On the garden front

All is well.
Some things are starting to show some signs of slowing, while others are really just kicking in. Some of the tomatoes for instance, while still giving prodigious harvests, ( I'll go into that later ) are starting to show signs of stress. The long hot summers do take their toll on things by this time of the year. But hey, They take their toll on me too so I can't blame them.

on the other hand, our green pole beans are really just coming on strong now. I thought that we wouldn't get a good harvest of them this year, and it still won't be as good as last years, but after consulting that garden journal from last year (can I tell you what a blessing that thing has been!) we found that our first substantial harvest of green beans last year wasn't until mid September either. We figure we're about 2 weeks behind. That will catch up to us on the back end, but honestly I couldn't have handled more if they'd have come any earlier!

A couple of other things that have been fun this year have been our green peppers and eggplants.
I don't know if it was a product of the long cool spring that we had giving them a chance to root well, or if the new Lasagna garden that I planted them in just acted like rocket fuel to them, but we got a better crop of both of them this year than we've ever gotten. And of course this years new crop for us was Okra. I followed the instructions of a woman that I met in our Master Gardener program that had learned to grow them in the south and they've done great! To think that last year I never even managed to get them to germinate and this year I'm harvesting bunches at a time. It's all about planing the seed direct well after any chance of cool weather. They like it hot.
I mentioned that we pulled our Mid season potatoes a while back. I never did manage to get a photo of that harvest up though. It was a good one so I thought I'd share.

We got a few tomatoes, cukes, a watermelon and such then too. We've eaten a lot of potatoes, but they're mostly a fall/winter thing for us so many of these are in the cold storage waiting for Thanksgiving.

I guess while I'm on the topic of harvests I can meander off in that direction with you. We've done well this year. We set a goal of 1500 pounds during the winter while we were working up our garden plan for this year. It was ambitious to say the least, but we figured what could it hurt to shoot for the moon. Well, we lost our entire pumpkin crop as well as a few zucchini plants and our watermelons to squash bugs this year. They were TERRIBLE. That's set us back quite a bit I think but as of tonight we have a running total of 745.25 pounds (Not counting eggs of course.) so I think we're doing pretty darn good. We'll hit 1000 lbs this year I'm sure or at least come pretty darn close. Last year for the entire year we got a total of 521 pounds so if nothing else we can be glad to have well beaten our own best.

We also set a one day harvest record for ourselves a couple of weeks ago. Remember
I said I'd get back to the prodigious tomatoes? Well, thanks in no small part to a one day harvest of 140 pounds, we brought in just over 166 pounds in one day. Curious what 140 pounds of tomatoes looks like?

For perspective, they're covering the top of our full-sized chest freezer. Suffice it to say we had a lot of tomatoes!

So then what's a family to do with all this stuff? Well, besides eat it of course. We gave a good bit of it away to friends and like the old saying we're so fond of...

"Eat what you can and CAN what you can't" we put up a bunch of jars this year. more to come on that.

P~

Local produce, Campfire-Baking and Canning info

This weekend was another busy one. I took Friday off, as I had already met my hours required for the week and we ran errands all day; and I do mean all day! One of the tasks we decided to do was to make a stop by our local you-pick-it farm. They are not an organic farm unfortunately, but I think supporting our local small scale agriculture is more important, not to mention the HUGE savings that we're able to get from it. Check out this haul.Clockwise from the bottom left we got Ancho chilis (to be roasted and frozen for salsas later), jalapenos (also to be roasted and turned magically into chipolte peppers), Yellow wax peppers, Black Beauty eggplants (made ratatouille this afternoon), Green Bell Peppers, Yellow Bells, and Big Jim green chili's (to be steamed and canned for later use.) All together we got two full bushels of veggies. Guess how much? Go on, bet you can't get it?? Twenty bucks total! Ten dollars a bushel of whatever we can get in the box.
We had some shopping to do later that afternoon so we checked on the going prices and we estimate the store value to be approx. $128.00. So if you count the time we put in, which was about an hour total from the time we left the house till we got back, we made a little over $50.00/hr. each. I can live with that!
An observation that A~ and I made to each other while we were there was that there was so much diversity of people there. We saw Asians, Eastern European and of course Mexican families there along with us. Sadly, we were one of only two families of what might be called the UT majority, i.e. non-immigrant whites. I think we have a lot we could learn from some of our immigrant neighbors on this front. I won't get into the issues of legality or immigration policy here because that's not what this blog is about, suffice it to say I have strong opinions. My point here is that these are families that are, generally speaking, on the lower end of the income scale. When we see them doing certain things, like sharing rides, harvesting their own foods and cooking fresh meals and not wasting them, you can bet those are pretty good ideas for someone wanting to live a little more frugally. Our standards of living are, in much of the world, in the top 5 to 10 percent overall. I think this has made us a bit lazy. That's all fine and good in a world of plenty, but I think we can all see that to at least some degree those times are creeping into extinction. Enough on that for this post, you get my point I think.

