I have a secret stash of magazines hidden under the mattress on my side of the bed. I know I am not the only one with this problem, but yesterday, I added to my collection…the Gurney’s catalog came in the mail! I have a problem and I am willing to admit it. I just love to look at seed catalogs. I pour over each page and read every description of every seed. I make lists of what I want and more lists of who sells at the best price. I have a problem!
If my problem was uni-dimensional, there may be hope…but I have another addiction also. My wife calls it bee-porn. I admit it - I love to read beekeeping magazines and catalogs and websites too. I love to read Beesource.
In one way, it makes no sense why I read the seed catalogs over and over again. The descriptions never change. How many ways can you say a bean is green or a cabbage will make the best kraut ever? Still, as winter looms, I take part in the process. I really hate winter. It depresses me. I have a serious need to be outside but I don’t care for the cold anymore. So I am stuck with a contempt for winter. But the catalogs give me something to look forward to. It’s how I get through the winter. That sounds overly dramatic, but it makes my outlook so much brighter. I love fooling with the garden and it’s sort of what I am all about. Messing around in the garden makes me feel alive. I work on computers all day and they take me so out of touch from other people (don’t get me wrong, I don’t really like people : ) ) and from what makes me feel human. Machines pay the bills, but they are not who I am.
So, I am thankful for Gurneys, and especially their catalog. I am thankful for bee-porn. I am thankful for my crazy wife and kids who support me with my problem! Happy Thanksgiving!
I used to turn my nose up at just about anything vegetable related, but especially things like chow chow and relish - stuff whose components cannot be easily identified. Here I am a bunch of years later wondering why in the world I was so silly. We had a ton of green tomatoes left in the garden when we decided to put it to bed for the winter.
I am not one to just dump the free food so we carried every green tomato into the kitchen. Thanks to the folks at Texas A & M University, we found a way to use them without my having to give myself some sort of tomato facial or make a tomato+Mt Dew sport drink.
- CHOW-CHOW
- 1 peck (12 pounds) green tomatoes
- 8 large onions
- 10 green bell peppers
- 3 tablespoons salt
- 6 hot peppers (chopped)
- 1 quart vinegar
- 1 tablespoon allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon cloves
- 3 tablespoons dry mustard
- Few bay leaves
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- cup horseradish (optional)
CHOP tomatoes, onions and peppers together and cover with the salt; let stand overnight. Drain, add the hot peppers, vinegar, spices (tied in cheese-cloth bag) and sugar; allow to boil slowly until tender (about 15 minutes). Add horseradish. Pack into sterilized Kerr jars to within inch of top. Put on cap, screw band FIRMLY TIGHT. Process in Boiling Water Bath 10 minutes.
Of course, chow chow is one of those mystery foods where you can really put just about anything into it. I have seen it with cabbage before and I suppose you could shred squash or pumpkins too. Anyhow, we made several jars of the stuff and it is really really good!
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I talked a little about drying beans the other day but I didn’t tell you what we do with the beans once they are dried. Actually, we dehydrate and dry all sorts of things actually and this applies to everything we do. As I have said before, I get hair-brained ideas fairly regularly. I wanted to be able to vacuum seal stuff in jars but I couldn’t see spending the money to get one of the fancy vacuum sealers. Foodsaver makes attachments for their powered products to evacuate the air from mason jars so I decided to give that a try with a modification of how the air gets removed. I needed something that sucks!
I can’t take sole credit for these ideas but I can’t remember where I saw a similar discussion on the idea. Anyhow, a brake bleeder sucks just fine and, in fact, even has a vacuum guage on it to tell how much it sucks. My first plan was to integrate the brake bleeder with the mason jar sealer. Although I wouldn’t want to hand pump a brake bleeder all day long, I can pull a vacuum of 20 inches of Hg in about 30 seconds. The mason jar sealer works perfectly for that.
Moving on to bigger and better, Harbor Freight (a cheap tool supplier) has a vacuum pump for evacuating hvac systems. You simply hook it up to your air compressor and it will draw around 28 inches of Hg. I couldn’t make it work as well with the jar sealer for some reason though I didn’t try too hard either. You can (as I did) fashion some sort of a cup-like end for a piece of hose. You could use a stout film canister or a small piece of tupperware or somehting similar.
Punch a hole in the lid of the jar and put a piece of duct sealing tape (the shiny silver stuff, not regular duct tape) on the lid leaving the hole exposed. Hold the cup over the hole and tape and start the vacuum. When you are finished, slide the cup off across the tape sealing the hole. The vacuum will further hold the tape in place providing a great seal.
With a little effort, you could probably use the hvac pump with the jar sealer too so it is worth a try. My “cup” solution works for things like large pickle jars or other containers that aren’t mason jar sized.
A traditional vacuum cleaner will not pull sufficient vacuum for this to work by the way. You’ll need something designed to draw (from what I have read) somewhere around 15-25 inches of Hg to be sufficient. Also, this is not a replacement for canning stuff that should be canned. We only store dehydrated stuff this way. Anyhow, it’s a pretty cool option for storing garden stuff and it can be pretty cheap depending on the junk you have laying around your workshop.
