August is the beginning of harvest season at my home in Wasilla, Alaska. Soon in September it will be freezing at night. I will need to add my space heater to the greenhouse to extend the tomato season a little longer and to keep the greenhouse temperature above 40 F at night. I still have bell peppers and eggplant inside a garden hoop tunnel. I have been busy picking everything and busy in the kitchen making my oven roasted tomato sauce.
I have Raspberries along with Gooseberries, and Black Currants. I destem berries and freeze on sheet pans then weigh and vacuum seal in 1 lb bags for storage in my freezer. I will make jams and country wine during the winter.
I will pick the last of my beans - rinse, trim, blanch and freeze them on sheet pans then weigh out and seal in 8 oz vacuum bags to store in my deep freezer
King of the North and North Star bell peppers are good varieties up here. Short season and large fruit they do well in Wasilla with our short garden season.
I am now growing only Bush Early Girl F1 hybrid tomatoes. They are short season and on smaller sturdy plants and are perfect for my Alaska Grow Buckets in my small greenhouse. They produce large slicing tomatoes that are also great for making sauce and they are VFFNT resistant.
I finally found a used copy of my favorite pickle recipe book, that I lost many years ago. It has lots of good ideas for preserving your garden produce.
I will spend my weekends making sweet pepper pickles and tomato sauce. It will soon be time to clean up the garden for winter. In a few short months I will be checking out the seed catalogs and placing my orders for next year's garden!
