Speak to me of worm bins

So it's the time of year where I need to start thinking about next year's garden. And that includes considering soil augmentation. The soil at Fwigf is pretty good, however I only have one small plot. This means I'm not able to engage in any true crop rotation without doing a lot of session planting. And even then? I am going to wear down my soil in a few years. Unless I start supplementing.

Now, Fwigf is an organic practices only garden. This means I can't go and pick up a container of synthetic fertilizer, I need to get manure or compost. I don't know if you've looked at price comparisons, but covering a 400sqft area with enough manure and/or compost to make a difference in soil quality does get kind of pricey. And I am time rich but cash poor.

The obvious answer is to start a compost pile/bin. Or this would be the obvious answer if I didn't have a pair of inquisitive jerks who insist that EVERYTHING is either food or something to knock over then roll in. I think my dogs are really goats in disguise. Maybe a cross between goats and something larger, like say an elephant, given the noise the fuzzy heathens make going up and down stairs. But I digress. A compost bin/pile is not something that is feasible given my current space/living situation.

Which leads me to researching alternatives. In my travels (read: finding blogs and wiki articles through google) I've come across the idea of using worm casings. They are apparently a low nitrogen growth enhancer. A little goes a long way apparently, and they have the added benefit of being organic which means I can use them at Fwigf.

They are also hella expensive to buy. Probably because worms are small and worm casings are basically worm poop. Small critters produce small poop (the exceptions being human babies and puppies, both of which contain a little known quirk of anatomy which allows them to pull poop from sector Fecal Five, the poop dimension).

The good news is I can in fact raise worms and harvest worm casings at home. For pretty cheap since I'd have to feed them things like table scraps and coffee grinds. You know, things I'm currently throwing out because my Heathens won't let me have nice things like a compost pile/bin.

I have never raised worms however and have no idea where to start. Should I just go dig up a bunch of earthworms? Perhaps enlist friends with toddlers and make use of the slave labor to dig worms up offer free babysitting? What do I need to start? Is this a thing I should even consider? Anyone actually try this?

Red Noodle Beans

Chinese red noodle beans were an experiment this year. I'd never had them before, either eaten or grown. Honestly I decided to grow them because they look cool. Yup, that very mature and well researched reason. But the seed was inexpensive, it was a heritage type of bean, I had the space. I decided to go for it.


Seriously, don't these look cool? (Image from http://www.cherrygal.com/images/RedNoodleNew.jpg)

We planted a single row of them in Fwigf. I proceeded to spend all summer worried about them. The reviews said they grew like kudzu, mine were a bit short. They were supposed to get 8 feet tall, they were barely three feet by mid-July/early August. They hadn't put off a single flower or bud and it was approaching mid-August. I had written them off as a loss resolved not to plant them next year and chocked it up to a learning experience.

Then they exploded.

No seriously. In two weeks I went from 3 foot stalks with nothing happening to an over grown hedge putting off massive beans by the handful. For context on size, each bean is roughly 18-24 inches long. They go from blossom to full bean in 3-4 days. I have roughly 10 pounds sitting at home. That we harvested today. This isn't counting the maybe 3-4 pounds I dehydrated for soup mixes last week.

Apparently noodle beans are fantastic in stir-fry. They can also be used instead of green beans in any recipe. I'm debating the pros and cons of making green bean casserole (the kind where you use the can of cream of mushroom soup and fried onion strings) using these instead. In fact? Screw it. I'm going to do it.

But I'm going to can them first so I can do it for Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll do a mix of these and green beans in the casserole for Christmas. Red and green beans swimming in white. That's festive right? Gross sounding. But festive.

Peppers

Today we're going to talk about drying out and preserving peppers. Specifically hot peppers. I can't can them because I only have a water bath caner, and trust me you really want to can those in a pressure caner. So what else can you do to keep peppers? I'm going to look at 2 different things today.

1. Roasting then Freezing

This is honestly what it sounds like. Cut your peppers in half lengthwise. Preheat your oven to 375, coat with a little olive oil, put your peppers on the pan cut side up, sprinkle lightly with salt. Roast for 20 minutes. Once they cool put them in your freezer. I'm doing this with jalapenos. You can then use the roasted peppers as a substitute for fresh peppers in cooked dishes.

2. Drying

There are a few different ways to dry peppers. You can dry them on the line (like I had set up for corn) but it takes a few weeks to dry them out completely. Leave them whole since it'll cut down on rotting before they're dried. Just tie them up and leave them in a place with open air circulation.

