As I grow food, I am more inspired to use it in new ways to share with others. The recipes below all include at least one home-grown ingredient.
We moved into our neighborhood this past July and our children made fast friends with the neighbors. It was through a casual conversation with the childrens' father that I learned about a local who makes his living fishing in Alaska in the summers; through this connection, we could order a large quantity of wild-caught sockeye salmon. We had just recently purchased an upright energy efficient freezer and I already had made plans to fill it with beef, pork and chicken from a local regenerative rancher, but to add wild-caught salmon to the mix? Dream come true as far as I am concerned.
We love salmon, but this salmon is so incredibly rich in flavor, I cannot really compare it to other salmon I have eaten. Unlike Atlantic salmon, it is not fatty; unlike other sockeye salmon I have tried to cook, it doesn't easily dry out. The only thing this salmon begs for us to do it not overcook it and savor every bite. For this holiday, I took two of the larger fillets to make our Yul Bord favorite, gravlox. This was our second time making gravlox with this fish, but the first time with our homegrown dill. Yet again, it did not disappoint!
2021 Yul Bord: Crackers, cheeses and cured meats (not pictured here as the four-year-old neighbor twins decimated the cured meets in a shockingly short amount of time ;-), gravlox, capers, lemons, sil (pickled herring), picked beets, and salad.
Not pictured: Swedish meatballs, roasted potatoes, dilly sour cream, gravy, lingonberry jam, and horseradish cranberry sauce.
Notice the amaryllis bringing forth so much color! This was the one with the broken stem which has made a beautiful cut flower all this week and looks like it will leave at least two more blooms for another week.
We had our neighbors over for this year's Yul Bord as the kids spend so much time together we are essentially quaran-teaming at this point. Next year we hope to be able to invite more friends and neighbors after these strange Covid times when to care for one another means to keep our distance.; this is not really conducive to building community in a new place, but we will do our part. In the meantime, I am happy to share these recipes with you, the broader community of lovers of homegrown dill and well-prepared salmon!
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Dough Ingredients
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Simple Syrup Ingredients
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Kitchen scraps collected in a 5-gallon bucket, ready to bury in the future garden.
"Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out...And though her daddy would scream and shoutShe simply would not take the garbage out
And so, it piled up to the ceilingsCoffee grounds, potato peelingsBrown bananas, rotten peas, chunks of sour cottage cheeseThat filled the can and covered the floor, cracked the window, and blocked the door..."
~ Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends, 1972
What Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout needed was a garden and then all of these kitchen scraps would have had her dreaming of the black gold she could create by simply burying them in the ground. I am a lazy composter and thus do not bother with a bin or a pile nor measure my greens-to-browns ratio. I dig a trench when the ground is not frozen and then dump the kitchen scraps we have collected over the previous weeks in our 5-gallon bucket into the trench to be buried. "If you build it, they will come," is my motto meaning if you dig a trench, fill it with organic matter, and simply wait, microorganisms and worms will come, and they do! While I don't have photos, when I was digging in the fall, the soil where I had been trench-composting was full of wriggling worms feasting on our, "Brown bananas, rotten peas, chunks of sour cottage cheese."
The 5-gallon bucket of kitchen scraps headed for the trench compost in our future garden to be.
The area below the yurt which I have been terraforming to create swales and berms for water retention, has lent itself beautifully to trench composting. This area is a mixture of clay and rocks, not yet a place where plants will flourish. I am currently in soil-building mode, dreaming of my own black gold in which I can grow nutrient-rich food in nutrient-rich soil. As I build the soil, I will add to this post with before and after shots as I transform dirt into a medium for plant nirvana. Check back for updates!
]]>Soil farming socks from my mom as a Christmas gift.
Z and my husband making dinner. Always on the garden plan? Cherry tomatoes and greens!
My husband used to joke that I would not be satisfied until I had achieved total vertical integration of our food supply. While this was my dream some time ago, my thinking has evolved to five key garden planning principles, which I call the garden commandments:
Today's discussion focuses on knowing one's family (even if it just you) and what you actually eat by studying your grocery lists and then studying what is realistic for you to grow in the coming season. For the undertaking of this critical planning exercise, I have created this handy Growing What You Eat Worksheet to support your thinking and planning.
The text thread between my husband and me, "Honey can you pick the following up from the store?"
I have the advantage of having a years-long text thread with my husband that almost exclusively contains grocery lists. While there are a few cute pics of the kids and links to interesting or funny articles and videos, mainly there is evidence of what we feast on weekly and seasonally. I found the exercise of studying these lists helpful and supportive and I hope you do too.
Once you have your list of the produce you typically purchase take some time to consider which you eat most often and which you have the most interest in growing. This will allow you to move through the process of stack-ranking the produce you want to grow this year from most to least and support your thinking about which seeds to start in the coming months so you can be ready to transplant them after the last frost of the season.
If you choose to, you can take the exercise one step further. If you are like me and stockpile more seeds than you can grow, you likely have many of the seeds on hand and catalog what you have from the list. If you don't have the seeds, creating a list upfront can keep you from over-buying once you enter all of those beautiful and tempting seed catalogs. A final gardening-nerd step you might take would be to consider how much a packet of seeds--if grown well--might save you in food costs over the summer and beyond. Inflation being what it currently is today, I just might take this on for a future post on saving money through the garden.
I would love to see what others are choosing to grow this year and about your learning along the way. Please post in the comment below! Happy almost spring!
]]>Purple Bok Choi seedlings juxtaposed with snow (March 10, 2022)
In the world of seed catalogs, one is so famous that we all must pay to receive it; this past December I paid my $10.00 to receive the Baker Creek Whole Seed Catalog, rich in inspiring photography and deep long-form articles on beloved plants. I also receive several other catalogs from various seed providers: Johnny's Select Seeds, Annie's Heirloom Seeds, Strictly Medicinal Seeds, and the list goes on. If you have read previous posts you will know I am astonished every year by the miracle of the seed, such a tiny speck encoded with all of the information to grow flowers, herbs, and food. I love the sense of accomplishment of growing a garden from seed!
In recent years, I have done my due diligence while garden planning to research seed vendors and purchase as many seeds as I am able using the following criteria in priority order:
A glimpse of my seed hoarding collection.
Most of the seeds in my current collection are from Colorado seed vendors: Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust. I try to order most seeds locally as this means they are adapted to my climate and it supports local growers. Seeds Trust is a hyper-local, female-owned seed vendor originally located in Denver, but recently moved to Western Colorado. For the past few years, I have gone to them first, and then purchased what they don't have from Botanical Interests which in my opinion has some of the most beautiful botanical illustrations on their packaging.
This year I did make a few discoveries as I am in a new town and growing zone. I found Vibrant Earth Seeds located in nearby Cortez, CO via the local coop. They save and sell seeds adapted to this climate that mature early, require less water, and are adapted to the four-corners region. We also have a local seed library that will "lend" seeds with the promise of sharing the cultivated seeds with the library at the end of the season.
These smaller seed houses hold the promise of truly locally grown and adapted seeds, which cannot always be guaranteed by the larger seed catalogs with seed stores growers across the globe. Each year as I make new discoveries, I imagine my seed collection will become increasingly locally adapted leading to the increased success of my future food forest and all of the creatures that need a place to thrive. I am no purist, but I do like the local first ethos when it comes to seeds for the health of my garden, local economy, and the local ecosystem.
Native galardia and rudbeckia seeds stratifying outdoors for eventual spring planting.
