Garden is Slacking Off

Sorry to be a slacker about blogging, but this week has been full of recovery from the kitchen remodel and catching up on all the things I didn't do because I was remodeling.  Like laundry and dishes and cleaning house.

The garden has been rather unproductive too.  The peas are done, but the eggplants and peppers and winter squashes have nothing to harvest yet.  Right now the only things coming out of the garden are a few beans (the Royal Burgundy are still producing like crazy, Fortex is a smaller harvest but still going), cucumbers that have slowed down since their initial burst of fruits, a zucchini here and there, and a handful of tomatoes each week.  I am so sad that after all of the work I put into the garden this year the weather has nearly shut down tomato, eggplant, squash and pepper production completely. 

Surprisingly the jalapenos have quite a few fruits ready... but with no tomatoes for salsa making I'm just not sure what to do with them.  My family just isn't into spicy stuff.

I did can some pickle relish earlier this week, and one quart of dill pickles.  It's my first attempt at pickles, so I'm letting them rest before trying them and hoping that the recipe worked out well.  If anyone has an awesome dill pickle recipe for whole pickles I'd love it if you'd share, I'm always on the hunt for great, tested, and approved recipes.

 That's about all I have to report today, hope everyone has a lovely day.

Bean There, Done That: A Bean Review

Here's my review of the green bean varieties I planted this year.

Top: Speedy.  Bottom: Royal Burgundy.

I planted three varieties of beans this year; Speedy bush, Royal Burgundy bush, and Fortex pole.  On the whole, all three had excellent germination rates.  All three grew at nearly the same pace, the RB had the first beans ready, followed a day or so later by the Speedy, and several days later by the Fortex.

My observations (remember this is based on my garden for 2012 and may be completed different in your garden or in a different year) of Fortex:  good flavor, smaller harvests over a longer time period, had more pests (japanese bean beetles, leaf beetles).  I planted equal amounts of each bean type, but the Fortex have produced far fewer beans at this point than the other two varieties.  I would recommend them for fresh eating over freezing or canning, because they are long beans that tend to twist and curl and come in small batches over a longer period of time.

Speedy is a bush bean with an upright and very small habit.  From what I could see no pests seemed to care too much for them, the beetles preferred the Fortex, and the slugs preferred the Royal Burgundy.  The beans on these came in all at once and had a very uniform straight 4" pod.  I can't say that the flavors of the beans were noticeably different to me, but I'm not really a bean connoisseur either.  They tasted fine.  I would recommend Speedy specifically for canning.  The pods were consistently straight and just long enough to fit a pint jar, and since they were all harvestable within about a week a large planting would supply all of your canned bean needs in one fell swoop.  

Royal Burgundy  is another bush bean, but with a much more spread out, almost vining, habit.  The slugs loved these, but they were not bothered by the beetles.  More effort is needed in the harvesting of RB because of the tangled vines, it's easy to miss beans hiding in the foliage.  The primary difference from Speedy is that the beans of RB come in over a longer time period, but they are far more productive.  Again, the flavor seems fine to me, I can't say that it lacks compared to the others.  Despite the slug damage I have gotten nearly twice as many beans from RB so far as I have from the other two varieties put together.  The beans are purple and have a tendency to curl and come in all different sizes and shapes.  This habit means i would not suggest them for canning.  But for a frozen bean or for fresh eating they are fine.  

One day's harvest of beans, showing the difference in quantity between varieties.

 So that's my review.  If you have a favorite bean variety I'd love to hear about it, I'm always looking for more to test out.

Slacker Blogger = Harvest Tuesday

This post was meant to be for Harvest Monday... but I got distracted by Legos and never wrote it.

Raspberry Jam!

 I started out my week's harvest by heading back to the farm to pick raspberries.  Then I made up 14 jars of raspberry jam and 2 jars of raspberry sauce (for mixing into yogurt and stuff).  I'm hoping that the raspberry and strawberry jams together will keep us in jam until next year; I am really tired of picking berries now.

Peas and strawberries.

 The sugar snap peas are finally piled with fat pods, and the snow peas are just starting to have harvestable pods ready too.  Yesterday I picked 1 1/2 quarts of them for my mom.  Friday I picked another quart of sugar snaps for my trip south to visit friends, and Wednesday I picked half a quart.  Peas are one of my favorite things to grow in the garden, especially since the snow and sugar snaps are so expensive to buy at the store.  Shelling peas just don't seem worth it though, they are cheap and it would take up a lot of space to grow enough of them.  Somehow I ended up with one shelling pea plant in my sugar snaps though, so now amid my 63 sugar snap plants there is one shelling pea plant hiding.  I'd just pull it out but they are a tangled mass now, so instead I have to watch out for the pods and separate them from the others.  It's no fun eating sugar snaps and then accidentally biting into the tough, tasteless pod of a shelling pea.
 The strawberries above are from the yard, picked yesterday.  They went into a gallon bag and into the freezer, I'll continue to add to this bag until it's full then start a new one if they are still producing.  Not sure I'll get two bags though, the strawberries are definitely starting to wind down.