You can dry them in the oven. Set your oven as low as it goes (Generally 120-150) and leave the door open partially. Flip the peppers every hour so they don't scorch. If they start cooking your oven is too hot.

Dehydrator. This is the easiest way. Seriously. Cut them in half and stick them in the dehydrator until they're dry.

No matter what drying method you use keep the peppers in an airtight container. They can last for a a year or so. You can also grind them into chili powder..

Food storage and pets

So everyone knows the best way to ripen tomatoes is to keep them on your counter after you pick them, right? Right. Well I can't do that anymore. At all. Why? Because my cat is a jerk. She has decided that she enjoys the feel of her fangs sinking through the thin tomato skin into the pulpy goodness below. She has discovered that round tomatoes are fun to knock off the counter and chase.

Did I mention my cat is a jerk? Because she is.

But this brings me to a very important topic:

Pet Proofing Preservation

So how many of us have a beloved fur ball that just can't wait to mess up their stuff? The vast majority? Yeah. Not everything can go into pet free rooms (which are only pet free until the fuzzy bandit figures out how to open the door) or totes (which collect condensation, so are bad for things you're trying to dry). So how the heck do you keep your food (and your fluffy jerks) safe?

Carefully.

Basic kitchen safety covers most of our problems. Things like making sure your pet isn't underfoot while taking your jars out of the caner. But what about the boiling hot jars sitting on the counter? All breakable and enticing to mischievous four foots? I have no idea. Thankfully Minerva (the aforementioned tomato killing jerk) isn't interested in the jars while they're hot. Once they cool they go up on a shelf that she (so far) can't get to.

But the tips that I have so far are as follows:

Keep anything breakable/edible out of pet reach.
Keep dried things in totes with a well fitting lid
Accept a certain level of loss comes with owning pets.

Ahhh Yeah, be jealous

Be jealous because your SOs don't set up a clothes line (henceforth known as  food line) in your kitchen.

BEHOLD!

Isn't it majestic? Not pictured is the fan under it, blowing up toward the line to keep air circulating.

Please ignore the YELLOW of my kitchen walls. My landlord calls it 'depressed man yellow' because it's so bright that it helps combat depression. I call it 'rather oppressive yellow'. Anyhow, that sucker is about 8 feet or so in the air, Husband needed to stand on a chair to put the nails in to hang it from, and he clocks in at 6 and a half feet. That's high enough to keep both my dogs, and my pain-in-the-butt cat from knocking things off of it.

What on earth is hanging from the wooden clothes pins? I'm glad I pretended you asked dear reader! That is 9 ears of dwarf corn that I'm drying on the cob for easy storage. That big long green thing on the end is a line of herbs. From the bottom up we have:

Cutting Celery
Sage
Purple Basil (or as I lovingly call it: Goth Basil)
And regular Basil

I call it my soup bundle. When it's done drying I'm going to toss a bunch of each into  the jar that I have the dehydrated green beans and soup noodles in. And when the corn is done drying I'm going to put some dried corn in there too. Yup, dehydrated soup mixes are a go.

Also Husband and I have been cleaning the basement. And by 'Husband and I' I mean 'Husband'. Apparently the dust and mildew down there sets off headaches and dizzy spells if I'm working for more than 30 minutes. But Husband is awesome and is cleaning. While he was cleaning he discovered a root cellar.

No seriously. There's something down there that can only have been intended as a root cellar. It is tucked away in a corner, with two exterior walls that never see sunlight, with a third wall and built in shelves. And a window. All we need to do is add a fourth wall (which can be heavy plastic) and a vent into the window. Guess what is happening before next winter? Yup, come this time next year I'll have a legit root cellar for storing the produce from my better planned garden. Which will have more squash, so there will be more need. But if nothing else it's a safe place to keep all my canned goods out of the sun, and my dry goods safe.

Yup. Somewhere along the line I've turned into my grandmother's memories of her mom in the '40s. And I'm perfectly ok with this.

Tonight is the march of NOM!

We went to the garden this morning. We harvested a handful of snow peas (it's been so damn cold that they're still producing. It is august. They ought to be dead by now), the last of the cucumbers, some tomatoes, more evil tasty peppers, some spinach, a few blue potatoes, some more corn, and three pumpkins.

You read that right. Pumpkins, in August.