When I was young, we were only allowed to watch a few television programs and Little House on the Prairie was one. I loved the show and subsequently, read the books. I remember vividly the descriptions of the family living in a sod house built by cutting strongly root-bound blocks of soil to use as bricks to construct a home. Having grown up in Delta, CO, an agricultural community in the late 1970s, I remember wondering how a house like this didn't just blow away in the wind or wither away in a strong rain. By this time industrial agriculture had turned soil to dust and the fields around me were sparsely planted and machine-tilled wastelands dependent on chemical fertilizers.
A few years back I read the book Kiss the Ground (2018) which dedicates deep attention to the importance of our soil and all of the organisms that live in it; the organism - plants, bacteria, microbes, fungi - come together to support a host of critical jobs, most importantly sequestering carbon. Native plants have an important role to play in preventing devastating climate changes; native grasses, trees, shrubs, flowers, and plants are self-sustaining perennials adapted to our climate that keep soil fastened to the earth's surface and support the symbiotic networks beneath our feet critical to the health of our food, communities, and planet.
Native species above ground also depend on us creating food corridors for their lengthy migrations. The Audubon Society of the Rockies has a full list of recommended native plant retailers. Some of these I had purchased seeds from before and others were new to me. I have a future backbreaking project to complete in our sloped backyard that involves digging swales and berms; this listing will be a go-to resource as I plan the native perennials to hold the berms in place. I look forward to our yard and neighbors' yards (as I share plants with them) becoming a monarch and migrating bird sanctuary.
As with anything worth doing, I must remind myself, that less is more and go slow to go fast. This year I am doing my best to limit how many seeds I buy and make sure I use up my significant stockpile of seeds first to grow what is viable and realistic for one season. In this vein, I made myself a garden planner to help grow only what we actually eat in our garden this summer, so I have time to contemplate the many spaces that need to be prepared for longer-term plants like asparagus, berries, fruit trees, artichokes and more. My only advice? Make a viable plan, grow what you eat and then eat what you grow and more than anything let the garden transport you to the present. Happy almost spring!
]]>"The best gardener is the one who does the most gardening by the winter fire."~ Liberty Hyde Bailey, Father of Modern Horticulture
So it has come...January! In some ways, I have already made a plan for this month, but now that I study the planting and planning suggestions in the calendar, I realize I will make my own adjustments for January; and so it goes--Kaizen--the cycle of continuous improvement. I invite all of my readers to add your comments below about the ways in which you have adapted the calendar to your cycle of planting and style of gardening. It will only help me make next year's calendar that much better!
This week, as recommended in the calendar, I sorted my seeds. This annual practice supports me in not overdoing it on seed purchasing which can get out of hand when you love the miracle of growing enormous plants from tiny specks of what could be mistaken for dust (I mean really, it blows my mind every year). I made myself some sorting labels from scrap paper and categorized the seeds I've saved/purchased from my previous gardening seasons:
These categories deviate somewhat from those in the calendar as I do not yet have a cold frame set up in our new garden and I realized that I should pull the perennials seeds I hope to stratify this winter in preparation for spring planting. I substituted the cold frame category for a grow wall/microgreens category as I do plan to have some of these going this winter.
Most of the seeds in my collection are from Colorado seed vendors: Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust. Like most folks who love seed catalogs, I cannot resist the inspiring photography on the Baker Creek website, so I buy a few packets every year. I try to order most seeds locally as this means they are adapted to my climate and it supports local growers. Seeds Trust is a hyper-local, female-owned seed vendor from western Colorado, so for the past few years I have gone to them first, and then purchased what they don't have from Botanical Interests which in my opinion has some of the most beautiful botanical illustrations on their packaging. Many of the packets pictured below have a star stamp on them meaning I purchased them in the fall from my local garden center when they were on sale for 50% off.
I have on hand all the seeds I could ever hope to grow in the indoor winter herb garden. In my window sills, I have mature dill, basil, flat-leaf parsley, and chives that we have been using to cook with over the holidays. I have two thyme plants just peeking out in the AeroGarden and plan to get some cilantro and chervil going next. If these herbs are still growing strong in the spring, I will transplant them to the garden after the last frost.
Seeds from Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, Seeds Trust, and some I have saved on my own.
Next week, I hope to start drawing out a plan for the north and south garden beds closest to the house and the deck garden as these will be my grow spaces next season. I have much more room in the back yard, but these areas will take deeper consideration as I will need to "terraform" them somewhat to support decreased water usage and deer protection that still allows the deer to hang out, which they are prone to do. I don't anticipate planting these areas until late summer or even the 2023 season.
By taking pictures of what I have, I now have a reference of what is on hand without having to dig the seed bins out of their cool dark storage. Once I have a plan for the space available to me, I can use these pictures to make decisions about whether to purchase new seeds for my indoor starts. Mid-January is a good time to purchase any new seeds so they arrive before February planting.
These plants I will get going indoors in February. I like to give tomatoes and peppers a head start so that I have some pretty big plants to get in the ground come mid-may.
These are the plants I will start in April so they have a little head start going into the summer. I will also direct sow some squash, melons and cucumbers after the last frost.
Seeds from Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust.
The grow wall my sister gifted me is in the garage and it is really is too cold out there for them to grow very well or quickly. The one plant that has had a modicum of success is the cress. All of the other lettuces, herbs, crucifers, and greens are small and sad. I rearranged some storage over the winter holiday so I might be able to use our space under the stairs for the indoor starts and the grow wall as this space is tucked away and the radiant floor heat should make the plants explode. More to come on this project.
I dream of a week in which we do not have to purchase lettuce from the market and we add homegrown bok choi to stir fry from the grow wall.
Seeds from Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust.
I have so many seeds that there is no way I have space to grow all of these veggies next season. I do have some ideas for growing green beans and peas on a trellis on the side of the deck so there is a small possibility that I will get these all planted. For now though I have my photo reference for my garden planning.
Seeds from Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust.
I recently read a blog post about using milk jugs as mini green houses to get perennial seeds started outside and I may try this toward the end of the month along with putting a few packets in the fridge until spring. The Shasta daisy, galardia, and rudbekia in the envelopes are seeds I saved from my garden in Golden. These will allow me to pay homage to all of the hard work that went into building my last garden and remind me that it pays off.
Seeds from Botanical Interests, Lake Valley Seeds, and Seeds Trust.
My sister is a vagabond and never stays put for very long; hence the van life. She gifted me these heirloom seeds, but I have not had luck getting them to germinate and I wonder if they were overheated in storage. They are from 2018. I will see if the local community garden by my children's school might want them. If not I may compost them and let them enter back into the cycle of life. Also in this pile, a pack of butternut squash seeds from 2010. I decided it was time to let these go as hard as it is. The act of having to get rid of really old seeds or seeds gone bad is a good deterrent from over buying this season.
The hyacinths bloomed January 25th and the tulip February 17, 2022. Both were planted December 6th after four weeks in the refrigerator.
I am planning to start another round of indoor forced bulbs this February in hopes we can have some blooms throughout the spring to inspire and gift to others for all the coming celebrations. In the fall I put in an order for Aiolos Hyacinth, Hakuun Tulip, Purissima Blonde Tulip, and Saffron Crocus. I planted about three-quarters of these bulbs in the garden but reserved the rest to put in the back of our refrigerator in a box where they could experience a period of cold dormancy. I have been slowly pulling these bulbs out and planting them in pots. These winter-forced bulb experiments have yielded new learning about how best to force more healthy bulbs with better blooms.