More peas, and a cabbage

 The Parel cabbages are just finishing up, I've picked 3 already.  They are about a pound each and very space-saving.  I find them to be excellent since we rarely manage to use up a whole large cabbage before it goes bad.  These are a one dish cabbage.  The combination of slugs, earwigs, and cabbage loopers meant i lost more than a few leaves to insect damage, but the centers of the heads were untouched and perfectly lovely.  I'm not sure how much longer the Derby Day cabbages will go, the heads are about the size of baseballs and very firm but they are supposed to get much larger than the Parel.

Pearl onions, Alex's carrots, cabbage, and lettuces.

 The bonus to Oregon being among the three states in the Union that are not swelteringly hot right now, is that I still have lettuce!  In fact, I haven't lost a single lettuce plant to bolting this year.  The only thing that has bolted in my garden is the cilantro, but that's to be expected.  Of course, the downside to that is that the eggplants and peppers (my biggest heat-loving plants) are incredibly sad, and I'm beginning to lose hope that they will recover from this.  If I had known what the weather was going to be like this summer I would've grown spinach, and much more leaf and stem crops and less heading and fruiting crops.  Oh well, you know what they say about hindsight.

Canning Education

Today I took the National Center for Home Food Preservation free educational course on canning.  Since it was free I figured it was worth the time to learn something new and double check my knowledge of canning safety and standards. 

The reading was pretty brief and included safety information and links to canning competition judging standards.  It included how to care for and maintain pressure canners, and where to go to get pressure gauges checked; and water bath canning do's and dont's.  Considering it only took about an hour to do all the reading and quizzes, it was well worth the time to learn some new things.

If you have never canned foods, or are unsure of the hows and whys of canning safety, or if you want to branch out from water bath to pressure canning and aren't sure what you need please go sign up for the course.  It never hurts to expand your knowledge.

End Of May: Garden Update

I haven't posted in over a week, partly because I've had visitors coming and going, and partly because the garden hasn't done much in that week.  I harvested several more heads of lettuce, and some kale and chard that I sauteed up and threw in the freezer for another time.  There are still no ripe strawberries or peas and the anticipation of them is killing me.  I did pull enough lettuce to get my two earliest tomato plants into the garden finally, both are Oregon Spring and one is already flowering.  Sadly it also suffered a bit of sunburn during the hot days a few weeks ago.

Flowers on Oregon Spring tomato.

The garden as a whole is getting rather crowded.  Not so crowded that the plants are suffering, so I think my spacing is okay, but the carrots and onions are starting to get shoved aside by the cabbage leaves.  The good thing about spacing things so closely is that there's very little bare dirt, which reduces weeds, and the shade of the plants helps keep moisture in without needing mulch.  The bad thing is that sometimes your cabbage gets a little overzealous and completely smothers your carrots.

The garden is getting crowded.

 The broccoli are finally getting some heads on, I wish I had enough room to let them keep growing after the main heads are harvested, but I will likely get one large head each and then rip them out to make room for the tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.

Broccoli head.  It had better get bigger than this!

 Despite the damage done by slugs, we are still swimming in lettuce.  Sadly, because there are no tomatoes and carrots and other such things, and I refuse to go buy them when we'll have some of our own soon... I have been struggling with making salads.  Plus, the lettuce are so pretty!  Especially the ruffly Red Sails next to Salad Bowl and the tall straight green of Valmaine.  All of these varieties ended up being delicious too.  I was very happy with my mixed lettuce seed, except that it was mixed so I couldn't control the proportion of each variety to each other.  I ended up with 2 Red Sails, 4 Salad Bowl/Slo-Bolt (I can't tell the difference!), 6 Valmaine, and like 20 Buttercrunch! 

Lettuces are too pretty to pull... just can't bring myself to do it yet.

 My little boy, Alex, has an amazing green thumb.  He was the one who planted the sunflowers last year that grew over 14 feet tall.  This year he planted some carrots in one of the whiskey barrels.  They are doing much better than mine, though I did have to thin them a bit.  Every day he goes out to check on his carrots and says "They are doin' good!"  He's so excited for them to get big enough to eat after all this waiting.

Alex's carrots.

 My brother informed me that it was way beyond time for me to fill up my potato buckets, so I scooped in more soil to a few inches below the tops of the plants.  I'm still kind of winging it on the potatoes, I just plan to keep them alive this year... I'll work on improving my harvest next time. 

Potato pots, potted kale and more lettuces in the whiskey barrel.

 The pumpkin bed is uncovered, and the beans are putting on their second set of leaves.  Soon enough the entire corner where the pumpkin bed is will be a wall of green, with piles of fresh green and purple beans coming in.

The pumpkin bed; pumpkins, zucchini, pole beans in back, and bush beans.

Finally, my stockpile of canned goods from last year has been reduced to 2 jars of applesauce, 1 bread and butter pickles, 1 pickle relish, 5 jars of strawberry jam, and 1 freezer jam.  Time for the last minute push to get things finished off before the restocking begins.  Guess we'll be eating a lot of PB&J in the next few weeks.  I made a total of 41 jars and frozen 1/2 pints of strawberry jam last year; I'm thinking that worked out to just about right.  Though this year I'll be doing more freezer jams and less canned, they are so much easier.

