Once they develop their first true leaves beyond their seed leaves I transplant them to larger peat pots which are about 4 inches tall and 4 inches wide.  I place the peat pellet at the bottom of the pot and then add seed starting soil until it reaches the base of seed leaves.

The plants develop great root systems in this soft soil and grow quite quickly.  On warmer days, I bring them outside to help harden them up.  I will leave them out all night as long as it doesn't fall much below 50F during the night.  By June, I have nice healthy home-grown starts which are not root-bound like a lot of the nursery-raised ones that I have purchased.  On average my plants are smaller than the ones I have bought at the store but once planted in the garden they grow faster than the store bought ones and end up producing more fruit, too.

Do You Know How to Salsa???

Well, after today I believe I now can say that I know how to make salsa. Never before had I made salsa of any kind, either fresh or canned. With all the tomatoes that I had ripening down in the basement, most of which are destined to be frozen, bagged and eventually cooked into my favorite homemade V8 juice, it seemed a shame not to make a batch of canned salsa from some fresh tomatoes. Once frozen, tomatoes become little red sacks of mush and do not lend themselves to more than juice or sauce.

The recipe I decided to try is from the Ball Blue Book and is called Spicy Tomato Salsa. I know it sounds like I'm El Cheapo (which I am!) but I decided on this recipe because a lot ingredients I already had on hand and what I had to buy for it was not expensive. Here are the ingredients:

Spicy Tomato Salsa
(makes 6 pints)

• 6 pounds of tomatoes, washed, drained, peeled, seeded and chopped to 1/4" dice
• 3 cups diced red onions
• 15 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, packed tightly
• 6 jalapeno peppers seeded and diced
• 9 dried hot red chilies, seeded
• 3/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 TBS pickling salt
• 3/4 tps red pepper flakes
• water

To peel the skin off the tomatoes you need to blanch them in boiling water for 1 minute and immediately plunge them into cold water. The skins will be very easy to remove.
The preparation of all the ingredients is pretty straight forward except for the 9 dried hot red chillies. Remove the seeds and place the chilies in a bowl. Add boiling water to the chilies just enough to cover them. Tightly cover over the top of the bowl with a plastic wrap such as Saran Wrap and let this steep for 15 minutes. After this, discard of approximately half of the infused water and place the remaining water, along with the chilies in a food processor and blend for a minute.
Now place all of the ingredients, along with chopped chili water mixture, in a large sauce pan or Dutch oven and heat over high heat until it comes to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to make sure it's not scorching near the bottom. Ladle the hot salsa into hot, sterilized pint jars and fill with 1/4" head space remaining. Seal with two-piece lids.
Place in a boiling water canner and boil gently for 15 minutes. Adjust processing time you the altitude you are at.
I was please with how they turned out. After tasting a bit of the salsa before canning it, I would say it's a medium heat. I love the amount of tomato and the cilantro flavor but I am expecting a "maturing" of flavors after sitting on the shelf for a few weeks.

Signs of Spring in North Idaho

After the last two longer-than-normal winters we have experienced here, it does not take one long to really appreciate the first signs of spring. The woods come alive with the thumping of ruffed grouse, the crowing of pheasants and the gobbling of turkeys. The chipmunks reappear from their long hibernation searching and scurrying about on the ground looking for food.

For us humans it's time to start planning our veggie garden, mend fences for the arrival of our beef steers and one of my favorite spring diversions, morel hunting. We found some of our first morels of the season just last weekend. Coral mushrooms come out during the second half of morel season and will post some picture of those then we find one.
I have to admit that I am running a little behind on the veggie garden but the weather is so cool this spring I think it will be okay. We will be planting this weekend sugar snap peas and lettuce. I have started my tomato plants on the first day of spring and they seem so tiny compared to the ones I see at the stores which are available right now. I seem to always cave in and buy a couple tomato plants because mine seem so small by the time I plant them the first week of June. But the funny thing is that small they may be the always end up as big as the store bought plants and produce more. I'm going to stay strong this year and resist the urge to buy any tomato plants. I have 20 started plants right now all along our south-facing window sills. Hopefully seeing the big trees out there will inspire them to grow big!

A One Pound Plus Moskvich

My two favorite types to grow here are Moskvich which is a Siberian beefsteak type hybrid and Red Agate which is a determinate saucing variety. I plant a lot of the other favorites, too, like Sungolds and Brandywines which also produce well during our short season.

Emma with a Red Agate

All the tomatos pictures on this post are from our 2007 season. We had tomatos last year but only few fully ripened to color in the garden and a majority of them had to be bagged until ripe. I attended the North Idaho Fair that year and did not see one red tomato! It made me feel so much better to see the blue ribbon winners were big green tomatos. Not that misery enjoys company but I figured if these folks that really know what they are doing still have green tomatos in August then I must not be too much of a failure after all!