This planter contains three hyacinth bulbs, four tulip bulbs, and seven Muscari bulbs, which have proven too many for such a small space.
The first lesson has been to force just one type of bulb per planter and give them more room for root expansion by planting fewer. I say this for two reasons: 1) in the photo above the hyacinths came up first and did well enough, but the subsequent tulips just haven't done as well, and; 2) since the flowers don't bloom at the same time anyway, I think they would have been better off in their own smaller containers that could be cycled in and out of rotation once their blossoms had withered.
The second lesson is that bulbs are offered seasonally, so it is important to purchase in the fall if you want forced winter blooms and to store them in a cool dark place. This allows for succession planting of bulbs all winter long in the absence of their availability.
The final lesson (for now) has been that bulbs may not need as long of a cold and dark dormant period as advertised in my online research. The bulbs pictured above were put into the fridge November 11th, 2021 and planted December 6th, 2021 and all did begin to grow and bloom. The remaining bulbs have been chilling for three months, so we shall soon see if this makes a difference for their overall growth and blooms.
Like many of my posts, I will be adding additional lessons as I learn them. As I prepare to plant force indoor bulbs for spring, I will update with photos and additional tips and tricks gleaned from my own successes and mishaps.
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My mom generously gifted me two amaryllis growing kits this past weekend. These will be the first in a series of bulbs I plan to "force" over the winter. Forcing simply means providing the conditions a bulb, rhizome, or corm needs to come out of dormancy through exposure to darkness and cool temperatures. This tricks the plant into thinking it has made it through winter and spring is just around the corner. If you've grown bulbs, rhizomes or corms in your garden you know that they start to peak out from the garden's surface as early as January or February and come into full bloom throughout March, April, and May in Zones 5 and 6. In this series we are going to trick our bulbs into thinking it is Spring in November, December and January.
A block of coco coir, a healthy sized amaryllis bulb and a 5-inch plastic pot came with each kit. This amaryllis bulb is the perfect size for the 5-inch pot it came with as it is about 3 inches across and the bulb needs about one inch of room all around it.
Amaryllis are tropical plants from South and Central America and thus only know a wet and dry season. This is why they do not need to experience cool temperatures for dormancy, just dryness and darkness for a few months before working to bloom again. This makes amaryllis a good beginner bulb. I am hoping to keep these amaryllis going for many years and as a result will be using a potting mix in addition to the coco coir that came with the kits, as the bulbs will need some nutrition between now and when I stop watering them in July or August 2022, putting them back into dormancy.
I will continue to add weekly updates to this post and subsequent bulb forcing posts throughout the winter, so keep checking back and sharing your own progress with bulb forcing this winter.
On a perfect fall day after school, Z and our four-year-old neighbor planted the amaryllis bulbs in anticipation of it taking four to six weeks to see blooms, putting us at mid-December. This was a good project to do with them as it took under 30 minutes, which is about their attention span for gardening projects.
Week One!
This week I was able to move the amaryllis from the floor to a floating wall shelf as a part of my new plant wall (look for this in a future post), so now the photographs will more consistently display the weekly changes. Almost immediately after planting, the bulbs began to turn more green and send up stems, making me very excited to see what is to come.
One of these bulbs is not like the other! While they both appear healthy, one has really gained some significant height over the other. It is worth mentioning that this shelf is on a wall that faces north, so the plants get tons of indirect light from all of the windows, but never sit in direct light. My best guess is that filtered light is recommended as it is most like the filtered light an amaryllis would experience in the Central or South American under story of the rain forest.
This massive bulb is just a week away from blooming and I hope it waits until we return from our Thanksgiving adventures to Moab and Grand Junction. The smaller bloom is making progress and has about four stems but they are just slow to emerge from the bulb. I am not sure what the difference between the bulbs really is other than the taller one has a visibly larger bulb. I do know that we will have amaryllis blooms in December and this makes me happy to think of having this beauty indoors during the darkest month of the year.
This big bulb did indeed wait for our return to bloom, but not to grow. I moved it to a shelf where it had some more vertical space, but even this may not be enough. This is the Goliath of amaryllis. Meanwhile, the smaller one also grew on the blossoming stalk, but still is not sending up any leaves. By next week I hope to be sharing blossom photos!
What winter beauty these blossoms are! A welcome splash of color on these darkest and shortest of days. The smaller blossom still has no leaves emerging, but does appear to show the promise of a bloom. The taller one has outgrown its shelf; from the bottom of the pot to the crown of the tallest bloom it is 32 inches with a gorgeous spray of leaves on either side! I will definitely be holding onto the bigger bulb for future seasons!
All blooms come to an end when their job is done. I am not sure why I chose to pollinate the amaryllis blooms. Will I save these seeds and try to grow them? Still to be determined, but it gave me some practice using a paintbrush in place of a pollinator mainly to apply to my Meyer lemon that is just now blooming. The smaller amaryllis is ready to bloom and should give us beauty over the holiday.
Zut Alors! The second Amaryllis had just begun to blossom, but the blooms must have been too heavy for the stem as today I found the blossoms upside down hanging by a thread. I had to cut the stalk and put these beautiful blooms into the best vase I could find on hand, a glass milk bottle. I will continue to let the bulb grow leaves to recharge for next season.
The first Amaryllis to bloom, now has seed pods growing after being pollinated with a paint brush. I have cut off the spent blooms and will continue to let these seed pods develop for experimentation. I had supported the stem and leaves of this one but the second one got away from me, so I probably will not be able to cross pollinate the two plants to see if I get interesting seeds. Boo!
I took the week off from photographing flowers to capture the holiday with my family; however, the cut amaryllis bloom made it for much longer than I expected and adorned our Yul Bord with its loveliness and four big blossoms. Once I cut the first two blooms that were fading the last two blooms gave us another full week before making their way to the compost bin.
In my reading about amaryllis (not and affiliate link), I have since learned the first plant that immediately started growing leaves and a stem is an outlier. Typically, amaryllis send out a stem, bloom, and then once the blooms wither, the leaves emerge to support the bulb in storing enough energy for the next season. I plan to water this bulb throughout the winter, take it out to the garden in the summer and then let it go dormant in the fall for next season.
The amaryllis that I pollinated is growing rather large seeds at the moment. In the coming weeks, these pods will dry out and crack open and I will harvest and dry the seeds. Not sure yet if I will attempt to grow them indoors as it will take several years before I have any viable bulbs that will bloom, however, I am interested in the idea of growing a new hybrid which can be done when growing by seed.
I have moved the amaryllis up to the top of the plant wall while they finish making seeds and storing energy until I put them into dormancy again at the end of the summer. This brings these amaryllis updates to a close for the time being. I will add an update when I harvest the seeds, plant them in the garden in the late spring, and then put them into hibernation in late summer.
The seeds exploded from their pods this week, allowing me to harvest and dry them. I plan to run two more small growing experiments this winter: 1) growing these newly hatched seeds alongside my other garden starts for spring, and 2) direct sowing in the garden after the last frost to see how they do int he garden. I will of course bring these tropical plants indoors before the first fall frost and keep you updated here as we go.