Soon enough the sun will be back full force and plant growth will take off again!  Can barely contain my excitement!

For Food Preservation, Go To Georgia?

While at the farmer's market this weekend I had a few questions for the Master Gardeners and Preservers there.  Usually, I see their stall and completely draw a blank in regards to what I planned to ask them.  (I also never remember to bring my knives to the market to have them sharpened. Boo.)

Since I was posting this week about preserving brassicas I wanted to ask if they had any ideas beyond my own.  They didn't.  Though they did tell me that the standards for all home canning and food preserving are determined... in Georgia.  Specifically at the University of Georgia, so for those looking to learn the details of food preserving from a legitimate source that sets the national standard, check out the University of Georgia Extension Service Food Preservation Page.

I plan to spend some time there and bookmark it in my recipe folder so that I will have all the safety standards at hand when doing my home preserving.

*In case you don't about Extension Services: every state has an Extension Service, the job of the Service is to provide gardeners and agriculturists with information on pests, plants, diseases, and climate that is specific to their area.  Some states offer a Master Gardener certification as well that allows people to attend classes and learn about agriculture in their area, sometimes this course is paid for straight out and other times it can be discounted by volunteering in the community, as part of the Extension Service, to answer questions of other gardeners.  Check out your local Extension Service to find out more about what they can offer to help you as a budding gardener.

Cooking With Coles

Some of my favorite ways to eat broccoli, and cauliflower are fresh from the garden in salads or as a vegetable tray, or steamed lightly as a side dish.  Obviously those are the easiest ways to make them, but sometimes you have to get creative to get a whole harvest eaten before it's too late; or you need to preserve them for later in the year.

My all-around favorite way to use up brassicas is Colcannon.  Colcannon is traditionally made from mashed potatoes and kale (or cabbage), with scallions, butter, salt and pepper added. It can contain other ingredients such as milk, cream, leeks, onions and chives.  It is an Irish food, and is traditionally served on Halloween.

• 1 pound cabbage, broccoli, kale, cauliflower
• 1 pound potatoes
• 2 leeks
• 1 cup milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 pinch ground mace
• 1/2 cup butter

1. In a large saucepan, boil brassicas until tender; remove and chop or blend well. Set aside and keep warm. Boil potatoes until tender. Remove from heat and drain.
2. Chop leeks, green parts as well as white, and simmer them in just enough milk to cover, until they are soft.
3. Season and mash potatoes well. Stir in cooked leeks and milk. Blend in the vegetables and heat until the whole is a pale green fluff. Make a well in the center and pour in the melted butter. Mix well.

Colcannon pretty much amounts to mashed potatoes and veg.  It is very tasty and can use up pretty much any cole crops you have in excess, it also freezes well for use during the winter when you may feel like something warm and hearty but not feel like spending the time to cook it.

Since I usually eat my broccoli fresh or steamed with little additional flair I don't have a broccoli-only recipe to share, but the recipe below looks good and i plan to try it out when the broccoli are ready.

Awesome Broccoli-Cheese Casserole

For a change in tempo, this is a spicy recipe from India for cauliflower.  The recipe I found online has several vegetables in it, but the proportions can easily be adjusted, for cauliflower bhaji just replace the potatoes with more cauliflower.

Indian Vegetable Bhaji

No one in my family likes coleslaw, except my husband.  He is a slaw fiend and after much browsing last year I found the perfect recipe for him.  There are several comments about this recipe being too sweet, so if you try it you may want to put in about half the sugar initially, then add a bit and taste until it is the sweetness you prefer.  Coleslaw is a great way to use up cabbage, especially since cabbage doesn't freeze well.

Sweet Restaurant Slaw

For fresh use these recipes are some different ways to use your harvests.  The colcannon, bhaji, and casserole should even freeze well.  Now what do you do when you have so much harvest you can't eat it all before it goes bad? Or if you want to save some for later in the year?

 Cabbage is not very freezable as far as I know, it can be preserved as sauerkraut though.  I've never tried this, but my sister has and apparently sauerkraut is a hit or miss.  It is made by fermenting and canning the shredded cabbage.  If you have a lot of cabbage and no way to eat it before it spoils give sauerkraut a shot, but be warned it may just spoil rather than coming out right.  Cabbage can be frozen in recipes, like colcannon.

Broccoli and cauliflower should be picked early in the day, washed thoroughly in cold water, chopped into small pieces (florets), then blanched for 1-2 minutes in boiling water.  The broccoli will turn a bright green.  Immediately move the florets to ice water for a couple minutes to stop the cooking process.  Drain the florets and place in freezer bags; if you want to do gallon freezer bags, freeze the florets in a single layer on cookie sheets first then bag them.  This keeps them from becoming one big mass of frozen vegetable, and makes removing a serving size easier.  Label with the name of the vegetable, variety (if you are doing more than one variety), and the date. 

