Fall Kitchen Work

Rosemary, Oregano and Parsley - dried for winter use

Tomatoes, halved and seeded and ready for dehydrating

Finished Product - Oven-dried Tomatoes

Tomatillos, whole and in a bit of water

Finished product - ready for use in salsas, stews, chili, etc.

Today I have some jalapenos I'm going to dehydrate. We also got our first good frost last night (it's currently 34°), so I'm going to go thru the garden and pick whatever may be left.

In other yardwork, we have to mow the lawn and then overseed the backyard. We disagree on where we're going to overseed (we only bought enough to do about half the back). I think we should seed where the grass is thinnest - towards the back of the yard - and Eric thinks we should seed where we spend the most time, even though the grass there is plenty thick and grows well.

Putting Food By

Well, with the start of fall harvest comes the start of putting food aside for the winter.

Last weekend I turned about 1/3 of the collards I harvested into Sukuma Wiki (the rest went to my sister, probably for the same purpose). There's still more collards coming in, so I may have to do another batch.

Last night I spent the night turning several pounds of tomatoes into my Red-Wine Marinara Sauce. I have about 20 lbs ripening in the bag and about as many still on the vine.

Some time in the near future I'm going to pull out some tray-frozen peppers from last year and turn them into Roasted Tomato and Pepper Sauce, along with this year's peppers.

I only ended up with a handful of jalapenos this year - not enough to justify smoking and drying them into chipotles. I may just turn them all into poppers to eat now or try my hand at pickling.

Harvest

Jalapenos, one gigantic tomato (Better Boy?), several plum tomatoes, a couple romas, more beans, one squash, a couple peppers.


And several pounds of collards to be blanched and frozen, turned into sukuma wiki, or eaten fresh this week.


Happy (almost) September!

Garden update

My tomato plants have been hit by some form of spot disease. I think it's bacterial.



I trimmed away the worst of the affected leaves. The fruit seems to be just fine so far. In fact, we have a tomato the size of a bocce ball that's almost ripe. And the plants pictured here? Crazy producers. I'm going to have some amazing marinara this year. Also, if you look carefully in the first photo you can see our tomatillo plants and all the fruit it's set. Love.It.

The garlic we grew this year actually doesn't suck! I have to admit I was nervous. I dug it up when they said to, but the bulbs were so small. But I took one of them and tried cooking with it and, wow. Delish. Spicy and flavorful.

The onions are almost ready to come out, I think. Our yellow ones are beautiful and large. I can't wait to cook with them.

I think the bush beans and the peapods have finally kicked the bucket.

I don't know if our habanero will ever produce. Our poblano seems to be done after just two peppers. Green peppers are doing just fine and the jalapenos are doing ok. Not as crazy as last year but we didn't have much hot weather this year.

The lettuce? Came back. Gah. I may have to ding-dong-ditch with lettuce this year.

Our zucchini plant got vine borers, so that got dug up and thrown out. I'm scared to see what all this rain has done to my remaining squash plant. It had set more fruit a week ago but I've been unable to go check on it all this week.

I need to harvest, blanch and stew the collards. I think I may just make a ginormous pot of sukuma wiki and be done with it.

I've been harvesting and drying herbs for the winter. I love my oven's dehydration feature. I have a boatload of fresh dried parsley and rosemary. The oregano and basil are next.

Garden Recipes

Now that the garden is starting to swing into full production, I thought I'd share a couple recent kitchen creations using in-season vegetables.

Garden Bounty Minestrone - this was a tasty way to use up zucchini, squash, beans and pea pods.
Creamy Orzo Primavera - a spin on pasta primavera, using more beans and pea pods
Spinach-Stuffed Pork Chops - using spinach, a spring onion and fresh herbs. and bacon. because bacon makes everything better

The following are from last year that are worth a repeat:
Caesar Salad with Croutons - a great way to use the last of the lettuce for this year
Sukuma Wiki - collards, collards and more collards. goes GREAT with BBQ.

Find more on What Recipe using the "garden" tag

Lettuce and Garlic Harvest and thoughts on fall planting

I harvested the last of the lettuce yesterday. We're about to go on vacation and it was getting towards the end of the season. I was pretty sure it would bolt while we were gone.

Our two plants ended up offering two gallons of leaf lettuce. I think overall we've harvested somewhere between 4-5 gallons this year.

I also dug up our garlic. We lost one head... as in, I couldn't find it where it had been planted. Another one is probably inedible since the stem was completely brown and flopped over. But I got one nice head and one smaller one that I think will do.

I'm considering going ahead and ordering a bunch now for fall planting. Not sure where, yet, I'm going to plant it though. I have been toying with next year's plan and seed orders (first time growing from seed! Eek!), so I may come up with a rudimentary plan just to get the garlic in the ground.

What's Growing Now

I've been woefully behind in updating but the garden and life is keeping us busy.

To date we have harvested:
a boatload of lettuce
a ton of collards
dozens of green beans
lots of pea pods
3 jalapenos
1 zucchini
1 summer squash
lots and lots of herbs

With them we have made lots of salads, sauteed collards to go with Rudy's BBQ chicken, salmon stir fry (using the beans and pea pods), and Garden Bounty Minestrone.

Ready to be picked are the garlic (I think I may be too late for one...) and some onions and shallots (they just need thinning).

On the vine there are lots more jalapenos, poblanos, green peppers, a ton of tomatoes, more zucchini and squash.

Odd failures this year were the chard and the spinach. I really don't know what happened - last year we couldn't keep up with them.

In exciting news, I was talking with my mom about canning. She asked why I was bothering with it and I whined about our lack of refrigerator space, especially in comparison to our pantry space. She seemed surprised that we hadn't bought a freezer yet and I admitted it was on the list of purchases but we've never gotten around to it. So she said that she and dad would buy us one as a Christmas present - apparently this was something they'd done for most of my other siblings. It's a very generous gift but one I think we'll gladly accept. I need to keep an eye on sales now.

Garden photos - July 2009

I harvested some of the collards today for dinner.

Garage Bed - July 2009

Bean Bed July 2009 and a surprise

The surprise were these blood-red roses that appeared along the fireplace wall.