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January Garden Reflection 2022 |
February Garden Reflection 2022 |
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March Garden Reflection 2022 |
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April Garden Reflection 2022
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October Garden Reflection 2021 October Garden Reflection 2022 |
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November Garden Reflection 2021 November Garden Reflection 2022 |
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December Garden Reflection 2021 December Garden Reflection 2022 |
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Figs are not a fruit we eat that often; however, when I have seen them in the grocery store as a seasonal novelty, I always buy them. I love them raw, drizzled with a little honey so I can pretend I am relaxing in the Mediterranean sunshine. Figs transport me elsewhere--back to our honeymoon climbing every island crag we could find in Greece, back to my summer backpacking in Italy--and who doesn't want to be transported elsewhere from time to time?
Below is a diary of this Black Mission Fig's journey. So far there have been no figs, so I will be doing my research on this variety to see if I can get a fall harvest next year. I received the fig tree via mail order in August of 2021 and promptly planted it in an 11 by 14-inch planter. I had read that figs like good drainage so I added a bit of sand to the organic potting soil mix I used. I have been regularly fertilizing the plant every four months or so.
Black mission fig putting on new stems and leaves.
When I brought the fig in from the back patio in the fall, it immediately began to lose its leaves. I thought it was the transition from outside to inside, but upon further research, I read that figs are deciduous (duh for anyone reading this that knows the plant); they naturally lose their leaves in the fall and then regrow them in the spring. The plant quickly rebounded and put on new leaves.
Though the fig tree seems quite healthy in the afternoon sun provided by a southwest-facing window, I have learned figs love at least 8 hours of full sun. I made a space for it atop my seed starting shelf in a directly south-facing window and will see what this does for flower and fruit production. It currently is putting on a large number of new leaves and stems which, I have read, proceeds a spring flowering and fruiting of not-so-good fruit. Fall flowering and fruiting then follow, and this is when the best fruit is produced. This summer the fig will reside in the full sun on the yurt deck.
Black Mission Fig leaves just prior to moving outdoors.
In mid-May, once the likelihood of freezing passed, I move the fig to the yurt deck to get full sun. This was an enormous mistake! The poor tree suffered a terrible sunburn and lost many leaves. It did proceed to sprout new leaves that seemed acclimated to the full sun but it has yet to flower. I did not take a picture, which I regret as this is supposed to be a full-disclosure series so others can learn from my mistakes.
Black Mission Fig after being brought in from the outdoors in the Fall of 2022
I was a terrible fig caretaker this summer. June and July were hot, hot, hot and I did not water enough. Luckily for all of my plants, we had a nice monsoon season in August that in all likelihood saved them from my neglect. In my defense, one must prioritize free time and this summer most of mine was spent with my family in the mountains, escaping the heat.
The stress of not being watered enough most definitely kept the fig from blooming. No figs for us! The plant has gotten very spread out and has far fewer leaves than in the past. It is fall and I know it should lose its leaves, but I am thinking this plant needs pruning. I'd like it to grow taller versus wider and I think this will be the best time of year to do this. I am going to do some research and return with a post once the fig has had a haircut.
Pruned for increased height, this Black Mission Fig will not likely fruit next spring or fall.
I have learned that pruning a Black Mission Fig will negatively affect the chances of the plant producing figs; this is due to the fruit forming on the terminals of the previous year's growth. I mainly am interested in pruning for a taller versus wider shape and at this point, this is more important to me than next year's fruit. I would like this plant to be more manageable and the best time to manage its shape is now while it is young. The recommended time of year to do this pruning is in fall/winter. If I were to go back in time, I would have pruned the plant when I first got it into the shape I wanted so I could get fruit sooner.
I also took this opportunity to re-pot the fig into a larger pot. This allows the roots more room to grow, more water to be retained--especially in the summer months--and more light to reach the fig from the windows. I used miracle grow indoor potting mix as I have a fungus gnat problem. Because the mix uses coconut coir instead of peat moss, it still retains water yet is less attractive to fungus gnats. Incidentally, coconut coir is a more sustainable option than peat moss since it takes thousands of years to develop peat and one season to develop coconuts.
]]>Dear reader, if you have tips and tricks for growing figs, I invite you to join the conversation in the comments!
Ripening Meyer Lemons (November 2022)
We purchase many limes every month for cooking Mexican and Thai food and for making our ice waters that much crisper when it's hot outside. I use lemons all of the time for salads, fish, pestos, anchovy pasta, dressings, and sauces. While growing our own lemons and limes will not completely integrate our plate they will support some of our citrus habits and the blossoms in the winter are indisputably some of the best I've smelled.
In August of 2021, I ordered one Meyer lemon and one key lime tree from the internet. I potted them in an organic potting mix with added sand for drainage as I read these plants do not like wet feet. I planted these in the same 11.5 by 20-inch recycled plastic planters so they'd be manageable to move outdoors in the summer. Below are my diary entries for these two citrus trees over time as I have learned to care for them.
Blistered Meyer lemon leaves as a result of using isopropyl alcohol as a spider mite deterrent.
So far, I have learned that citrus trees are more prone to spider mites than avocado or fig trees. Both the Meyer lemon and key lime trees have had varying levels of infestation throughout the winter. The first mistake I made was using isopropyl alcohol on the lemon tree as I had it on hand and had read this will kill the spider mites in another blog post. It also can kill a lemon tree apparently as spraying the leaves resulted in their yellowing and dropping. Since the infestation pictured above, I have been using diluted neem oil and it seems to be doing the trick.
First blossoms on our Meyer Lemon tree
I have won the battle against the spider mites on the citrus trees with the continuous treatments of neem oil. Now we are enjoying the first blooms on the Meyer Lemon tree and let me tell you, there is no better smell! There are two blossom sets on the trees and with each blossom being a potential fruit, this could be a magnificent harvest.
Meyer Lemon in full bloom
The Meyer lemon blossoms have opened up and I cannot get enough of sitting near the tree and just breathing. To get fruit, I have been hand-pollinating the blossoms with a paintbrush and it seems to be working as the anterior portion of the bloom is swelling with what could be potential lemons/
Hand-pollinating Mayer Lemon blossoms with a paintbrush which has led to fertilized baby lemons!
Meyer Lemon fruit unripened but hanging on the tree
After hand-pollinating the blooms of the Meyer Lemon tree, I managed to bring forth two fruits. Most of the other blossoms dried up and fell off the tree. I think that these two fruits are the most this small tree can currently support. I chose not to move the lemon tree outdoors this summer because the fruit seemed somewhat precarious and I wanted it to fully ripen on the tree. Now I just have to keep the girls' impromptu gymnastics from causing their demise.
The fruit continues to ripen on the Meyer Lemon tree. From blossom to this point we are now at 10 months.
The Meyer lemons are nearly ripe!
I think we are nearly ready for harvest! I have been wondering what to do with these very special lemons. I mean I cannot bring myself to simply use the juice in a single dressing after 9 months of watching these babies grow! In the mornings I have taken to reading different recipes for limoncello while I drink my tea. Many recipes call for the peeling of the lemon and just using the peels to infuse with vodka. Some recipes say to use the whole lemon and infuse them with Everclear. I really am drawn to the whole lemon recipe, but with vodka since my adult self will not go back to those Everclear days.
Both of these Meyer lemons still have a bit more ripening to do.
I am anxious to harvest now that these are so yellow, but I will curb my enthusiasm until they are both fully ripe! I am hoping I can get them into the vodka by December 1st so that I can then strain them, mix them with simple syrup, and enjoy this as a digestif after Christmas dinner with my mom and stepdad.
Tree-ripened Meyer lemon cut into wedges, blossom ends, and seeds removed.
