Category Archives: Garden

Green beans have started

Family, Garden,

My parents were in town last weekend and helped us harvest from the garden. Most of out time was spent picking beans. There were 6 rows of tenderette bush beans to pick. All together, we harvested 44 pounds of beans on this first picking. A bushel of beans of 30 pounds so we picked about one and a half bushels all together. We expect to harvest again this weekend and we may get another harvest after that. Once we picked, we spent a good deal of time snapping the ends off the beans and breaking them into pieces for canning. With two pressure canners going, we canned 30 quarts of beans on Saturday/Sunday. Beans are simple to can. We fill the warm jars nearly to the top with beans, add boiling water and a teaspoon of canning salt and pressure can them at 240 degrees for 25 minutes. Of the 30 quarts, only one didn’t seal. Aside from the beans we canned, three families had a good helping of fresh beans to boot. Emily’s grandfather mentioned and I have read that beans near tomatoes do better than beans alone and that certainly was true of our first harvest. We have one row of beans between two rows of tomatoes and they are larger, healthier plants and produced more beans than the rows that were away from the tomatoes. Next year, we will plant tomatoes and beans, every other row.

a 5-gal bucket o' beans

Dad processing beans

Momaw processing beans

Mom and Abigail doing beans

beans ready for the jar

beans to be canned

Yellow Squash!

Garden

yellow squash flower

Bumblebees in yellow squash flower

We harvested yellow summer squash on Saturday when my parents were here for a visit.  I didn’t count but I suppose we collected around 25 perfect sized squash.  We ate a bunch of it and gave some away.  I have a bunch of it in the dehydrator also.  Squash is around 94% water so dehydration can significantly reduce the volume for storage.  We haven’t tried to rehydrate and use squash yet but we have had luck with bell peppers and hot peppers.  I expect we’ll use it in with other stuff more than we will eat it in a squash-only dish.  We’ll see.  Bumblebee in yellow squash flower

Anyhow, I took some pics a while back of bumblebees in the squash flowers.  We have quite a few plants and there were tons (I didn’t count but I am positive it was over 100) bumblebees in the flowers.

Yellow squash on the vine

Many flowers had two or three bumblebees.  It is paying off now. Yellow squash harvest

I think the flowers must be too deep for my honeybees to get nectar from it as I never saw a single honeybee.  Anyhow, there are still a lot of flowers and bumblebees so I guess we’ll have a lot of squash.  I surely hope so…I love it!

 

Sauerkraut!

Canning, Garden,

cabbage for kraut

Cabbage was done so we started a batch of sauerkraut yesterday morning.  Emily’s granddad picked the cabbage

Shredded cabbage

and her grandmother and I shredded 6 heads.  Our recipe said to work with 5 lbs of cabbage at a time so we shredded and weighed it head at a time.  Kraut is really simple to make…or at least set up.  We had a few stone crocks into which we packed 1/3 of the 5 lbs of cabbage, followed by 1 tbsp of salt.  I rolled the salt and cabbage together in the crock until it was mixed and the water was drawn out of the cabbage.  We repeated until we had 10 pounds of cabbage in the crock.  It as amazing how much water was stored in the cabbage.  By the time we got 10 lbs in, water covered the cabbage and had allowed the cabbage itself to pack down significantly.  We put a plate on top of the crock of kraut

cabbage and weighed it down with mason jars full of water.  I will check it every day for 3-4 weeks to remove scum that may buildup.  Our basement is 75 degrees which should allow the cabbage to ferment pretty quickly.  We’ll (hopefully) have good kraut to can at the end.weighted kraut

Chanterelle mushrooms!

Canning, Garden, WV, ,

We decided to venture into the woods a little last night to hunt for some mushrooms.  There are tons of mushrooms growing on the leaf-bed in the forest we wisited.  Some I know are edible like the chanterelles we harvested.  There are some that I know are not safe to eat and there are a lot I don’t know about.  A friend is teaching me about mushrooms because I want to be an old mushroom eater!  I took a bunch more pictures when I went mushroom hunting with her on July 4th.  Anyhow, last night Isaac, Emily and I hiked only a short distance before Isaac found a patch of wild blueberries so he remained occupied with that.  After gathering mushrooms, we found a patch of blackberries so we picked a bunch of them and made 9 more half-pints of jam.  I am amazed, now that I am looking, how much food is growing around us here in the Charleston city-limits…I am also amazed at how poison ivy grows around here!

More blackberries

Canning, Garden, WV, ,

The blackberries are aplenty right now. We picked 2 1/2 qrts on Sunday, 4 qrts on Tuesday, and 4 more qrts tonight. The kids’ excitement has completely worn off by now though. Isaac brought a book while Abigail brought her positive outlook ;). My Dad (and sometimes I) used to pick blackberries along the logging roads near the house when I was younger. I am sure I always had a positive attitude. Anyhow, we have canned 27 half-pints of jam and 5 pints of syrup so far!  I think we will make a bunch more into syrup for pancakes since we probably have enough jam to last until next year. I see some blackberry homemade ice cream in our future too!  Speaking of that, Isaac and I discovered that a little jam (before pectin) tastes awesome on ice cream. I don’t care much for ice cream so I just get a little dab of ice cream and a heap of syrup. I don’t know what we are going to do if the picking continues to be as strong. I just can’t bear to see the food go to waste.  For the first time, we noticed how much poison ivy is in the berry patch.  I am not sure how we missed it before but we are hoping that we didn’t bring any of it home with us as well.