We planted sunflowers this year as an experiment but, as usual, I had no idea what to do with them come harvest time. After some searching, we found how simple it is to roast sunflower seeds. The National Sunflower Association provides a simple recipe We added 2 quarts of water and 1/4 cup of salt to a regular sauce pan. 
We then added enough seeds to make the pan full but not in danger of overflowing. Once boiling, we covered it and lowered the heat and simmered it for 2 hours. I stirred it every now and then just to make sure nothing was missing out on the salty fun! Afterwards, I heated the oven to 300 deg F and spread the seeds on a few cookie sheets.
The recipe says to bake for 30 minutes but it took much longer than that for ours to be dried and roasted. Just keep an eye on it after 45 minutes of so. We checked back every 15 or so minutes until they were done. Don’t try to pile the seeds on too thick. A single layer is necessary (don’t ask me how I know) for good roasting. Once you finish the roast, let the seeds cool for half an hour before you pour them into a moisture and mouse proof container.
Some folks separate the seeds from the shells when they eat them. Personally, I just eat the whole thing. I have no trouble with fiber…that’s all I’ll say. Emily is a separator. She doesn’t appear to be ready for the Majors yet as her seed spit is not yet up to par. We have a bunch of seeds though so I suppose she will have more time to practice!
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I planted garlic this weekend. Last year I ordered several types of garlic from Seed Savers Exchange. We planted Music, Shvelisi (Chesnok red), and German Extra Hardy. They all grew well but only the Music really appealed to us flavor-wise. I saved 5 heads of it from this summer’s harvest and replanted the cloves from those heads. I also ordered some new varieties from The Garlic Store. We planted Metechi and Romanian Red garlic in addition to the Music. All together, we planted almost 70 cloves of garlic this year. That is an increase of around 10-20 from last year.
So, in case you don’t know how to plant garlic, I’ll describe. Garlic comes in heads that contain 4-12 cloves. I dig a hole about 2-3 inches deep, spaced every 6-12 inches. At the garden (i.e. not before) I separate the cloves of garlic and place them pointy end up in the bottom of the hole. I replace the dirt and move on. Typically, garlic is planted in the fall, usually around Columbus day. Through the fall and winter, the garlic forms roots from the cloves and begins to form a new head. Some folks plant garlic in the early spring but it just seems easier to me to plant them in the fall and forget about it. My garlic is all hard-neck which means that each clove will send up a hard stalk in the spring that will persist until
harvest (I am sure there are other differences between hard and soft-neck also). We harvest in July when the leaves from the hard stalks start to wither and turn brown. We carefully dig the garlic and hang it to dry in the shed (leave the dirt still attached). Once it dries for 4-6 weeks, we trim the leaves and roots and store in onion sacks in the cellar. Easy-schmeesy!
We use a ton of garlic in canning and cooking so it is likely that we will use every bit of this garlic. Once you try fresh garlic in things, it is hard to beat. The stuff is simple to grow and fairly cheap to get started. It’s easy to save heads for the next season so your investment can be a one time deal if you find types you like. There are several places that sell garlic but they usually sell out early so start looking in July or August. What we plant is organic but that’s up to you. Garlic is sterile and will not cross pollinate so you can plant different varieties side by side.
We wrapped up the summer garden last weekend. Mentally, we checked out of it a few weeks ago, completely exhausted from canning and drying and pickling and cooking. Gardening and canning is exhausting work though we both really enjoy it (don’t ask us now, ask us in February) and it gives us a lot of time to work together towards a common goal, chat about the day or the future or our dreams. It provides us with fantastic nutrition and exercise. We have no fear of a vitamin D deficiency in the summer sun. It’s just the right thing for us to do.
It is equally good to put the summer garden to rest though. We get to take a break and enjoy a bit of the work that we’ve done. 
I don’t suppose to have any real idea of our ancestors who really survived on the land, but I think I feel a small bit of the relief of having food put up, of the rest of fall and winter, and the simple joy of seeing stuff transition from seed to seed.
Ok, enough pondering life. We gathered a bunch of cayenne and jalapeno peppers (will they ever end?!), black beans, green peppers and tomatoes (those are 6 gallon buckets in the first pic) at the close of the garden. We actually picked several crops of black beans that had dried on the vine over the course of the summer. Anyone pulling up the plants early to harvest dried beans is missing a huge second or third crop.
Anyhow, Emily spent a good part of one evening shelling the last crop of black beans. Mo, our cat loved the seed pods. He chased them all over the place. We dry the beans on a clothes drying rack covered with cotton fabric which is held in place with clothes pins. The cool thing is that the entire rack folds down almost flat and is easy to store.
It’s also a lot cheaper than some of the fancier racks and the cotton fabic can be washed unlike some of the window screen versions that some folks have made.
Anyhow, we are done with our summer garden. We are planting garlic tomorrow but that is fairly low key compared to everything else. ‘Tis good to have a break!
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Earlier this summer, I posted about our first year planting sunflowers. They were glorious and grand and a lot of fun to watch turn into the sun as we worked in the garden. Such beautiful plants couldn’t be left with just a single post. I had to bring them back into the discussion as I am sure you have been curious how things turned out.