One of the Meyer Lemons was clearly fully ripe this morning. I left the other, smaller less ripe lemon on the tree to possibly increase in size and flavor before harvesting. I cut into this fully yellowed, hard-won Meyer lemon and juice came pouring out. I cut off the stem end and blossom end, then cut it into quarters and removed the seeds. I then put the wedges into a jar and covered them with vodka to infuse over the course of the next 22 days until Christmas. When the other lemon is ripened enough, I will add it to the infusion.
Meyer lemon wedges immersed in vodka to create an infusion for holiday limoncello.
The second of two Meyer lemons continuing to ripen on the tree.
Spider mite webs on the key lime tree.
I have been giving the key lime tree a spray of diluted neem oil (1 part neem oil, 4 parts water) two times per week and it seems to be doing the trick against the spider mites. This plant is spiked and doesn't like me getting in close with the spray bottle, but I persevere. lol.
Healthy Key Lime Leaves
The spider mites on the Key Lime tree have been taken care of, but there were no signs of any blossoms over the winter, however, the leaves look quite healthy.
Key lime tree looking healthy despite my best efforts to kill it
I was not good to this key lime over the summer! I sunburned it; I un under-watered it; I neglected it. Yet despite my best efforts here it sits looking like a pretty healthy tree overall. It still has some sunburned leaves that I need to cut back and I think it could use some light pruning, but otherwise, it seems happy in its new home where it gets both morning and afternoon direct sunlight. This tree has made me realize that I am better at taking care of plants that produce fruit than not; however, I vow to do my best to get key limes going this winter.
]]>Dear reader, if you have tips and tricks for growing citrus indoors, please add them to the comments below.
Since my 7-year-old makes me measure her every week in hopes she will graduate from her booster, she is 49 inches in this photo for scale.
It really isn't hard to have the desire to grow one's own avocados after learning about how Mexican drug cartels manipulate the market and take their cut from honest avocado farmers or after reading about the ways in which avocado farms in Chile are stealing all of the water from citizens. I love avocados; so does the rest of the family and so I continue to buy organic avocados from Mexico and California when available as boycotting them is complicated in this globalized world.
Cold-Hearty Avocado blossoms which began in January and are continuing into March but with no fruit to show for it :-(
Growing actual avocados, thus far, has proven to be a dream three to four years away. There are no signs of blooms from the Haas avocado though it really has put on a large number of leaves this past month. The blossoms from the cold-hearty avocado simply drop to the ground despite my impersonating a pollinator morning and night with my trusted paint brush. Patience grasshopper; the avocados too shall grow in their own time.
]]>A healthy Hass avocado with no signs of flowering, yet.
On October 8th, 2022, I cleaned up this garden bed, pulling back overgrown catmint and creeping jenny to reveal these sweet hidden fall-blooming saffron crocus.
About twelve-and-a-half years ago, my life became inextricably linked to a Swede--my husband--who grew up half-time in Stockholm and half-time in Boston. As a result, he has a deep love of Swedish Christmas traditions which mainly revolve around food that brightens up the darkest December days with color and flavor. I too have come to love these traditions and sharing them with our girls. The first tradition falls on December 13th, Santa Lucia Day (luciadagan), and the second on Christmas Eve for which we prepare a giant julbord.
Saffron buns (saffransbullar) are a treat at all of our fall and winter holidays.
On both occasions, a favorite of ours has become saffron buns (saffransbullar) also known as Lucia buns (lussekatter). Saffron is often more expensive than gold per ounce, so this is a special holiday treat for us, as it is for most Swedes. What is not more expensive than gold per ounce are saffron crocus bulbs. Last year was my first year trying to grow saffron crocus in the garden. I forgot about the bulbs in the garden until I started fall clean-up in early October. Under the overgrown catmint and creeping jenny, there they were, saffron crocus blooms ready for harvest.
Hidden gem!
Our first saffron harvest in late October and our second in early November.
Last fall when I planted these bulbs in my front yard garden in the beds closest to the house, I was hoping that in zone 6, which is a little chilly for saffron, there would be enough solar gain in this south-facing bed to keep them toasty. While the crocus leaves peaked through the earth in mid-November last year, I never did get any blooms. I also tried to force saffron indoors; the plants died quickly. I have decided I do not recommend forcing saffron crocus as they do perfectly well outdoors and since they are fall-blooming, provide saffron just in time for our holiday needs.
I was so excited upon this discovery and how well these blooms had done that I immediately went and ordered three more packages of saffron bulbs and planted them on October 23rd upon our return from a family trip to Florida. I did not expect any blossoms from these bulbs until the next season, however, I was again delighted to be gifted a second harvest which I collected on November 9th.
New saffron crocus blossoms were planted on October 23rd, 2022, and emerged just weeks later, pictured here on November 6th, 2022.
As a whole bulbs are a wonderful addition to any garden for their beauty and the benefits they provide to pollinators in early spring; however, I am especially smitten with saffron crocus as a culinary herb and look forward to many seasons of not needing to import this expensive spice over hundreds of thousands of miles. Goodbye carbon footprint; Hello saffronsbullar!
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Fourth-grade students leaned in to hear about their choices of jobs in the garden from Charlie Love, their committed science teacher.
I spent a day in late September volunteering with students from our neighborhood elementary school at Durango's only community garden, Ohana Kuleana. The students have a large plot here in which they have grown squash, melons, corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and herbs under the direction of their committed science teacher for the past ten years.
The student's three sisters and pizza gardens.
The garden will be closing this fall as the property on which it grows will be sold. The day I was able to spend in the garden, students from the preschool and the fourth grade prepared for the garden's closure by digging up wooden garden beds, harvesting winter squash, and digging up perennials that will be living (hopefully) in my backyard over the winter. The students are supporting an effort to build a larger community garden, the SOIL Outdoor Learning Lab.
Mr. Love distributes freshly picked and sliced watermelon to students.
This garden has been a rich resource for these students, teaching them about growing, harvesting, and eating healthy food. While we were in the garden three separate groups of students were able to snack on the watermelon they had helped grow.
An Ohana Kuleana student-grown hybrid, waterlope, a decidedly juicy cross between the cantaloupe and the watermelon.
Ten percent of the profits from the 2023 Year-Round Gardening Calendar will be donated to support building this garden's replacement and preparing future gardeners. Check out the SOIL Outdoor Learning Lab plans for expanding this learning opportunity to the entire school district and the greater community.
]]>Peeled and washed tomatillos ready for the freezer and cooler weather in which to transform them into canned tomatillo salsa
There really is no better spicy, tart, and tangy salsa than tomatillo salsa. It really would not be a complete season without going into the holidays with at least some of this delightful condiment on hand. My brother-in-law, the biggest foodie I know, swears he could just drink this salsa. My husband and I also cannot get enough and since our girls are not yet fans of spice, the 9 jars made from the ingredients pictured below should last us at least through January.
This year, lacking the space, I bought as many tomatillos as I could at the farmers market in August and then peeled them, cleaned them, and bagged them for the freezer. I pulled these out to thaw the first weekend in November as well as the jalapeños and Serrano peppers that had kept pretty well in the fridge since September. It made for a perfectly cozy day of indoor canning after the weather had cooled.
I used the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving recipe for tomatillo salsa with some variations: more cilantro and garlic, add ground coriander and ground chipotle chili as the red chili. Each year's version is slightly different. This year's salsa isn't as spicy as I would like but perhaps I have burnt out my taste buds in seasons past. All I can say is it'll do, and the effort was worth the result.
