Putting to Bed

The day after Ungardening is the Putting to Bed day. Now with the raised beds, we are going to try a little no-till lasagna gardening. Tim was mulching leaves in the lawn, and he rounded up quite a pile with the mower. I went out with the sucker/blower, and chopped them further, using two bags per bed. I think this looks very cozy and almost pretty with the golden brown leaf mulch. And, if I had not just spent half an hour blowing leaves OUT of the garden, I would have been tempted to leave the beds like this. But, I know better, and soon these chopped leaves would have been mixing with our fresh gravel. So, as I laid them down I watered them with the hose.


Then we rounded up Mike, and got out the little tractor for some more mulching. The gates were carefully measured so that the smaller tractor, complete with belly mower, can fit through with a little room to spare. We used up about half of our composted horse manure, throwing down a layer of an inch or so to hold the leaves in place, and get the composting started.

When we were done, it was not quite so pretty, but our beds have been replenished with organic matter, and should be ready to plant in the spring.

And now a little word about pests. This was my view out the window in the morning... 5 turkey jakes, and our truant fawn. He is the child of a doe who just wreaks havoc on our landscaping. Most of the summer I saw him with his grandmother and her two fawns. But quite often he would run through on his own. Why? Because his mother, the no good floozy, was busy wandering about eating my perennials and being a lousy parent. And still he's up to no good, running with the bachelor turkeys. His mother has a price on her head this season. And I expect nothing but trouble in the future from this little guy.

Rototiller and the Marigold Stomp

Today was the big day for "Un-gardening". The tomatoes came out, and everything got cleaned up in preparation for the war against the falling leaves. In the past, this was a pretty labor intensive day. Neighbor Mike and I would roll up the 200 feet of no climb horse fence. Tim and I would pull the T-Posts with the bucket. Then, the rottotilling would begin. The rottotilling was actually the easy part since we had a 5 foot PTO driven tiller for the smaller tractor. But, the rolling of the fence alone diminished the benefits of the tractor tilling.

The garden was beginning to look a little rough with bacterial spec taking over several of the tomato plants, and leaves littering the walk. I started last week picking green tomatoes, and there are ALOT of them. Although they have stopped ripening on the vine in this cooler weather, they will continue to ripen in the dark after you pick them. The ones that don't get made into fried green tomatoes (my favorite dish while watching football) should be individually wrapped in newspaper so they will ripen, and you can continue to enjoy tomatoes for a couple of months. My mother has been known to stretch her tomato season as far as December!










First I went through and removed all of the twisty ties and tags. Next, you pick whatever you intend on saving. Then I began a vigorous pruning, removing all the foliage until all I had left were tomato trunks inside the supports. After the supports were removed, we pulled the roots out. I took the poles out of the pole beans, leaving large, spineless, blobs of foliage.





We filled the tractor bucket with most of the tomato waste and put that on the burn pile. The beans, clover, marigolds, and basil were destined for the compost pile. We have filled this compost tube several times this summer, and it breaks down at an amazing rate leaving plenty of head room. Here's a picture of Tim doing the "marigold stomp" trying to get the last wheelbarrow in. We have plenty of rain fore casted for this week, and I guarantee that tube full of garden trimmings will be reduced by half in a week.






We tried out best to rake up all of the fallen tomatoes, but I guarantee you there will be plenty of Sungold volunteers next year, just like this one which popped up in Mike and Shelly's cucumber bed mid-summer.




When it was all said and done, we were left with a row of parsnips and my fall garden which consists of beans, peas and carrots. I also have half a bed planted with lettuce that is just beginning to poke through the soil.

The garden looks much bigger with all of the beds empty.

Even with the garden gone, we now have to deal with a glut of produce. The best recipe to cope with this is Ratatouille which combines tomatoes, eggplants and summer squash among other things. Really it's a perfect dish for a day like this. Tim calls it "Rototiller" which is a pretty descript name since you chop up everything you find in the garden before you run the tiller through. I mean, what else do you do with a dozen Little Fingers eggplants?



My mother is very good at dealing with these garden combinations. She makes the recipes up as she goes, and she can turn this menagerie...

Into a meal like this....



And furthermore, her husband has adventurous taste buds, and he will eat it.

So for anyone who's interested, here's a recipe for ratatouille. Tim is getting reheated stew for supper, and I'm off to try my hand at frying stuffed squash blossoms!