One other way to preserve cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower is as pickled vegetables.  Picalilli is a well-known type of pickled mixed vegetables.  There are dozens of different recipes available for pickled vegetables, personally I'm not a fan.  Though I do like Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables, but they don't help much when it comes to preservation.

A good book to check out for recipes and directions for preserving any harvest is Putting Food By, which even includes directions on root cellaring and drying brassicas.

And lastly, since I didn't discuss it on the culture post we will cover seed saving from brassicas.  After flowering, leave flower stalks on the plant until they make seed pods that are nearly dry, before they dry completely cut the stalks off and place in a large paper bag, seed pods down.  Leave the bag in a warm, dry area for a few weeks, you'll know they are ready when a gentle touch will cause seeds to drop from them.  Strip the seeds and pods off the stem into the paper bag.  Remove the stem and shuffle the rest around in the bag, this should loosen up any seeds still attached to their pods.  Get a clean dry bucket and set it outside on a day with a nice breeze.  Slowly pour the seeds and chaff into the bucket from about a foot above it.  As they pour the chaff will be blown away by the wind and the seeds will drop into the bucket.  If you still see chaff, dump the bucket back into the bag and repeat pouring.  Pretty quickly you will see only seeds.  Store seeds in a paper envelope or bag in a cool dry place, labeled with the species, variety, and year.  Brassica seeds will keep for up to 3 years.

If you have a brassica recipe or preservation technique you'd like to share, please leave a comment below.

Drowning in Berries

I have already discussed strawberries to some extent, how they grow and how to care for them in Strawberries, The Ultimate Food Crop.  I did not include recipes and preserving directions though since I was pressed for time that day.  So today we will cover what to do with all of those strawberries.

The first few days of finding ripe strawberries will likely be filled with fresh eating, strawberry shortcakes, and sliced strawberries in your cereal bowl or on your salad... but a few days later you'll find the novelty of it wears thin and long for a way to save those flavors for the winter months.  Luckily by this time your strawberries should be in full fruit.  If your patch is small and you are still only harvesting a few berries here and there, go out and pick some at a local farm and use them for these recipes.

There are two primary ways to preserve your strawberries, prepared or frozen.  Some ways to prepare them include making jams, pies, or syrups.  If this is too much hassle it's often easier to just wash and hull the berries, then lay them in a thin layer on a cookie sheet, freeze them like this and then bag them up.  This method of freezing keeps the berries from freezing into one solid lump, instead you can remove what you need to defrost from the bag and put the rest back in the freezer.

Making prepared strawberry recipes is more time consuming, but pays off when you can pull a strawberry-rhubarb pie out of the freezer at Thanksgiving and throw it in the oven right away, or pop the lid off a jar of strawberry jam and enjoy the taste of summer in February.

Jams are what most people think of when they consider preserving strawberries.  They are incredibly easy to make, keep well without needing to be pressure canned and are a product used in most households year round.  There are a number of recipes for jams available and depending on your own tastes and preferences you can choose the one that best suits you.  A standard jam recipe such as is found inside a pectin package can have up to twice as much sugar in it as berries; this will give you a very sweet jam and sometimes sets too firmly leaving you rolling a chunk of strawberry Jell-O across a slice of bread. 

Many pectin packages also include reduced sugar recipes, these cut down on the sugar which in turn can effect the jam's firmness and leave it runny.  They are not as sweet and allow more of the berry flavor through, however the reduced sugar is also more likely to cause the jam to brown in the jar.

I am still trying to find a perfect canned pectin jam recipe, each year I try a few in hopes of making the perfect jam.  Freezer jam on the other hand is so simple my toddler can make it.  Select a pectin designed for making freezer jams, mash up berries and scoop the required amount of berries into a bowl.  Mix in required amount of sugar and pectin for a few minutes allowing it to dissolve completely.  The pectin brand I use calls for 1 2/3 cups fruit, 2/3 cups sugar, and 2 Tbsp pectin.  This makes 16 oz. of jam, which you then scoop into freezer safe containers (leaving head room for expansion) and put into the freezer up to a year.  Freezer jams aren't cooked so they tend to be runnier than cooked jams, but being uncooked also means more of the bright fresh strawberry flavor.  Of course to make freezer jam you also have to have a large enough freezer to hold it, and once it's opened freezer jam will spoil faster than a cooked jam.

Last year I bought Ball RealFruit Pectin in "flex batch" containers that turned out to be really helpful with making small batch jams.  Instead of using an entire pectin packet to make a huge batch of jam I can measure out how much pectin I need based on how many berries I have on hand. 

I also found a pectin-free jam recipe last year that I had to try purely because it meant one less thing to buy in order to make my own food.  The pectinless recipe came from Clearly Delicious:An Illustrated Guide to Preserving, Pickling, and Bottling by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz.  It requires a bit more work, but I definitely appreciate being able to make jam without running to the store for pectin.  For this recipe you need 4 quarts of strawberries (4 lbs.) crushed, 2 Tbsp. lemon juice.  Simmer these until berries are soft.  Add 7 1/2 cups warmed sugar over low heat and stir until well mixed.  Increase the heat and boil rapidly without stirring for 15 minutes or until it reaches setting point.  Candy thermometer should read 220 degrees.  Skim off froth, cool slightly then pour into sterilized jars and water bath process them.  I don't think my jam using this recipe cooked quite long enough, it turned out a little bit runny, but it tasted fabulous and I can appreciate that this recipe contained far less sugar than most of the others.

