It has been a rather wet and cool summer here in Illinois. That hasn’t helped our tomatoes to grow or ripen very well at all. We were finally able to harvest a few but there are at least 50 green ones still on the plants.

We had fun a few days ago turning our meager harvest into tomato sauce. We bought a food mill (Victorio 250) last year for making applesauce. It is also designed to process tomatoes. All I had to do was wash and quarter the tomatoes and then in they went. Grant and Norah love to help turn the crank and watch the juice and pulp be separated from the skins and seeds. It’s a great tool and makes the process MUCH easier!

 
Tomatoes. Food mill in action. Tomatoes go in the top and the waste comes out the far end while the “sauce” comes through the screen. 
 
Don’t they look good? 
 
Grant and Norah turning the crank. 
 
Here is the result of processing the tomatoes we had. It’s incredibly efficient.

Food · Grant · Norah · SFG · Square Foot Gardening

The beans have sprouted (again) and are growing at an incredible pace. These pictures were taken two days apart.

At this pace, we’ll have beanstalks up to the clouds in a few days!

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As I mentioned in my previous garden post, I’ve had a few setbacks as well. These include a mass die-off of the seedlings and one of the garden beds splitting, requiring a rebuild of that bed.

As for the plants, the day after I moved the seedlings out to their new homes, we had a spell of rain and snow. That pretty much killed off most of the plants I’d worked so hard to start. Don’t fret, all was not lost. That event prompted me to enhance the design of the beds with a greenhouse type covering to help retain moisture and protect the plants. I built a basic greenhouse from plastic tubing and sheeting held in place by spring clips. It’s been in service for a few weeks now and seems to be working well.

While I enhanced the design of the garden, I also added a soaker hose system with a water timer to assist in keeping the soil moist. The kids have been having fun being “in charge” of the water.

Once these items had been completed, the kids helped plant the seeds again. We added a few varieties to squares that were purposefully left vacant in the original layout.

 
Grant and Norah, dining alfresco.

The new and improved garden beds, under their new protective barrier.

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At this point, it looks like at least one of everything has sprouted (although I’m not sure that an errant tomato seed may have ended up in the sweet pepper quadrant).

I went to Menard’s and bought wood to begin creating the elevated garden beds and had good intentions to get at least one built. The weather had another idea and we proceeded to get several inches of snow and ice on Saturday and Sunday. The construction phase will have to wait for another day. Until then, we’ll keep watering and anticipate planting once the weather gets nicer again.

Can you believe that each one of those sprouts can grow into a full head of lettuce? The kids can’t wait to see it.

Those aren’t trees, they’re our beans!

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Our seeds are making progress! The kids and I watered the seeds again today and saw that several of our vegetables had seeds that have germinated/sprouted.

To date, we can see lettuce (below), tomato, zucchini, green beans, and peppers. We’re looking forward to seeing the rest of our seeds poke up through the soil to join their brethren!

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