As it turns out, sunflowers grow very tall and get very heavy with the weight of seeds. I didn’t really think things through when I planted them. I watched them grow and was awed by their stature. Of course, like Andre the Giant, suflowers are in a different atmosphere with winds that we normal Earth-bound travellers don’t feel. Sure enough, I lost a few to winds and gravity (which still works by the way). As I am a quick study, I staked those that remained and we harvested 7-8 gigantic sunflower heads. I had no idea when to harvest them of course and the first thing that occurred to me was that when the birds start devouring the crop, they must be ready. Thankfully, I have access to the internets and was able to find that when the fronts turn brownish and the backs tun yellowish, they are ready.�
Emily and I started de-seeding them this week and found out that sunflowers produce a very sticky sap. I am still dragging my one cat to the office each day as he is glued to my left hand. Anyhow, we pulled the seeds from the face of the flowers and winnowed them in a screen sifter I built from 1/4 inch hardware cloth. Most of the debris was removed by that process but we still put the seeds in the freezer to take care of any critters that couldn’t be persuaded to leave. We plan to roast the seeds which I suppose would have killed anything still attached also, but it just seemed grosser that way. Anyhow, after a 2-3 day freeze, we roasted them and will have several mason jars full of seeds!
I like hot peppers of various types. Over time, it seems that my taste buds have become less sensitive. I remember when jalapenos used to send me over the edge. Not so much any more. As a bit of a pepper junkie, I decided that we need tons of peppers to satisfy my cravings. In the excitement of late winter/early spring seed-starting, we planted hot peppers in sufficient number to feed my entire family for a year. We planted jalapenos, hungarian wax, cayennes and habaneros. 
I have been drying pepper rings, I have canned peppers by themselves, I have thrown peppers in salsa, pickles, spaghetti sauce, and on everything I eat fresh. Still, we have millions and millions of peppers. I had to resort to something extreme and strange to use up some jalapenos. 
I made jalapeno jelly last night. I am not exactly sure how you eat this though I have heard it is good on anything with creamcheese. The recipe is pretty simple so it’s worth a try:
Jalapeno Jelly
3/4 pound stemmed & de-seeded jalapenos�
2 cups vinegar
6 cups sugar
2 pouches of liquid pectin
I de-seeded the peppers for the first batch of jelly but got tired of that so I ground seends and all for the second batch. Anyhow, puree the jalapenos until they are nearly unrecognizable. Boil them with sugar and vinegar for 10 minutes. Make sure you stir constantly and have a big enough pan as this mixture swells a lot and really smokes-and-smells-up-your-house-and-your-wife-has-to-scurry-around-to-deactivate-the-smoke-alarms-since-the-kids-are-sleeping when (I mean if) you boil it over (so I’ve heard). After the 10 minute boil, remove from heat, add pectin and boil again for 1 minute. Powdered pectin does not work very well so do yourself a favor and just use liquid pectin. Ladle into half-pint jars and water bath can for 10 minutes. You can add green or red food coloring, by the way. I prefer not to add coloring but you can color it if you’d like.
I listen to this fun podcast called Geek.Farm.Life and I once heard them talking about cushaw squash. Being naturally curious (though nothing compared to my brother George), I decided to embark on the Cushaw express to see what delights lay ahead. I knew winter squash can grow pretty large but I had not really considered what that meant. They shot up pretty little heads, just like the nearby summer squash. They vined out early, just like the summer squash…but then, something happened. I am certain a genetic mutation occurred or some sort garden demon hexed them and caused them to send vines 20 feet or so through summer squash and zucchini and nearly to the peppers!
It was madness watching these cutsie little squash grow into gigantic green and white striped widow-makers! We harvested these when the skin became tough and they basically stopped increasing in size. I have read that they can keep a very long time so we will have some time to experiment. I will post again with details of how they taste and how we use them. In the meantime, beware of these garden whales!
Abigail and I were harvesting the potatoes the other day and I dug this up…at least I think I dug it up. Anyhow, it ended up in the pile of dirt from which we were picking potatoes. At the top it seemed like a cocoon but it was very much larva-like at the bottom. I guess it was a moth or butterfly larva weaving its cocoon but I do not know what type.
That crazy thing was wiggling around and really freaking the kids out ( I, of course, was quite brave and unmoved by its actions). It was several inches long and full of ugly. I decided to just put it back in the dirt and hope for the best.
We are pretty fond of butterflies but I have sort of mixed reactions to moths…due to a bad experience with wax moths and my stored honey supers…I still can hardly talk about it!
Anyhow, we had a pretty good haul of potatoes and the kids were absolutely fantastic at helping me harvest them. I have never seen them work so hard as they did then.
I have a secret stash of magazines hidden under the mattress on my side of the bed. I know I am not the only one with this problem, but yesterday, I added to my collection…the Gurney’s catalog came in the mail! I have a problem and I am willing to admit it. I just love to look at seed catalogs. I pour over each page and read every description of every seed. I make lists of what I want and more lists of who sells at the best price. I have a problem!
November 27, 2008 8:10 am | 
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