Ingredients
2 onion, sliced into thin rings
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium eggplant, cubed
2 zucchini, cubed
2 medium yellow squash, cubed
2 green bell peppers, seeded and cubed
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
1 chopped red bell pepper
4 roma (plum) tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
4 sprigs fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Heat 1 1/2 tablespoon of the oil in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until soft.
In a large skillet, heat 1 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil and saute the zucchini in batches until slightly browned on all sides. Remove the zucchini and place in the pot with the onions and garlic.
Saute all the remaining vegetables one batch at a time, adding 1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil to the skillet each time you add a new set of vegetables. Once each batch has been sauteed add them to the large pot as was done in step 2.
Season with salt and pepper. Add the bay leaf and thyme and cover the pot. Cook over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes.
Add the chopped tomatoes and parsley to the large pot, cook another 10-15 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Remove the bay leaf and adjust seasoning.

The Garden Shed

The Garden Shed / Chicken Coop is finished. Tim and I each have one part of the project left. His is the chicken fence, and mine is the window shades in the garden shed to keep it cooler in the summer.

So here is the Before when we moved it from the house next door (that we sold to Mike and Shelly):

And the After:

It has doubled in size, and Tim has finished the walkway and the deck so that we don't have mud splashing up on the siding, and we aren't tracking in all kinds of dirt. You can't imagine how much dirt sticks to dewy work boots. Because of the electric lines being dug in, there has been a nice patch of dirt right in front of the door for months.

See the apple tree in the tube in the foreground? That is one of the scions I sent down to Horse Creek back in the spring of 2009. It is growing by leaps and bounds and we had to add to the tube to keep the deer from trimming it. The second one is in the foreground of the picture below and is growing, but not as vigorously.

The gravel right behind the shed will be part of the chicken run, and the mulched area is my "perennial foods" garden where I relocated my strawberries, rhubarb and horseradish. Next spring I will add a row of asparagus. I decided to leave my first asparagus bed where it was to see if it can't make a go of it since it seems to be improving now in year 3. The Rhubarb has more than quadrupled in size since transplanting, and the Horseradish has come back to life.

Tim went above and beyond the call of duty inside the shed. We chose maple cabinets from the discount outlet and bought a small refrigerator which is great for storing "excess produce". Aside from a few cucumbers, it mostly holds beer, wine and mixers. It does make it nicer to grab a refreshment when working or socialising outdoors, and cuts down on the foot traffic in and out of the house.

Tim removed the center of the face frame and reattached it to the right hand door so the base cabinets open all the way making it easier to tuck all my larger items away.

The long handled tools are hung on the opposite wall, and the third wall has commercial shelving for storage of tomato ladders, window boxes and other plant supports.

I have a few neat garden collectables to display in here, but we haven't gotten around to cutseying it up yet.

Late Summer

Gardening is beginning to wind down for me this year. Our friends who had planted potatoes and winter squash are reporting record yields. One gardener says that his wife is weighing their potatoes at a little over 4 pounds a piece! I can't wait to see one.

My artichoke has blossomed. There is only one flower on this one. There were two other chokes started on the stem, but I didn't fuss over watering it, and they dried up. It is still a garden oddity, and visitors have enjoyed seeing what an artichoke looks like in "it's natural habitat".




The tomatoes continue to produce, with the Black Krim being one of the steadiest throughout the season.



This was my first year for Dr. Wyche, and this tomato will be my standard favorite for orange fruit. I see no reason to look any further. I prefer the taste over the Kellogg's Breakfast variety I grew in 2008, and they are not as large as the Kellogg's, and more to my liking.

The fall planting of peas, beans and carrots is doing outstanding. The beans are flowering, and the peas already have formed pods on the Maestro vines. They've even inspired the nasturtium to rally and bloom again. My first planting of bush beans, has continued to produce steadily. The past two weeks, I have often gone out to find that all of a sudden I need to pick and freeze beans. There are a little over two dozen plants still producing, and I've left them even though they are sprawling at the foot of the sunflowers in a miserable mess. In a few days they will be done, and the new planting will be on the verge of producing. That made just about perfect timing.

My sunflowers are over 10 feet tall. While I loved how they worked in the cucumber and bean bed, I think next year I will choose a shorter variety! I've had to go in there and lop off the spent stalks just to restore order.