One thing to note about strawberry jams: if berries aren't completely crushed the air pockets inside them will cause them to float to the surface of your jam and this can make them discolor leaving you with unappealing brown berries at the top of the jar.  Crush them well to prevent this.

Looking for a strawberry rhubarb pie recipe (since I have no rhubarb yet I have never made one) I found this site and was amused by the author, plus it links to the recipe she used.

 You can also make up these pies into single serving pie-in-a-jar, for days when you have no one to share with.  A recipe for this can be found at Adventures in Sustainability and is usable for any fruit pie.  Be sure to tell her who sent you. ;)

So there you have it, some easy and some not-so-easy ways to deal with excess strawberries.  If they survive long enough to be "excess".

Ask and Thou Shalt Receive

Please feel free to make any suggestions on topics to cover in the comments (which I believe I have finally gotten fixed).  I do plan to cover as much as possible in culture, recipes, and general gardening, but if readers have suggestions of what they'd like to see I'd be happy to work on those first.  Also, any questions regarding particular topics will be responded to as fast as possible, I would love to have reader input and am happy to help with any questions or concerns.  Even if that means referring you to another website for guidance.

Make a Note

Well, the beautiful weather has gone back to a moist gray chill.  I suppose I will be back in the house for another week or two.  That's okay though, since I wanted to bring up the topic of notes.

Taking notes on your garden seems like a waste of time, but in reality it is rather hard to remember the date and conditions of planting a specific seed for a year or more.  As your garden gains more plant varieties and you start to push the limits of what you know, it's important to write these things down so that next year as you select tomato seeds you can refer back and remember that Brandywines were good producers, but Legend struggled in the bed it was in.  You can make a list of what seed you have at the end of summer, so your new order in Spring doesn't accidentally double up.  You can look back at some misconceptions you had and remind yourself not to do those things again.

I tend to get so excited about gardening by springtime that I put plants into the ground too early, or start them in the house too early and have sad spindly plants by the time the weather has warmed enough for them to go outside.  I have to make a note to remind myself that curcubits don't actually like the weather in Oregon in May, they get too cold and wet and end up with mildew issues.  If I use this information next year I'm more likely to hold off until June.  I also keep notes on what seeds were planted inside, outside, and at different times; what day they were ready for harvest; what sprouted well and what didn't; and what the weather was like.

Taking notes is like slowly building up a Farmer's Almanac that is based on your specific location, crops, and experiences.  You may plant rhubarb this year, have it die, then 6 or 7 years down the road think, "Oh, I should plant some rhubarb, I like rhubarb!" but not remember the circumstances that led to its death the last time and end up having the same thing happen again.

Note taking doesn't have to be really intensive, if you're a journaler by nature keep a little leather bound journal next to your garden gloves, or keep a cheap spiral bound notebook if you prefer.  If you're a blogger, type it all out in a blog.  I am lucky to have an iPhone that I keep on me nearly always, I use the Notes app to type in notes on what day it is, what the weather has been like, what seeds/plants are growing and how they fare, and this year I will add to that what sort of harvest I see from each.  I almost prefer to do a voice-to-text note taking; I am not a skilled typist and even less so on the iPhone keyboard, it's tedious to take notes that way but it's always at hand and is durable.  Plus I back my notes up with Dropbox so if my phone is lost or damaged I will have a backup copy safe and sound.

Sample of notes in the Notes app.

Note Dos and Don'ts:

-Do date your entries!
-Don't write a book, this is just some notes not a novel.
-Do list plant varieties as well as types, and anything special about them.  Indigo Rose (determinate, blue, slicer, hybrid) tomato produced 3lbs. by July 8th.  Oregon Spring (determinate, slicer, hybrid) produced 5lbs by July 8th, first tomato of the year ready on June 12th!
-Don't keep notebook in your bookshelf in the office or library.  Keep it close to hand to ensure you will keep it up to date.
-Do keep up with note taking throughout the year.  How much harvest and how long your preserved harvest lasts will be helpful in deciding how much to plant next time.  Jan. 31st 2012, still have 14 jars strawberry jam, and 20 jars freezer jam; ran out of frozen strawberries.  40 jams is too many, freeze more whole berries next time. 
-Don't forget to keep track of trials on new things! April 2nd, 2012 laid pennies around two cabbages to test for slug repellent, check back in two weeks.  April 16th, 2012 cabbages surrounded in pennies show less slug damage than others, will continue with penny use.

It's Pizza Night!