 

 

 

 

Blackberries

Canning, Family, Garden,

Blackberries are going full steam right now. Late this afternoon, we headed for the berry patch. Most of us went to pick. Isaac informed us he was not there to pick…he

was there to eat. I think he ate his fill because he pitched in and picked a bunch of berries as well. Both kids were a tremendous help in the berry patch. We intend to return to it on Tuesday evening and every couple of days as long as the berries hold out.

After about an hour of picking, we got 4 and a half quarts of berries. As soon as we got home, Abigail, Emily and I started making jam. We got a total of 9 half-pint jars of jam. We’re really enjoying canning our harvest. Emily and I both have a lot of fun doing it and have decided it is our favorite hobby to do together.

We saw a couple of cool things while at the berry patch too. When we first walked up, we happened upon a deer eating OUR BERRIES!. Isaac scared her off of course. The other cool thing we saw was a 6-foot black snake. Isaac wanted to pet it but the snake had other plans. We’ll keep an eye out for him next time!

Independence Day

Family, Garden,

What an Independence Day! Isaac and I walked in the woods with some friends this morning and had a lot of fun discovering all sorts of things while Emily and Abigail worked around the house. We started some ribs smoking around lunch in preparation for a 4th of July feast at supper time. Bud and Donna came over and ate ribs and corn and salad and taters and Hinora’s Stuff with us. Hmm…what is Hinora’s stuff? Here’s the core recipe (add whatever else is garden fresh): 

 

Hinora’s Stuff

1 diced, unpeeled potato per person

1 green pepper

3 small green onions

1 tbsp butter

2-3 jalapenos

1 yellow squash

2 cloves of garlic

half a small head of cabbage

1 green tomato

Cut it all up, pitch it in a skillet and fry till tender. It sounds so-so and looks so-so but tastes SO, SO good!

We messed around after eating until the city fireworks started. We headed outside and watched about 5 minutes’ worth until the rain poured. Some of us endured the rain and viewed it as a much needed shower. As the finale wrapped up, our teeth reached full chatter, our boots were filled with water and the rain stopped…perfect timing as usual!

Garlic!

Garden

Tonight we harvested the Music garlic we planted last October. I ordered Music, Hardy German, and Chesnock Red varieties of garlic from Seed Savers Exchange last fall. I had no idea there were different varieties of garlic. I figured that there was just the white stuff from the grocery store…little did I know! So, we planted several types figuring we’d decide what we like by taste!

Last fall, we opened the garlic bulbs and separated the cloves. Each clove gets planted and will develop into its own head of garlic by the next summer. The three varieties we got are hard-necked varieties (in honor of my wife…wait, she’s stiff-necked). I have no idea how they differ from soft-necked varieties aside from their necks. Anyhow, all-told, we planted about 45-50 cloves and each produced. We have a lot of garlic. Fortunately, we love it and eat a lot too. Over the course of the year, we will likely eat every bit of it.

The cool thing is that we will save our best bulbs of the types we like and plant them again this fall!

Raspberries

Garden

My parents acquired some raspberries when I was pretty young and I remember eating them as a kid. My parents’ patch grew like crazy with no care whatsoever. I am hoping for the same out of our new patch. I got some red and black raspberries from a catalog and a bunch more red plants from a friend. All of the plants have taken off and seem to be doing well.

I think the red ones are better but we’ll see. We planted strawberries and blueberries this year also but they are a little slower to get going. I surely hope to be overrun with food in our yard though! We do have some deer that visit quite often so I may have a fight on my hands!?

First harvest from the garden

Garden

Emily worked in the garden at her grandparents’ house yesterday and picked the first garlic and broccoli of the season. Emily’s grandparents, Gene and Ruth have kept a garden at their place for 50 years or so. We have recently started helping them keep it going. We had the broccoli last night for supper and it was the most tender I’ve had in awhile. We are drying

the garlic now but I cut up some of the scapes and cooked them in some eggs

this morning. My breath is sure to keep away vampires and my co-workers…and that suits me fine! Anyhow, Emily took some excellent pictures of the garden too.

We planted 3 types of garlic last fall. We’ve never tried garlic before but it is simple to grow and tastes awesome!

We leave a little space between rows to run a narrow tiller between the rows. I guess we lose a little real estate for planting but we save a ton of time in

weeding. Broccoli came up great and tastes delicious. I never liked it as a kid but it’s one

of my favorites now. In the family tradition, the kids don’t like it now either.  Roma tomatoes seem to peel better when we make salsa. We love salsa and need to make more this year! We are already at dangerously low levels in our pantry.

We’ve had a few great rains that have really made this thing pop. We’ll be able to start eating pretty regularly from the garden from now on I think