This past Labor Day weekend, I made another larger batch of the wild plum jelly. After eating it for a few days, Tim proclaimed it was a little hard to spread. I have to agree. If I were judging it, I'd take off a few points for spreadability. Those half ripe plums have a lot of pectin in them. So for the second batch I decided to play mad scientist and mess with the recipe, something every book and article will advise against.

I started with 8 cups of juice instead of 5 and a half. I added the same amount of dry pectin, then when I had reached the 7 and a half cups of sugar, I tasted the juice and decided to add another half cup. The first batch was very sweet, and I wanted to preserve some of the plum's natural tanginess. After boiling it a minute, I tested the jell, and it just didn't seem to be adhering to the spoon at all. I put it back on the heat for another minute, then lost my nerve. I didn't want to play with the recipe too much, and my objective was to make softer jelly. I went ahead and processed the jelly, ending up with 11 and a half half pints. I had another half pint that I put into a pint jar with a plastic cap, and just set aside for eating.

When the canning bath was done, I had 11 plus jars of runny plum goo. The instructions always say to resist tipping your jars to see if they're jelled at risk of ruining the seal. All the lids popped almost immediately, though I admit I fiddled with the jars. After a couple of hours, I had given up hope. It looked like I had a whole bunch of plum topping, and I began to think of ice cream sundaes, and look up recipes for crepes.

Later I read one of the Ball brochures, and it mentioned that it could take up to two weeks for the jelly to set. TWO WEEKS? How could anyone wait that long? I went back to check the jars, now cooled for 5 hours, and lo and behold.... they had all jelled. Whew! What a relief! I dreamed of plum jelly all night, and for breakfast enjoyed two slices of toast spread liberally with the leftovers from the fridge. Mmmmm.... just the right amount of tart plumness.

Wild Plum Jelly

Jelly is FUN! For one thing, I'm enjoying the suprise of finding those long forgotten plums. And while tomatoes and pickles are useful they are pretty common. "Wild Plum Jelly" not only makes a pretty and tasty gift, but it even sounds wholesome, creative and rare.

Since I've never made jelly, I got out my old Ball Blue Books and Canning bulletins from post WWI and read up on the process. I noted that the older booklets mentioned "Greengages" which , it turns out, is what these plums really are. Which variety is a mystery. I also found that I not only had exactly the right weight of plums for one batch, but they were picked at the right time. You make jelly out of slightly under ripe plums because they have a higher pectin content, and pectin is the stuff that makes jelly jell. If you have really ripe plums, you are better of making jam. If you aren't aware of the difference, jelly is made from clear fruit juice. Jam is made from the flesh of the fruit mashed up.

I did some more Googling, and found some more romantic and interesting plum info. Cooking with Plums from Country Living, and a bit of a field guide for guessing which variety of Greengage we might have here. Pretty Plum Prints

I spent two evenings making Jelly. The first evening, I made the juice. Five pounds of plums was expected to yield 5 1/2 cups of juice. The instructions called for crushing the fruit, but they didn't suggest how to go about this. At first, I cut a couple of plums open to remove the pits. I could see right away that I was going to lose valuable juice material doing this, so instead, I circumscribed each plum with a paring knife and pulled them apart, leaving the pits in. This let me check each plum, cut out any major blemishes, and discard the bruised ones. I ended up with only three rejects, and very few spots cut out.




The next instruction was to add a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water per quart of prepared plums. This is just to keep them from scorching to the bottom of the pan when you first put them on the heat. I underestimated, and added a cup. After half an hour covered on medium heat, they were bubbling away. I pressed a few against the side to check that they were soft without mashing too much flesh into the juice. I was amazed at the amount of juice which had appeared out of nowhere.





The next task was to get that juice drained. Here is where the older booklets were more detailed and helpful. Plus I remember my Grandmother making currant jelly. I have a clear memory of the currants hanging in cheese cloth from the towel bar of her wood cookstove. This part I knew....

I always stock some very tight knit cheese cloth. We use it for straining Glogg. Glogg is something you will just have to wait until November to find out about. Anyway, I cut a large piece of it and developed a strategic plan for getting the mush in the cloth, and the juice in the pot.



Over the past few weeks I've gotten quite adept at handling boiling liquid. I did wait until this had cooled a bit which was wise since I was a little cavalier about my volumes and whether they would fit in my chosen receptacles.

As soon as I gathered the cheesecloth and tied it into a bundle I knew I had most of my juice already. But the instructions suggested I leave the mush in the bag overnight, so I did.