]]>Tomatillo Salsa Ingredients (around the circle from the left to the center):2 tsp. salt/2 tsp red pepper; 7 tsp. cumin/7 tsp. ground coriander; 1 c. lime juice; 14 cloves of minced garlic; 2 c. chopped cilantro; 2 c. apple cider vinegar; 3 1/2 c. chopped jalapeños and Serrano peppers; 3 1/2 c. chopped onions; 7 lbs. pureed tomatillos. This recipe was adapted from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.
When we left Golden and I had to say goodbye to my former garden, I took as many seeds as I could: Shasta daisies, rudbeckia, chives, cilantro/coriander, and gaillardia. I started the perennials this past winter through my favorite lazy stratification method. These perennials got their roots in the ground this summer and if they overwinter well, I will permanently have a piece of my old garden in the new.
After providing beautiful, pollinator-feeding blooms, nasturtium seeds mature in clusters of two to three highly-visible and savable seeds. I brought these inside to dry on a paper towel and lost a few to my girls walking by thinking these were peas on which to snack.
Plants have an amazing reproductive system, maturing hundreds to thousands of seeds in hopes that a few will propagate into the next season and give rise to the next generation. Some seeds are easier to save than others due to their size. I can save coriander and dill seed every season, but I have yet to even notice a tiny thyme seed. I save marigold, zinnia, and nasturtium seeds, but have yet to have any microscopic pansy seeds fall into my palm at the end of the season. If it’s easy I save it, why not? I have a serious gardening habit and saving seeds at least cuts out some of the costs.
These zinnia and echinacea seeds were collected from dried seed heads and "packaged" for the next season. I always write the year in which they were collected, so I know how viable they might be once they are lost in my seed storage bin.
While I was canning, I set aside jalapeño and Serrano seeds to cure for next year's garden. I knew these were heirloom, open-pollinated varieties that would produce fruit close to the parent variety. The one thing I am not sure of is if the seeds were fully mature when I harvested them from the fruit. Time will tell when I try to germinate them in February for next summer's garden.
I will dry, save, and plant these jalapeño and Serrano seeds harvested during my tomatillo salsa canning session in next summer's garden.
I didn't save the tomato or tomatillo seeds this year and this will be next year's experiment when I actually have the space to successfully grow them myself. This season, I purchased tomatillos from a local farm and my parents gave me tomatoes from their garden. Harvesting these "wet" seeds is a bit more involved and I didn't know if they were heirloom, open-pollinated varieties.
After several freezes, I harvested these French Marigold and Orange Hawaii Marigold blooms and will let them dry in these old yogurt containers before harvesting. Southwest Colorado is very dry so I am not worried about mold or mildew.
I am mainly saving flower seeds this fall--marigolds, zinnias, calendula, nasturtiums, and hollyhocks. The hollyhock seeds gathered from the former community garden, I have dried and sorted and will get these back to the science teacher at our elementary school for student use in the new garden. Since I ended up with a huge number of french marigold seeds, I will be adding these to my seed inventory for sale in the Forging Time store in January once they are cured and packaged. I have just enough nasturtium, zinnia, and calendula seeds to establish new plants for my garden in the spring.
Next season, I know I will have enough herbs and veggies to accomplish the next level of seed-saving goals I am striving for:
As I incrementally make my way toward realizing these seed-saving goals through tried and true techniques, I will chronicle them here. In the meantime, what seeds are you saving this fall as a promise to next season's bounty?
]]>Interplanting tulip bulbs with garlic bulbs as a deterrent for deer...lol.
Like most, I plant my bulbs and garlic together in the Fall. This year the first frost is very late so I didn't plant them until late October. To make the work of sowing bulbs and cloves so much easier, I wait until after my fall clean-up of garden beds and after I have added compost and mulch. This way, I can space them all out on the surface and then submerge them easily in the loamy new layers of compost and mulch.
In my last garden, I had competition from rabbits, but here in Durango, the deer make certain things impossible to grow, i.e. tulips. Last year I fruitlessly tried to interplant my garlic with my tulip bulbs as a deer deterrent. Anyone with deer experience reading last year's post probably got a belly laugh from the idea. It does not work. Deer are hungry in the spring and tulips are delicious to them, regardless of the garlic. I did grow a few successfully but had to cage them in with wire, decreasing the aesthetic. The deer seemed to have no interest in the alliums, crocus, daffodils, or hyacinth, so this year I chose more of these and a few new varieties of "deer-resistant" wild tulips.
In mid-March, I added these tulip cages to protect them from the deer after losing several burgeoning tulip blossoms to the deer. I managed to see them bloom but don't love the "caged" look.
Because garlic develops underground, it can absorb whatever it is exposed to in the water and soil in which it grows. If I must buy garlic, I purchase organic or from local growers that I know at the farmer’s market. Since garlic is easy to grow, doesn’t take up much space in the garden, and is a cooking essential in our daily recipes, I always plant it. Eventually, I hope to grow all we need for the year.
As the main peeler of garlic in our home, I prefer hardneck as it peels so much more easily and generally has larger cloves. I do plant some softneck so I can braid it at harvest for easier long-term storage, but hardneck will always win for its ease of use. I also love the fact that hardneck garlic offers an early spring harvest of scapes, the seed pods that can be eaten before the seeds mature. This year I ate most of the immature scapes but let some grow to maturity so I could use the seeds. I planted these tiny cloves this fall to see how well this works as a garlic starter and will update after next year's harvest.
Mature garlic seeds developed from a hardneck garlic scapes. This Fall, I separated the garlic by type to see if I found any differences in flavor. While I like to cook, I am no chef and to me garlic is garlic. It all tasted pretty much the same.
I thought I'd see if I could tell the difference between the different garlic varieties but I am no sommelier and have decided garlic is garlic. This is half of the amount I purchased from my favorite stand at the Durango Farmers Market, Mocking Crow Farm. The other half was saved as my seed garlic for fall planting.
For the past two seasons, I have purchased bulk garlic from my favorite farm stand in early September. From this large quantity of garlic, I take an afternoon to break apart the heads as gently as I can and divide cloves into two piles: cloves to plant and cloves to eat. I select the cloves to plant based on two criteria. First, I separate the largest cloves which selects for cloves that will grow large in subsequent seasons. Second, of the largest cloves, I only set aside those with their cured skin intact as they will not dry out before I am able to plant them in late October. For the remaining smaller cloves and those with open skins, I peel them all with my trusty garlic peeler and save them in a jar in the refrigerator. I simply pull these out and dice them for any given recipe. This is an especially helpful timesaver in the fall just prior to making large batches of salsa full of garlicky goodness.
This year's garlic sourced from Mocking Crow Farm: Chesnook Red (HN), Georgia Fire (HN), Sonoran (SN), German Red (HN), Montana Zemo (HN), Persian Star (HN)
This summer's garlic harvest curing on the pea trellis next to our front door.
Who doesn’t set their gardening clock by the peaking and cresting of the spring bulbs? It sets the mind to dreaming of all possibilities in this new season. What will I add to my garden this year? New beds? New plants? Outside of their beauty, blooming bulbs offer early sources of food to pollinators and the start of the zone 5/6 timer on the growing season. “Oh, the daffodils are up? Time to start hardening off my indoor starts. Oh, the tulips are up? Which perennials do I need to get in the ground?” This biological alarm cannot go off unless you plant your bulbs in the fall and tuck them in for the winter. Outside of preplanning, bulbs are easy to grow and are a small effort for a big spring payoff.
