Vegetable Garden

Our vegetable garden did rather better than expected this year. It's been a late, cool summer (which seems to have vaporized already) and I didn't figure we'd get much so I've been pleasantly surprised.

I have a hard time estimating how much we've harvested in pounds since it's trickled in little by little. I have about six quarts of pickles in the fridge (bread and butter, sweet and dill), a good bushel of kale blanched and frozen with more on the way, eleven half-pints of pickled beets (chiogga and bull's blood varieties) and approximately three pounds of beets in the freezer.

I'm still waiting on the tomatoes to ripen - pears and beefsteaks. Those won't be more than a few pounds at most (and I'm keeping my recipe for green tomato relish handy.) I have two softball-sized pumpkins I'm babying along (about halfway ripe) as well as two good sized acorn squash that I'm watching closely.

Our pole beans struggled all summer looking yellow and leggy. Now they are a nice dark green and lush. We've picked about half a pound of those with lots more tiny pods on the vines.

I need to work up the nerve and dig up the Potato Experiment.

I read somewhere that you can plant potatoes and then keep raising and filling the container with soil as the plants grow up. I had some Yukon Golds sitting around that were too old to eat so I built a small box and planted them. I started with two layers of boards, then added two more over the course of about two months. The plants have all died back and it's time to dig. It's been raining like crazy the past week so I hope I haven't waited too long.

The crop I'm most hopeful about is the parsnips. Those have done well all summer - at least the plants looked great. They are a very long-season crop - about six months. I can see the shoulders of the parsnips peeking up and they look like they are getting to a good size. They taste better after a frost so I'm going to let them go for a while longer.

I planted a handful other vegetables - cilantro, parsley, dill, a few different kinds of peppers and Valencia and Walla Walla onions. The cilantro grew great but we left it too long and now it's coriander (tasty but we just don't use that much.) Like the pole beans, the parsley lagged behind but is healthy and productive now. I think it wasn't really hot and dry enough weather for the bell peppers but we did get about six cayennes. The onions didn't do didley this year. They barely grew vertically and the bulbs are still size of pearl onions! These were probably too crowded. I bought a flat, one of those undivided trays) rather than individual starts and I don't think I separated them enough.

I had about six carrot plants that I started inside and transplanted. My friend Alix told me that carrots do not like to be transplanted and get pretty twisty and mangled.

Her theory may be correct....

So not a bad garden this year after all. We have about a month left before any serious risk of frost so we aren't done yet.

What were your gardening experiences this year?

Putting Up Fruit

Since I'm more mobile these days, I'm trying to make the best use of my time off work. This weekend, I'm putting up apples and pears.

We are fortunate to have an orchard - well, I say "orchard", it's really just three apple and two pear trees that came with the property. I just like saying “I'll be in the orchard”. I suspect one of the apple trees is a golden delicious but I'm not sure about the other two. We call them "the one with the reddish-green really tart apples" and "the one by the horse pasture”. (I'm not sure what their Latin names are.) I suspect the pear trees are Bartletts.

All the trees produce pretty well but they need serious pruning and thinning: the fruit is plentiful but tends to be small. We'll probably need to have a tree surgeon come out and do the job. (Nurse! A number ten chainsaw, stat!) They have gotten too tall for even my six-foot-three-inch fiance to reach on our tallest ladder.

We are getting toward the end of the season but I think I can still get close to a bushel of apples and probably three bushels of pears. I hate to pass up free food so I have a busy few days ahead of me.

I don't mind some fruit falling to the ground - the slow decay gives that lovely fall-in-the-orchard scent. And the deer get a little buffet and stay away from our garden (such as it is). And the horses next door get a few. And the cows on the other side have learned to come running when anyone walks by. And Henry, our yellow lab, thinks they are quite a treat - I'm sure he'll be confused when the season is over and they are all gone, poor boy!

I have all the equipment (and skills) to can pretty well but the quickest and best route for fruit, I think, is to freeze it. I don't eat a lot of jams and jellies (and JD is diabetic and has to be mindful of his sugar intake) so making pints and pints of preserves isn't going to work for us. I decided to peel, core and toss them in freezer bags. In their unadulterated state, I can decide later on what make with them. (Does this mean I have commitment issues? I can't decide!)

I'm not usually a fan of task-specific kitchen gadgets but I have to say I'm pretty taken with this apple peeler/corer/slicer. 

 

It makes quick work of an apple and also seems to be able to peel pears if they are not too ripe (and soft).  Here's how it works:

1. Spike the apple:

2. Crank the handle and it starts peeling:

3.  Keep cranking 'til it goes all the way through the corer:

4.  Voila! Ready-to-use apple!

The peeler blade arm could use a little adjustment. It has a spring that holds it against the apple and, as it is, takes a pretty thick layer of peel and apple flesh with it. If the spring was looser, the blade would run more lightly over the apple and take a shallower bite (ha) out of it. But what it lacks in economy, it certainly makes up for in efficiency. And when I have four bushels of fruit in front of me, I'm willing to sacrifice a bit!

I cram them all into a bunch of vacuum seal bags and, well, vacuum-seal them. We have a good-sized chest freezer so that will be their home until I get 'round to using them. I've just recently started using the ones from last year to make fruit leather so the vacuum-sealing works well for long-term storage.

I don't worry about the apples turning brown since I figure anything I make with these will involve cooking them which would turn them brown in any case.

So I'm off to pick apples. If you need me, I'll be in the orchard....