I got most of my 5 cups of juice right away, and I was delighted with the color and clarity. It was beautiful, the color of ruby red grapefruit juice. And TART! But no matter, we're going to add 7 cups of sugar. Yes, 7 cups of sugar to 5 cups of juice. This isn't health food.

And I proved that there was a whole bunch of pectin in this batch of plums. The next day when I dumped the mush, it had solidified into the consistency of Playdough. It was really ugly and brain-like. Tim suggested I not take a photo of it, and just get it out of the house and into the compost pile where it belonged. I think he found it rather creepy, hanging there from it's noose dripping into a pot.

I put the juice in the fridge, and didn't get back to it until two days later. That's the beauty of jelly! Procrastination.

The canning process seemed pretty easy. Standard canning process, but only 10 minutes in the bath. Abbreviated canning! There was just the complication of the whole messy jelling process. Once my jars were ready and heating in the water, I got the juice up to temperature, adding first the pectin, then the massive amount of sugar, which I had premeasured so I wouldn't lose track. Mixing the jelly is much like making jello. Everything is sticky, and soon every piece of cookware you own is covered in a film of goo. And when jelly decides to boil, it gives no warning. One moment you are stirring pretty pink juice, and in an instant you are dealing with a bubbling cauldron.

I ladled the juice into the hot jars, being careful to avoid the solids that were trying to develop in the pot. I tried to remind myself this was my first try and I wasn't preparing a State Fair entry, but nonetheless, I was very particular about the quality I was trying to achieve, and very pleased with the results. I had pans of hot tap water to set each jar in as I filled them three at a time. Then I cooked two batches in the canning bath for ten minutes each. As I was picking them out of the bath, the seals were already beginning to pop. I was so intent on getting the jelly into the jars, I almost forgot to lick the spoon! It tasted better than I had anticipated, but tomorrow's breakfast will tell the tale...

And now the best part... I get to give them away!

The Fruit Swap is On

My grandmother used to do what we called "fruiting". She loved fruit as much as I love vegetables. She was no gardener, but she was a heck of a picker. She knew unerringly when the Strawberries, Blueberries, Cherries, Peaches and Grapes should be ready, and she would head out into fruit country to pick them, then distribute them along her route of family houses until everyone had been "fruited". I don't know when the fruit is ripe. I need a sign. One on the roadside that says "U-Pick Strawberries" is a pretty good clue.

Anyway, we've kept up the swapping with the veggies and fruit, making sure everyone shares the wealth of whatever we have too much of. Today as I was leaving Mom's house, she told me to stop and pick myself some Pineapple tomatoes from her garden. Those are one of our favorite slicing tomatoes, and my plant turned out to be an imposter. The plant I gave her is what it should be and she is getting some beautiful tomatoes

Pineapple

My mother's gardening philosophy is opposite from mine. Whereas my tomatoes lead structured lives, planted neatly in rows, pruned and tied tidely to stakes, Mom's tomatoes grow with wild abandon mingling with raspberries, asparagus and squash, creating a jungle like wall of tomatoes. Picking tomatoes with Mom is like a treasure hunt. We crawl on our knees, forcing our way deeper into the bush, prying tomatoes from the grip of intertwined stems.

But her results are as good, often better than mine.

Mom shows off a cluster of four Barlow Jap tomatoes.

Zucchini and cherry tomatoes

A salvaged step ladder makes a unique pole bean support


A couple of weeks ago, as I was out riding around the family farm, I spied some wild plums growing along a fence line. Mom says there used to be a plum tree at the other end, but now, all of a sudden, there are four or five clumps of plum "bush" and they are loaded with plums.

We checked them today and they are beginning to ripen. I tasted one and it was amazingly sweet, every bit as good as a large black plum. Where these came from and what they have been hiding all these years is a mystery. Because this fence line, before it was used as a horse paddock, bordered the kitchen garden of the farm homestead, I can only imagine that sometime in the last two hundred years, some farm wife took pits and skins out to the edge of the field and dumped them. This years growing season proved to be ideal conditions, and we have a surprise bumper crop of wild plums.

Mom picked five pounds of them and declared that due to their varied sizes, their best use would be plum jelly. Then she put them in my car.

I'll keep you posted.