The first spring daffodils in bloom this past spring.
If you plant bulbs, they will multiply, and five years in, you will find you have more spring blooms than you know what to do with; however, to begin I order them online for the first few years. I never buy more than one variety so I can see how well adapted each is to my garden and its microclimates. If it does well and I love it, I may get more in subsequent years, but getting new and different varieties each year ensures a true diversity of spring blooms over time.
A variety of tulips and daffodils in the spring garden.
This year I chose to not order any more tulips because of the deer. Instead, I invested in three dozen more saffron crocus as they did really well in the front garden and I want a bigger saffron harvest next year. I used a more "local" online nursery in southwest Colorado, High Country Gardens, and shopped for deer-resistant bulbs. This resulted in the purchase of a new iris, a red spider lily, several varieties of allium, and three plants very new to me: red crown imperial, snake's head fritillary, and Persian lily. These will complement the tulip, hyacinth, and daffodil bulbs I planted last year and grow the menagerie of spring blooms.
Getting ready to plant bulbs in the fresh layer of compost
Like garlic, bulbs just need a 6- to 8-inch-deep tuck into the new organic matter added as a part of the Fall clean-up. Most varieties come with instructions about eventual height and spacing, so I try to place the taller varieties toward the back of the bed and the shorter ones toward the front. I am not an admirer of alternating, neat monochromatic bands of blooms, so I do my best to mix the colors as I like a wilder cottage garden look. This means interplanting bulbs around existing perennials and always being surprised in the spring, summer, and fall with what comes up. It's like planting yourself little presents to be forgotten and discovered later.
]]>Clearing the crab apple branches from over the sidewalk offered the materials for a quickly woven door wreath.
Early in October, I was aware I would not have much time to address all of the critical fall gardening tasks, but certain fall clean-up chores are not optional. I was able to prioritize:
Our city offers a fall clean-up service in which all landscape debris is collected and hauled away for composting. I am not set up yet for composting my own yard clippings. I hope to be in a position to do this next fall, but for now, I wanted to clear the decks for the hardscaping I'd like to begin later in the fall.
The last of the fall flowers made for a nice showing indoors in the last weeks of Fall.
Trimming the crab apple branches from over the sidewalk offered enough boughs to weave a door wreath with some wire from the garden toolbox. The girls and their friends caught wind of this idea and started making their own crowns, wreaths, and bracelets from the plants in the fall clean-up pile which kept them busy for the rest of the day.
The kids' creations from the fall clean-up pile.
Clearing the garden beds made it possible to layer in the compost I had purchased from the garden center in September. I purchased a mushroom compost and fermented pine shavings to improve the hard-packed clay in the front garden beds over the winter. Adding these amendments also made it easier to plant garlic and bulbs later in the month.
Cleaned-up beds, ready for winter garden dreaming and scheming.
This annual ritual offers two important benefits. First, it allows one to "find" plants forgotten in the overgrowth; this year I "found" the saffron crocus bulbs that I planted last fall. Second, it creates a blank canvas on which to plan over the winter for the next spring and summer. I like putting the garden to bed in this way and reflecting while I work on went well this season and did not. For me this is the start of winter garden dreaming and scheming.
]]>This season-extension technique is pretty straightforward, but the one I often forget. When there is so much to harvest, planting is usually the last thing on my mind, but this year I am planting my raised beds with the copious number of lettuce seeds I still have on hand and simply throwing a sheet of plastic over the top to see what happens.
]]>Tidy Treats Hybrid Cherry Tomato in my kitchen garden on the deck in early September.
It is early October as I finish up this post. We have yet to have a frost, however, in early September I was preparing for the much colder nights to come. Tomatoes and peppers like warmth and so I felt it was time to retire the two cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and jalapeños in my potager and bring them indoors. This is a new season-extension technique for me. I plan to keep them in the house as long as they are healthy and fruiting and then treat them as starter plants for the spring. This will be another ongoing experiment and I will post added detail as I learn what works and what doesn't.
The "snack corner" of our dining room also known as our indoor winter garden with tomatoes, basil, dill, marjoram, parsley, thyme, cilantro, lettuce, bell peppers, and jalapeños.
My principal reason for summer gardening is to enjoy homegrown tomatoes. We love them. My girls have taken to calling the corner of our dining room pictured above the "snack corner," as they remove every ripe tomato from the vine and pop them in their mouths before I can ever use them in a salad. I had to ask them to refrain from eating them this week so I could get at least one picture of how well they are doing in their sunny window.
These compact hybrid cherry tomatoes lend themselves well to this project as I know they will not grow out of control. I purchased two early this summer from the garden center: A Chocolate Sprinkles Cherry and a Tidy Treats Cherry.
I purchased two, 2-gallon pots from the local hardware store and drilled a 1-inch hole in the bottom |
I dug up the two cherry tomatoes from my kitchen garden and shook off most of the dirt. |
I pulled the roots through the 1-inch hole in the bottom of the bucket and held them up as I added potting soil. |
To protect the dangling tomato plant, I used my hummingbird feeder hooks as I topped off the bucket with potting soil and transplanted the basil plants. |
While these were still outside I gave them a deep watering. |
I bought two plant hooks from the hardware store and centered them above the windows. |
I had an 8-inch by 6-foot board in the basement to which I attached grow lights using string to offer additional light. These are sitting on top of the plant hooks unattached. |
Voila! Fall and Winter cherry tomatoes! Since I brought them in, they have put on new growth and new fruit. |
My bell peppers and jalapeños did reasonably well on the yurt deck this summer and still had peppers coming on so I also brought these indoors. Once they stop fruiting, I will explore helping them go dormant for the winter and storing them in the garage until spring. For the jalapeño plant, I simply transplanted it into an extra pot I had on hand. The bell pepper I added to a stackable pot in which I will be growing herbs and lettuce this winter. The bell pepper has since had a terrible outbreak of aphids so I have been removing leaves, cleaning leaves, and treating leaves with neem oil. It will be a hard-won battle should I prevail.
Which plants are you bringing in this season? What are your tips and tricks for extending the life of your summer garden plants? I'd love to hear in the comments below!
]]>Moving into our new home, we inherited four apple trees and three pear trees, all of which are prolific. We also live in an area abundant with farms, orchards, and ranches. Much of this bounty is available in the fall all at once and the easiest way to preserve it for later eating is to slice it and dry it.
Again, I like to keep it simple. As the pears and apples fall, enter the mandolin slicer and food dehydrator (a life goal realized three years ago). I slice the apples and pears into thin slices, lay them in a single layer on the dehydrator tray, sprinkle them with cinnamon and dry them for four hours at 135 F. These make an amazing snack for the girls to take to school or add to oatmeal mid-winter for a taste of summer.
Dehydrated Peach Fruit Leather, Dehydrated Pear Chips, Dehydrated Apple Chips
My hometown is famous for its peaches and I always buy a case. We eat as many as we can, the juice leaving sticky trails throughout the house, however, a box of peaches cannot all be eaten before the ripe fruit turns, so enter the blender. I do blanch the peaches for one minute and the peels come right off. I then cut them in half and blend them into a puree, add them to the dehydrator trays and in about 4 to six hours we have fruit roll-ups for months. The girls, especially my youngest, L cannot get enough!
]]>Peach fruit roll-ups ready to peel and eat!
Frozen quart bags of roasted green chilies, a southwestern delicacy, and 3-cup packages of pear cubes for baking.
