Q and A: making ketchup, peach trees, and bread and butter pickles

Making ketchup

In your book, “Growing and Canning Your Own Food,” the Ketchup recipe on page 114 calls for 1 gallon chopped, peeled and cored tomatoes. I can not find out anywhere how many tomatoes I need, approximately. I want to make a 1/4 size batch to make sure my family likes it before canning up a bunch, so in reducing that it calls for 1/4 of a gallon or one quart. Do I need to just get tomatoes, and start chopping them until I get a quart of tomatoes plus the liquid from them? Can I use previously home canned whole tomatoes in their own juice? If so, how do I measure them for the ketchup recipe?

Lisa
Maryland

I’d just guesstimate. Now I just toss tomatoes into my Victorio strainer and measure the purée that comes out. No seeds/no skins/no extra work! Yes, you can use home canned tomatoes, canned in their own juice. But I’d run them through a meat grinder to chop them; you’ll have to press them through a sieve to remove the seeds though. Some folks use a blender and blend seeds and all but I’ve tried that and find that it does change the taste a bit. Using home canned tomatoes, you already have a measured quart. The amount of seeds is so tiny that it doesn’t matter. — Jackie

Peach trees

Why do my peach trees have lacy leaves and the fruit has brown spots and what looks like sap oozing?

Patricia Nelson
Sesser, Illinois

I think you have a two-fold problem. Several insects and caterpillars eat fruit tree leaves, leaving them skeletonized, such as bean beetles, army worms, and tarnished plant bugs. Although this leaves the tree stressed, it usually does no lasting harm. But I’m pretty sure your fruit is being damaged from within by plum curculio larvae. The adult plum curculio is a small snout-nosed beetle about 1/4 inch long. The female cuts a crescent-shaped wound in developing fruit and lays eggs inside the flap. This wound turns black and is quite small. The larvae hatch and begin eating the fruit. You will notice tiny blobs of “sap” oozing from the fruit in several places. The “worms” ruin the fruit and often it will drop off, immature. You can achieve at least partial control by practicing good sanitation methods. These include picking up and destroying fruit that drops early, as well as removing or cleaning up overwintering sites. Keeping the area around the trees well mowed also helps.

Chemical controls should be applied immediately after the flower petals fall to control the first generation. Three sprays (the first in mid-June and the second at the end of June and the third in early July) will control the second generation adults. You can use chemical controls such as Carbaryl, (Sevin) or malathion. Insecticides may be used individually, or can often be found in premixed home orchard spray products, such as Bonide Fruit Tree Spray. When using Carbaryl or malathion, wait 3 or 7 days, respectively, between spray application and harvest. Permethrin (Bonide Eight Vegetable Fruit & Flower Concentrate, Bonide Eight Insect Control Yard & Garden Ready-to-Spray and Bonide Borer-Miner Killer Concentrate) or esfenvalerate (Ortho Bug-B-Gon MAX Garden & Landscape Insect Killer Ready-to-Use) may also be used to control plum curculio, but do not apply these products within 14 days of harvest. Repeated use of carbaryl, permethrin or esfenvalerate may increase problems later in the season with scale or mite outbreaks.

A less toxic mixture of neem oil and pyrethrins, such as in Green Light Fruit Tree Spray, is labeled for plum curculio control. It also works quite well for leaf eating insects that are damaging your tree’s leaves.

As with all pesticides, read and follow all label directions and precautions. — Jackie

Bread and butter pickles

I made bread and butter pickles today, using the recipe from the Ball Blue Book. The recipe only used 3 cups of vinegar, and I did not have enough liquid to cover 7 pints, the yield of this recipe. I made another full batch of the liquid and heated it, and finished the rest of my jars. Will these last few jars have too much spice? What is the proper procedure for making extra liquid for pickles? I don’t know why the Ball Blue Book recipe would be so short of liquid.

Catherine Reiber
Missoula, Montana

Usually, the added sugar increases the amount of vinegar and when the pickles are packed in the jars, the juice along with the pickling syrup will be adequate. BUT, as you found out, this doesn’t always happen. I usually make a double batch of pickling brine, just in case. If it’s not needed for that batch, I simply refrigerate and reheat it for the next batch. Don’t re-use brine that you’ve added cucumbers and other vegetables to, however, as the water or “juice” in them may dilute the pickling brine/syrup. I doubt that your second batch will have too much spice. — Jackie