Tomato Day

Yesterday turned into "Tomato Day". I had a large and varied assortment of tomatoes collecting on the dining room table, and it was obvious that something was going to have to be done. There are only so many tomatoes one person can slice and eat! I'm beginning to get tired of eating. There are always tomatoes to "deal" with. For some reason, the green beans are not quite so threatening. I mean, people don't make movies titled "the Green Bean that Ate Green Bay." Green beans, and summer squash for that matter, don't take over your kitchen and threaten to leave puddles of juice and attract fruit flies. I hemmed and hawed over breakfast, and finally got down to the business of sorting tomatoes.



First, with an eye to what is coming ripe in the garden, I set aside a nice Dr. Wyche for lunch and an under ripe Barlow Jap for "just in case". One thing I've been wanting to do is try my hand at some pasta sauce. I sorted out the deeply red, ribbed Costoluto Genovese and some Amish paste for this. Everything else, the Ananas Noirs, Black Krims, mystery varieties et. al. needed to be canned. This time was less stressful. Mostly because it wasn't the first time in two years. And also because, I just sort of woke up and thought "hmmmm, think I'll can some tomatoes", as if I were acting on a whim and not launching a strategic offensive against the ultimatum thrown down by Mother Nature. It went much smoother. I followed all the same steps as before, right down to removing the rug. I did learn a lesson from the cracked jar. As I stuffed each jar, I set it on the stove top in the "for good measure" pot which I had turned off, but was still hot. This made me a little less frantic during the jar stuffing phase.

I broke for lunch, and made that nice, yellow Dr. Wyche into BLTs. And then it was on to the sauce!

I happened to be watching the Food Network one day, and the guy was making sauce and it looked so simple. I printed the instructions off the internet and saved it. It turned out to be quite easy. You start with 20 paste tomatoes, wash them, halve and de-seed them, and bake them for a few hours. Yup, it was that easy. It became immediately apparent why the two chambered paste tomatoes are favored because they only have two (or three) globs of seeds. The ribbed Costoluto Genovese were more of a hassle since every convoluted bulge contains a group of seeds. Still, it didn't take long. I sprayed some Pam in a baking dish, loaded it up with tomatoes and sprinkled seasoning on them. Into a 325 degree oven, and within 10 minutes, the whole house smelled like Italy!

While they baked for 2 hours, I did some house keeping and made a batch of fresh salsa (more tomatoes). After two hours, you turn the oven up to 400, and bake another 40 minutes. This happens to be the right time and temp for an eggplant to roast, so I stuck one in and made Baba Ganush on the side.

Now for the fun part. All you do is scoop these baked tomatoes into a food mill and grind them into sauce. Now I know you always get the caution to use non-metallic everything with tomatoes because the acids react with the metal and make the tomatoes taste funny. Well, I didn't have a non-reactive food mill, so I went ahead and used the old one I have. I didn't notice much difference, but maybe some day I'll have a special tomato mill and then we'll find out for sure.

The first few tomatoes didn't do much. I looked in the pan and there was some red water. I thought this was never going to work. How much sauce could you get this way? I got a bit more aggressive, and the next time I looked in the pan, there was SAUCE. Well, I'll be doggone! I tweaked the seasonings a bit, and simmered it down. I ended up with a brimming full quart of thick sauce. I think tomorrow I'll add some home made meatballs, and we'll see how it tastes.

When all was said and done, I had four quarts of tomatoes, one quart of sauce, a batch of salsa, Baba Ganush, and one lonely Barlow Jap tomato. Down to one tomato! It's a miracle. Then a neighbor stopped by for some wine in the garden, and the lone tomato followed them home. I was tomatoless! But that was yesterday.

And tomorrow... these will need to be canned.

In fact, I think I'll do an experiment. They are all at the same point of ripeness (wonderful trait in a canning tomato variety) so I will can them, but freeze one bag. I've always been skeptical that freezing will alter the taste in a non-favorable way. I hate refrigerated tomatoes. But, I think I'm about done canning for this year. So, having one canned and one frozen from the same plant on the same day, will tell the tale. These are the Giant Pear 76 which is an Italian strain of the Giant Pear. There are 11 tomatoes all ready to go at once, and they're HUGE. Should be fun!

**FOOTNOTE: This morning I canned 3 pints of Giant Pear tomatoes, and froze 3 pints as a taste test. I love love love those tomatoes. Their skin slipped beautifully, and they are very meaty. I think I liked working with them better than the Amish Paste tomatoes that were in with the batch.

And the sauce was great on spaghetti!