Garden veggie pizzas are another recipe worth making.  Pizza cravings get out of control some days, but it's expensive, full of stuff that's bad for us, and lacks any nutritional value (my kids are straight up pepperoni eaters so don't even get veggies with their pizza).
To make pizzas throughout the year you need to plan during the vegetable season.  Make up some batches of spaghetti sauce, and blanch, chop/slice, and freeze some veggies in small portions.  Or you can get crazy and make tons of pizzas up in one day and freeze them in gallon bags for frozen pizzas ready to bake.

Blurry, but this one day's harvest is enough tomatoes to make a whole batch of sauce.

Garden topping options include:
-spinach
-kale
-tomatoes
-mushrooms (trade with your neighbor who grows shiitakes in a closet)
-sweet peppers
-jalapenos or other spicy peppers
-onions
-fresh basil
-fresh herbs in general
-artichoke
-garlic
-zucchini

I wouldn't necessarily build a pizza with all of these toppings, but you could pick 3 or 4 for each pizza you make.  Some ideas: artichoke, zucchini, mushroom, and chicken with pesto sauce;  mozzarella, kale, tomato, fresh basil on tomato sauce;  barbecue sauce, jalapeno, sweet pepper, onion, hot Italian sausage.  That one's for the spicy fans.

Not all veggies work out well for toppings, the ones that don't you save for your sauce.  While pizza sauce is primarily tomatoes, it won't hurt it to work in some other veggies to give it character and nutrition.  Basil, oregano, onion, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, and bell peppers (any color) are pretty much expected to be in a good spaghetti or pizza sauce.  Some you might not think of though are: eggplant, this mild flavored vegetable thickens sauces and is decidedly an acceptable addition to many Italian foods; carrots/sweet potatoes, these orange veggies add beta carotene and can help to sweeten a too-acid sauce without adding sugar, they also won't change the color of your sauce noticeably; summer squash, my stepmom believes these belong in everything, cooked into tomato sauces they add nutrition without making a drastic change in flavor; kale/spinach/chard, unlike some greens, these have decent cooked properties, they are full of nutrition and pizza may be your only chance to get your kids to eat them (use sparingly to avoid the obvious color change).

Pizza crust is easy, any bread machine comes with some kind of pizza crust recipe, or you can pick up a Boboli or refrigerated tube of crust.  I prefer to make my own in the bread maker or by hand from scratch.  Recipes are all over the internet for pizza crust, just pick one and give it a shot.

Sauce recipes are much more challenging.  You have a few options in sauce, you can do home canned pizza sauce, or a spicy version of home canned, or a pesto sauce, or a white (alfredo) sauce.  If your goal is to use up your garden produce choose one of the first three.  If your goal is to keep the nutrition content high and fat and calorie content low for your pizzas, also choose one of the first three.  Alfredo sauce has it's place, but on top of a pile of empty calories, topped with a pile of saturated fat... it probably isn't worth it.  It would be delicious over homemade whole wheat linguine with fresh spring vegetables though!  I am a foodie, but I am not a chef.  Sadly my mouth's idea of delicious and my hand's ability to cook often end up on separate sides of a cookbook.  So we keep it simple around here.

To make a basic tomato sauce:

Get together enough tomatoes to fill a glass baking dish about 8x11, use primarily saucing tomatoes.  Saucing tomatoes are meatier than slicers or cherries, they tend to have smaller seed pockets and less juice to them.  Heat a small pan of water to boiling, with a slotted spoon dip each tomato in the boiling water for a few seconds then drop in a bowl of cold water.  This is totally a two person job and having a helper makes it go much faster.  Once each tomato has cooled you can easily cut off the stem and core, then slip the skin off the tomato.  Chop each tomato into large chunks and toss into the roasting pan.  Don't worry about all the juice and seeds on the cutting board, in fact squeeze the juice out of some of the bigger tomatoes before chopping.  All of the juice and seeds will just make it take longer to thicken your sauce.  If you want to add red pepper to your sauce it's a good idea to core and quickly chop them as well to roast with the tomatoes.  Set your oven to about 350F,  roast the tomatoes for an hour or so.  When they are done they will be tender and have developed that fabulous roasted vegetable smell.  Nearly all of the vegetables can be roasted like this before being added to a saucepan for simmering, I don't recommend it for greens, mushrooms or herbs though.

When the pan of tomatoes is roasted, pour off some of the liquid at the bottom of the pan.  Chop some onion and garlic.  Get a large stock pot or 6-8 quart pot and heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in it.  Sweat the garlic and onion in oil until it is soft, and gently browned.  Taking the time to do this will give these aromatics a sweeter flavor.  Pour in your roasted tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and any other veggies.  Give this mix a quick twirl with a stick blender (or blend briefly in a regular blender before adding to the pot).  Cover and let simmer about 20 minutes.