I alluded to having been inspired by our success with our outdoor Campfire-canning (as I like to call it), and as a matter of fact we did another batch of 4 qts and 1 pint of dill pickles this weekend using that method, what I was talking about was wanting to try my hand at baking some NY Times no-knead bread over the fire.I made sure that since this was a food product that was going to be exposed somewhat directly to the smoke from the fire, to use clean wood and not OSB or other treated woods for this. I burnt down a good deal of coals, and placed our large cast iron stove on them to preheat. After prepping the loaf and coating the bottom with cornmeal (to reduce sticking and allow me to slide it off the cutting board) I dropped it into the pot and placed a few coals on top.
And here's the finished product. You can see that the pot was a little too hot by the thick, blackened bottom, and the little too-dark top crust. All in all though I'd say it wasn't an all out loss. The texture and crumb of the bread was very good. Perhaps a slight bit more undercooked than I'd have liked, but the taste was the best I've made yet. It had a very similar taste to the sourdough pancakes that we eat for Saturday breakfasts. Not necessarily a true sourdough but a very bready taste. I attribute it to the longer time I allowed it to sit before the first forming. For the novice bread bakers out there time equals flavor and that's the real strength of this recipe, it's ability to be slowly made. To help you plan your bread making with this recipe check out my NY Times bread planning scheduler.
And last but not least, for Sandy, a quick bit of wisdom on starting to can. First off we, A~ and I both, are still novice canners. I think the best advice I can give is to not be afraid and to research, research, research. And after you research it thoroughly, respect what you find out. If the recipe calls for 'X' amount of sugar or vinegar or to cook it for 'X' amount of time then add the called for sugar or vinegar and cook it for the right amount of time. Canning your harvest is a great way to preserve your hard work for later enjoyment and it's really nothing to be afraid of with care and attention to detail. One book that A~ and I picked up from the library this year and have really been enjoying is the "Ball Complete book of Home Preserving" (seen below).
I've also read very good things about Balls, "Blue Book of Preserving". You learn about these books or find great resources on their web site as well. Another great resource is Causabons book, a blog with very detailed and concise information on not only canning, but dehydrating, freezing and myriad other food storage and peak oil survival information.
And now that we're up to date on my weekend, how was yours? Hope it was as fun and productive as mine.
Till tomorrow.
P~

Last nights harvest

I realize that I am a little late with this, seeing as how it was yesterdays harvest, but I didn't have a chance to post yesterday; the harvest was a good one though.
In the picture you can see from front to back, jalapenos, anaheim chilies, yellow pear tomatoes, Zuchinni, black beauty bell peppers, large cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, green bell peppers, artichoke, cucumber, heirloom swiss chard, and green beans hiding in the back. I think that is all of them.

The big surprises this year were the green bell peppers, which I have grown every year, and which every year I have been very unhappy with. This year I am very very happy with them. The only difference that I can assume may have made the difference with them is that the drip system that I set up earlier for our vacation this spring does not water over the plant, but at it's base. In years previous I have found that my peppers get the white sunburns on the sun facing parts. I think this is due to the water pooling in the dips of the pepper and refracting the sun on them, thus burning them.

The other big surprise that I've had this year has been the artichokes. Last year we planted one just to see if it'd grow and it did, and toward the end of the year we got one tiny artichoke off of it; whoopee! This year I tried planting two plants and got them in the ground earlier in the season and these two are the 4th and 5th we've taken from them and there are a couple more on the plant. As we go along, they also seem to get bigger, and more tightly compacted more similar to the ones you might find at the grocery. My experiment for them this fall, will be to see if I can over winter the plants. In CA where I grew up, they are a perennial and get to be quite big if you let them, and will carry a lot of 'chokes per plant at one time. I am going to try a method that I saw italian families in New York use to over winter fig trees. I will pack the plant in straw, layers carefully mounding over the crown of the plant. Then wrap it in burlap and plastic to support it. It may not work, I don't really know, but that's the best part of gardening I think, trying out ideas, and passing them along. It'll be worth it if it does work though with early and plentiful artichokes.

My dissappointments this year have been the pumpkins again. I don't understand what the difficulty is with growing these d**n plants are, but I just don't seem programmed to do it. The only ones I have every gotten and the only ones that I have thus far this year are the wild volunteer plants that I can't get rid of. That's the other great thing about gardening, there's always next year to try again!
May your garden be green and your fruits sweet!
P~