Enjoying the Harvest
Yesterday I went to my mom’s and we harvested a row of ‘Yukon Gold’ potatoes. These were potatoes that she grew last year and she didn’t get around to eating and found them sprouting in her root cellar this spring. We figured we may as well use them, so we planted them earlier this spring when we planted my sampler pack. They produced over 50lbs of potatoes!
When you spend an hour harvesting potatoes you get really hungry, so we came in and enjoyed a few of those potatoes fried up with some onions and you can’t eat potatoes without a fried egg on the side. This is my most favorite way to eat potatoes, simple and delicious! Off course they have to be fried in a cast iron skillet with bacon grease or butter!
You sure can’t get a fresher or tastier potato anywhere. This is one of the reasons I garden. I love being able to decide what to make for dinner based on what’s ready to harvest in the garden.
Have you harvested any potatoes yet? What’s your favorite way to eat potatoes?
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Cucumbers, Pickles or Both?
Some people love cucumbers, some people hate them. I don’t like eating cucumbers, they give me indigestion in the worst way, even the so called “burpless” ones. I grow them, however because I LOVE them made into pickles. Somehow the process of fermenting them makes them so much more digestible for me.
In my garden I have had great luck growing ‘Boston Pickling’ cucumbers. This year I’m also growing ‘Marketmore’ cucumbers to see what they’re like. Last year I grew lemon cucumbers, but wasn’t as fond of them as I am of the Bostons.
The problem with making pickles when you have a small garden is that you usually harvest 4-5 cucumbers at a time, and most recipes call for pounds and pounds of pickles. Last year, I found a recipe for Small Batch Dill Pickles in The Joy of Pickling. They were very tasty, and I ended up making a few batches. If you only have a few pickles I’d highly recommend using this recipe, it makes a zesty dill pickle.
I picked a few cucumbers on Monday to make into pickles. I debated using a recipe from last year that I knew I liked, but being an adventurous cook that loves loves to try new recipes, I decided to use the dill pickle recipe from the book Canning & Preserving with Ashley English.
I’ll let you know what I think of these pickles, they’re brining as I write this post and won’t be ready for eating for a few weeks. The hardest parking of making pickles is waiting for them to age!
What’s your favorite way to enjoy cucumbers?
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Harvesting Garlic
Last year I harvested my garlic on July 17. This year my garlic was ready to harvest early last week, but I didn’t have time to get out to do it. I ended up harvesting all the garlic last Friday evening.
As with onions, the heads of garlic I grow here at Chiot’s Run are always a little smaller than I’d like. But this year they were much larger due to the fact that I added a teaspoon of bone meal under each bulb at planting time.
I planted different varieties of garlic than I did last year, I haven’t tasted them yet so I don’t know how they’ll stack up to the varieties I grew last year.
I only have a few heads of garlic left from my harvest last year, so I’m happy that the pantry is once again filled with a nice basket of garlic. I use lots of garlic in my cooking, both because of the flavor and the health benefits.
Are you a garlic lover? Do you grow garlic in your garden?
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Growing Herbs for Soothing Teas
I’m a big fan of hot beverages, even in the summer. Most of the time you’ll find me with a cup of coffee or hot tea, especially during those cold winter months here in NE Ohio. When it comes to tea, I usually prefer herbal teas of all kinds over black tea. I like black tea iced, but not particularly served hot. As I’ve gotten more and more into gardening and growing more of my food, naturally I started growing some of my own herbs for tea. One of my favorite herbal teas is chamomile, it’s particularly good in the evenings since it’s soothing and calming (especially for people like me with slight insomniac tendencies). It’s also a wonderful herb for aiding in digestion, nothing cures stomach duress like a nice warm cup of chamomile ginger tea.
Last year my chamomile didn’t germinate well, and I ended up with one one small plant. It produced a nice crop of flowers, but not nearly enough for the amount of tea I drink in a year’s time. I had a quarter cup or less of dried blossoms by the end of the year. This year I decided I’d grow as much as I could, and boy to I have a crop of chamomile! I’ve been faithfully harvesting it every couple days, drying it on a plate in the attic and storing it in a jar. Happily I’ve been watching the quart jar fill up knowing that I’ll have plenty to get me through the coming winter. I may be able to drink chamomile tea every night before bed.
I still have a ton of chamomile blooming in the garden, so I’ll keep harvesting. I may be able to get an extra pint of dried blossoms. The extra will be used for watering my seedlings in the spring. I’ve read it’s particularly good at helping with fungal diseases and dampening off. I’ll make sure to keep you posted on this experiment come seed starting season. In the coming years I’ll be adding more and more tea herbs to my garden as I expand my flowerbeds and get rid of plants that don’t thrive. I haven’t decided which ones to add next, but I’m sure I’ll find some good ones from Richter’s. I’ve also been experimenting with growing tropical herbs in pots as houseplants. Currently I’m starting ginger and lemongrass (more on that later).
Are you a hot or a cold beverage person?
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Planning Ahead
Many of your have probably heard about the Slow Food Movement. This movement was started: to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Growing your own food is a great way to learn to be more mindful of what you eat. Sometimes I wonder how a grocery store can sell a tomato for only 99 cents a pound when I know what goes into growing them.
I was thinking about slow food earlier this week, when I planted some sage in the garden. My main reason for planting sage was to season our Thanksgiving meal in late November, four and a half months from now. Sure I could buy some sage at the grocery store to season my stuffing and turkey, but I know this will be much tastier. I’ll certainly enjoy the sage in the stuffing more, knowing that I started it from tiny seeds, nurtured the plant, harvested and dried it, all well before Thanksgiving. Not to mention the celery and onions used in the stuffing will be homegrown, the bread with be homemade, and the turkey will be pastured on a local farm! A Slow Food Thanksgiving will be enjoyed with my family!
Has growing food helped you become more mindful of food?
Do you appreciate food more knowing what goes into it?