Homemade spaghetti sauce on the stove

After the 20 minutes is up, blend to a nice smooth puree.  Your sauce still won't have much flavor, but it should smell great.  Add in dried herbs: bay leaves, Italian seasoning, and salt (lots of salt!).  Remember this is a big batch of sauce so add quite a bit of seasoning to give it the flavor you want.  Allow the sauce to simmer for another 10 minutes, then taste and add more seasoning as needed.  Lastly, add about a cup of red wine (capestrano, zinfandel, or anything that isn't sweet is fine), and throw in some fresh basil.  If your sauce still tastes too acidic, add a couple tablespoons of sugar.  Uncover and turn the heat down to a low simmer, let the sauce cook down to the desired consistency.  Double check that it tastes right and salt, sugar or season until the flavor is right.  Remove the bay leaves.  This sauce is pretty basic and can be jazzed up when you are ready to use it for lasagnas, spaghetti, pizza, or in a meat ragu or whatever other recipe you have.  Italian seasonings can be skipped over also to make an even more adaptable tomato sauce.

You are then able to can your tomato sauce using a water bath method, but be sure to add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the bottom of each pint jar to ensure the acidity and prevent botulism.**  Or you can scoop the sauce into freezer safe containers the appropriate size for one meal and freeze up to a year.

**Disclaimer: AnywhereEden shall not be responsible for any illness or loss due to home canning and preserving.  If you plan to do home canning get the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving for full instructions on safe home preserving.  I am not a pro at canning, please be advised that tomatoes border on low acid and it is always safer to pressure can or freeze them.  Adding acid will help prevent botulism but is never a guarantee, and always follow canning safety measures.  Keep jars, lids, and rings clean; throw away any jars with broken seals, visible mold, bulging lids, or strange smells.  If it doesn't look right... throw it away! Don't take the risk of eating spoiled foods. Learn about botulism here.

Save some time and freeze sauce in meal-sized containers.

Pesto Sauce:

Pesto is an easy sauce to make, it's delicious and recipes for basil pesto can be adapted to make other herb pestos, if you've made pesto in the past and been saddened to see it oxidize (turn brown), you can prevent this by adding some lemon juice to the pesto and also by not allowing it to get too hot.  Tossing fresh pesto into hot pasta is guaranteed to make it change color, instead let the pasta cool a bit before adding the pesto and it shouldn't brown as much.  Some grocery stores' canning aisles carry oxidation prevention agents that may work to improve this but I have never tried one so can't advise regarding their effectiveness.

2  cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
3/4  cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4  cup olive or vegetable oil
3  cloves garlic
1/4  cup pine nuts
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

   1. In blender or food processor, place all ingredients.
   2. Cover; blend on medium speed about 3 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape sides, until smooth.
   3. Spoon into 8 oz. or smaller freezer containers and freeze up to one year.


After a long day of making sauce, the perfect way to end your day is to throw together your pizza crusts, toppings, and sauce into a garden pizza feast.

Enjoy!

And What To Do With All That Plenty... Pumpkin Muffin Recipe

This blog is intended to not only discuss gardening but to offer recipes and techniques for preserving your harvest.  Since it is January and miserably dismal outside I'll take this time to share a recipe that can be done with already preserved pumpkins.  While carving pumpkins are edible, they aren't very good to cook with, they can be cured and carved but I recommend Sugar Pie, Rouge Vif de'Tempes (Cinderella) or another eating variety of pumpkin for roasting.  Roasting and preserving directions also apply to any hard-rinded winter squash.

There are a few ways to keep pumpkins once they are harvested: one is to cure them.  If the skins of the pumpkin are undamaged (scarring is fine, but no fresh scrapes or cuts) you can cure it by letting it sit in a warm, dry area where it won't get damaged. If skins have fresh damage you will have to roast and process them immediately.  If you notice blemishes in the skin or mold growth your pumpkin isn't curing properly and needs to be processed into the freezer or canned immediately. Remove any areas that appear to have mold or spoilage.  Then follow the process for roasting.

If the skins toughen and the stems dry brown in about 10 days, your pumpkin has safely cured and will keep like this for several months.

Roasting:  You can roast your pumpkins directly after harvest, or cure them and roast them at a later date.  If you have a big harvest I can pretty much guarantee you will be sick of roasting pumpkins long before you are done, so cure as many as possible.  Curing pumpkins also increases their Vitamin A content.  Cut off any damaged areas of the fruit, cut it in half or quarters (depending on size) to fit in roasting pan.  Scrape out seeds and guts, discard guts; you can either add the seeds to your compost pile, dry them for planting next year, or roast them for eating.  Preheat your oven to about 350F.  Depending on what you intend to do with your pumpkin it may be worthwhile to butter or season the halves before roasting.  For pie, and other sweet making, I like to sprinkle the raw pumpkin with pumpkin pie spice.  Then roast in the oven for 1-2 hours or more, depending on the size of the pumpkin, until the meat is tender.  Let cool for half an hour, then scrape the meat away from the rind.  Use a blender or stick blender to puree the pumpkin meat until smooth.  Lastly, place puree in a colander lined with cheesecloth for 15-20 minutes to drain out excess water (this can be done later, such as after defrosting if you choose to freeze the puree).  The resulting puree can then be used right away in any pumpkin recipe, about two and a half cups is equivalent to a can of Libby pumpkin puree from the store; or it can be frozen for later use, generally in 3 or 4 cup containers.  I have never tried canning pumpkin because I don't have a pressure canner and have a healthy fear of botulism, but I'm sure it's possible.