I spend the summer growing veggies, not cooking; it is too darned hot to stand in the kitchen over boiling sauces and salsas. Also, I grow too much to eat it all fresh in the summer and not everything ripens at once to make a big enough batch of anything worth canning. The best solution I have found so far is to toss whole tomatoes and whole tomatillos into a zip-lock freezer bag or gallon jar as they come on and deal with them later.
There must be some neurological hard wiring we have to cook and bake in the Fall because online all I see are folks posting pics of their canning and baking. I am no exception, and this is when the frozen tomatoes and tomatillos come out to be turned into salsa and sauces or intermittently thrown into a dish I am making on the stovetop for some fresh summer flavor mid-winter. See more about this in the Can It! section.
In the past, I would do my best to eat to the bottom of the freezer portion of my fridge in the spring, so I had room for all my frozen summer produce. Last year was the first year I had a freezer in the garage (a life goal realized) so now I have the room to move beyond the tomatoes and tomatillos. The expansion this year extends to pears.
Diced pears on freezer sheets ready to be flash-frozen before being added to ziplock bags for later use in muffins, tarts, and cakes. Pictured on the cooling rack, is one of three batches of pear muffins I tested this fall to find one we all love.
Can you or should you blanch your produce before you freeze it? Blanching (boiling or steaming for a short time) does protect the color, flavor, and texture of some veggies, however, it depends on the veggie and when you freeze it. I am too busy in the summer to even consider doing this for veggies I know will stand up better in the freezer in their own natural wrapping. I reserve blanching for my green beans, pears, and corn. I have fond memories of my mother cutting blanched corn from the cob to freeze; raw kernels that stayed together were named "corn cookies" by my sister and me who stole them shamelessly from the "ready to freeze" pile. If you want kids to eat veggies, grow veggies!
Oh and that excessive amount of zucchini? Grate it in the food processor and freeze it in 2 c. increments in your freezer for winter baking...adding this to any batter leads to the most moist and delicious cakes, sweet breads, and muffins.
Throw It Directly in the Freezer | Blanch It and Freeze It | Wash, Chop then Freeze It | Cook it then Freeze It |
Whole Tomatoes Whole Tomatillos Sliced Peppers Berries Bananas (peeled) |
Apples (steam) Asparagus Corn Green beans Peas |
Pears Zucchini (Grated)
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Beets Winter Squash Sweet potatoes Potatoes
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I have left broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and cabbage off of this list as you can leave these in the garden until late fall as they all taste better after the early freeze.
]]>We have a lot of competition for our fruit: deer, bears, worms, insects, and birds. I tried an experiment this year wrapping the low-hanging fruit with stockings, the kind you get at the shoe store when trying new shoes. I would say the juice on this method isn't worth the squeeze as by my unscientific calculations it worked about 10% of the time. Still, we managed to get a large number of unblemished pears and a few apples, meaning no holes or evidence of worm infiltration near the bloom. By my calculation, the secret to harvesting and packing fruit is in having a large number of trees if you are unwilling to spray.
Pears and apples wrapped in shoe store stockings. This seemed to work about 10% of the time, so I am not sure I'd do it again.
My daughters and their friends helped with harvesting and even some unwrapping of the fruit. While there was some initial grumbling all I heard was laughter while they were doing it. They turned it into a competition with the younger girls "against" the older girls, which really meant the older girls manipulated their younger sisters to do all the picking, aka "winning." Sisters!
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Fruit for Sauce Overripe fruits with many blemishes, bruises, and wormholes were turned into pear and apple sauce. |
Fruit for Drying and Freezing Fruits that had fewer blemishes and wormholes to cut around were sliced for drying or diced for freezing. |
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Fruit to Save and Eat Throughout the Fall Unripe, unblemished pears and apples packed in shredded paper can last a while in a cool dark place. They should not be touching as they are in this photo. |
The one part of my system that is still missing is a refrigerator to store the apples and pears in for the longer term. The fruit can last for several months if stored in the fridge, so I was searching Craig's list for a free fridge. I found one and it was a neighbor's but he had already promised it to someone else. I will continue my search this winter. I was able to free up space in one crisper drawer of our kitchen fridge for pears. The apples are in a box packed in paper, however, they will not last long now that we have just turned the heat on for the first time this week.
Once my garage refrigerator system is set up next year, I will update this post.
]]>When I was younger, my parents, back-to-the-land hippies in the 70s, built a community around an agrarian lifestyle and had friends that raised meat chickens. Every year, we would go for a full day with other families to butcher and preserve these chickens for the winter. There was a definite division of labor by the sexes and the generations: the men would catch and kill the chickens. dip them in boiling water to release the feathers, and talk about the weather; the women would pull the feathers, gut and butcher the chickens, pack them for the freezer, and talk about the men; the kids would watch the chickens run around with their heads cut off and laugh, look at the repurposed one-gallon ice cream buckets full of chicken guts with horror and curiosity, and occasionally run between the kitchen and the barn as requested by the adults to take this or that to the other place.
Our former flock of chickens in Golden.
I know this story is a bit of a bird walk (ha, ha) from the topic of canning, but this is one of my most vivid memories from my childhood and it was built around a community preparing for the winter, completing a big chore, and doing so with laughter. Canning can be fun and I do enjoy salsa in the winter, but it is a commitment of time and energy and it is better with company. Consider inviting friends over to share in the burden of chopping, stewing, sterilizing, boiling, and testing the seals of your culinary creations. Projects like this are always better when you can chit-chat.
The chicken story is a legacy I look forward to passing down to my girls as we build community in our new town. For now, I am still toiling alone with minimal help from the girls. Next year I hope to bring more friends into the fold for a canning party.
The big goal this year was to make apple sauce from the fallen ground apples for snacks and baking and to make a batch of tomatillo salsa. I also ended up with a surprise batch of produce from my mom's and stepdad's prolific garden as well, so tomato salsa also ended up on the canning docket.
Peeled, cored, and pared fallen apples to make apple sauce. Just a topping of cinnamon and water is all you need. The sugar in the apples adds enough sweetness.
Spicy Tomato Salsa Recipe Clockwise: 3/4 c. apple cider vinegar, 9 cloves of garlic, rehydrated and pureed peppers, 1 c. cilantro, 1 onion, 9 chopped and seeded jalapeño's, 1 tsp. red pepper flakes, 6 lbs. peeled and soon-to-be-seeded and chopped tomatoes.
Bright green carrot top pesto! Preserve the color with a little olive oil on top before you pop it in the freezer or the fridge.
When I return from a farmers market run or from my own garden, there are so many options for making pesto, from the vegetable parts that might otherwise end up in the compost to the excess of herbs that grow like weeds at the end of the season. I have never encountered a sauce that freezes so easily and tastes so fresh in the middle of winter. With the help of a food processor, preparing pesto is nearly effortless in comparison to the reward in flavor and nutrition I can preserve for later enjoyment.
All pesto basically has seven ingredients that many of us already have in our kitchens:
These last three ingredients can be highly variable depending upon what you have on hand.
Carrot tops make amazing pesto and are full of nutrients: Vitamin A (110%), potassium (250 mg), vitamin C (10%), and calcium (2%).
The carrot top pesto featured in these photos from Fall of 2021 didn't really last all that long as we mixed it into pasta, spread it over sourdough toast, and baked it over salmon. This fall, I am hoping to make a dill pesto for winter fish dishes. Which variations of pesto have you tried?
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