So that is how to process pumpkins (and other winter squashes).  Here is a fabulously delicious recipe for your home grown pumpkin that my family will gobble up before it even cools.  I don't remember where the recipe came from so if someone knows my source please let me know so I can give credit where it is due.

Pumpkin muffin, served warm with butter is best.

Pumpkin Muffins - preheat oven to 350F
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups pumpkin puree
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 lg. eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon

Stir together flour, baking powder, salt, spice, baking soda, and cinnamon.  In separate bowl, mix puree, oil, eggs, and sugar until well blended.  Gently fold together wet and dry ingredients until well moistened.  (As with all muffins, stir gently or the muffins will become tough).  Scoop into muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake at 350F 25-30 minutes.  Serve warm with butter.  Makes 1 dozen.

How Much Harvest?

If you are new to gardening and want to grow some food this is the post for you.
Planting a tomato plant or two is nice and you get a few tomatoes, if you don't kill them somehow, but how do you know how much is right for you and your family?  When space is at a premium this can be an important decision, it can determine whether you will have room for tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, bell peppers and cucumbers... or just enough room for tomatoes.  Having too few tomatoes may mean you have enough for hamburgers one night, but not for salads the next day.  Or that you harvest more than your family can eat fresh, but not enough to make it worth the effort to can salsa.  Having too much of one harvest can mean an overstock of salsa, spaghetti, canned tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato soup, fresh eating tomatoes... you get the idea.  You don't want to waste garden space growing more than you could possibly eat in a year.  Most home canned goods and frozens are only good for a year, and by the next summer you'll have a whole new crop to process.
Tomatoes are a good example for this.  I have a family of four that is not big on vegetable eating, my son is a huge cherry tomato eater, my husband and daughter prefer their tomatoes fresh in their meals, while I like to have salsas, sauces, canned tomatoes, soups, etc. for after the harvest.  My 2011 garden worked out just about perfect giving me a mix of cherry, saucing and slicing tomatoes at a rate of about 4lbs every 4 or 5 days.  When we had an overabundance of slicers I simply seeded them and added them to sauces, when saucers were more productive I would chop them into meals.  The cherry tomatoes were eaten fresh or added to salads.  In total we planted 12 tomato plants with a mix of extra-early to late season, in differing sizes shapes and colors.  We actually ended up short on spaghetti sauce but I gave a lot of tomatoes to my mom because I was sick of processing them.
The tomatoes worked out to 3 plants  per person, which seems to be just right for my family, though not necessarily for yours.  If you are big vegetable eaters, or plan to share a lot of your harvest aim for closer to 5 per person.  If you are overwhelmed with that number you can always post on craigslist that you have too many tomatoes and would love to make a trade with someone who grew too many bell peppers, or share your extras with friends and family.  Around here, summer squash are the most overgrown vegetable (people just don't realize how productive they are) and are nearly impossible to get rid of, but tomatoes, carrots, peppers, corn, and peas are an easy thing to trade with friends and neighbors.
Generally when I'm selecting a new food to grow I put in one or two (if needed for pollination) plants and wait to see what comes of it.  This served me well when my brother insisted I should grow five or six eggplants last year and I decided to leave more cucumber space instead and only plant 2 eggplants.  Those 2 eggplants produced more eggplant than I could have ever managed to eat, luckily my mom took a lot of it off my hands, and meanwhile the extra cucumber space was needed since my pickling cucumbers ended up being completely shaded out by the nearby tomatoes.  For new gardeners this is a great way to practice trial and error too, and may keep you from giving up in disgust when your favorite veggie does poorly the first year you plant it.  When planning your garden, plan many different types of vegetables, in several varieties if possible, plan for them to ripen at different times if you plan to eat them fresh, or all at once for processing big batches.  As exciting as a lush patch of hot chilis may sound, if you won't eat them or don't know someone who will, it's probably not worthwhile to grow them.  And obviously, if you are a massive watermelon eater who simply can't get enough it may be worthwhile to plant several just for yourself.  Keep in mind that perennial fruits and vegetables tend to get bigger or spread over the years too, don't keep investing in blueberry bushes or strawberry plants to fill your garden bed if a few will spread in a year or two and fill it nicely.  Instead use that money to purchase some u-pick berries the first year or two until your patch can keep up with your demands. 
As an example of what can be done in a small garden this is a list of what I planted last year in my 102 square feet.
-one Thai chili plant
-two jalapenos
-two lemon cucumbers
-four slicing cucumbers
-two eggplants
-one small melon
-one luffa
-three pumpkins
-one zucchini
-six marigolds
-four calendula
-about 30 runner beans
-12 tomatoes
-eight pickling cucumbers
-three bell peppers
-eight basil
-six garlic
-24 bush beans
-six mammoth sunflowers
-six celery
-three cabbage
-four broccoli
-24 lettuce
-27 spinach
-12 nasturtiums
-42 peas
-and a handful of carrots

That's over 200 individual plants, of 27 different types of vegetable/flower.  Admittedly there were only a few of each type but they were more than enough to keep my family stocked for the year, with a few exceptions.