There is only one thing for it. Tonight? I make pie filling. Just the filling mind you, pie crust and I are not on speaking terms. Husband is also going to make beer at some point, as one of the harvested pumpkins was The Beer Pumpkin. The one he has been babying since he saw it. So some time in the next month or so Husband is making me pumpkin beer out of our own pumpkins. It must happen.

But first, I make beef stock. The plan is to freeze the extra stock that I don't use for soup tomorrow so that I have it for the future. I am also going to dehydrate the veggies I don't use, and make "instant" soup mixes where we just  need to add meat and broth (or broth for veggie soup). The dehydrated versions will take up less room than jars of soup, and save me jars.

Mia's Beef Stock

You need:

1 good sized beef marrow bone
1 medium sized sweet onion, cut into large chunks
1 heaping tablespoon of minced garlic
1 tablespoon of salt
3-4 quarts of water

Sweat the onion in a sock pot. Add the garlic and saute until the garlic is toasty-colored. Add the marrow bone, salt, and water. Set on low and let it do its thing, covered, for 4- 6 hours. Remove the bone, and use or freeze with the onions and garlic still in the stock. Alternately you can just make it in the crock pot.

Tomorrow I make soup. Beef and Bacon soup.

Beef and Bacon Soup

You need:

1 lb stew beef, cut into chunks
1/2 lb thick cut bacon
1 handful of green beans cut into 1-2 inch pieces
4-5 small potatoes cut into chunks
1/3 package of Orzo or soup pasta
3-4 carrots, sliced into coins
3-4 ears worth of dwarf corn (roughly 1/2 package of commercial frozen corn)
1 handful of spinach
1 small handful of okra
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
Oregano
Parsley
Sage
Basil
1-2 quarts of the beef stock outlined above

Cook the bacon until crispy. Brown the stew beef in the bacon grease. Add in everything else and set on low. Let it simmer for 4-6 hours. This can also be made in a crock pot if you want. Eat with a crusty bread.

Still with me after this recipe dump?

Because now I want to talk to you about my pumpkins.

As you know I grew Long Island Cheese Pumpkins this year. From what I'd read they were better than sugar babies for making pies, and they would keep like preservation pumpkins in a root cellar provided they weren't cut into. So I decided to grow them, thinking 'what the hell, the seed packet is $3.00, if it doesn't work or I hate them I'm not out much.'

Guys?

I am never growing a different type of pumpkin. Ever. Allow me to preach the joys of these things. The outer rind is thinner than a sugar baby, which means it comes off easier after steaming or roasting. The inner rind (the part used for pie makin') is thick, and creamy. It looks and smells a bit like a butter colored cantaloupe.  The pulp is small and easily removed, the seeds are large and are easy to separate from the pulp. I'm currently making pie, so I'll post tomorrow about how it tastes. But I can't see how this wouldn't be amazing. Why the hell did sugar babies replace these?! If you're going to grow pumpkins for eating, grow these. Seriously.

Pumpkin Pie Filling 

You need:

1 medium sized Long Island Cheese Pumpkin
nutmeg
heavy cream
brown sugar
all spice
cinnamon
ginger
cardamom
1 frozen pie crust (because fuck making that fickle bastard)

Cut the pumpkin into wedges (leave skin on, trust me). Remove the pulp and seeds. Roast the slices on a lightly oiled baking sheet at 390 degrees for 1 hour. Let the slices cool until you can handle them. Peel the skin off, it'll be easy to pull off after the pumpkin is cooked. Add the pumpkin and spices to a food processor. Pulse together, add heavy cream until the texture resembles a thick custard. Pour the custard into the crust. Bake at 350 for roughly 30 minutes, until the crust it starting to brown (check frequently to avoid burning). Let it cool.

Because pumpkin pie isn't complete without whipped cream:

Basic Whipped Cream

You need:

1 quart (or however much you have left over) heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp white sugar

Pour the cream, vanilla, and sugar into a food processor and pulse until a light and fluffy whipped cream happens. Or you can use an egg beater. But I don't have one of those.

There's one more recipe that I forgot to include the other day. I made a pork rib marinade with the Peppa Sauce that I made a couple of weeks ago. So here's that too.

Peppa Pork 

You need:

1 lb pork ribs
2 tbs Worcester sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
3 tbs Peppa sauce
1 tsp smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything together in a container in the fridge. Let the pork marinade over night, flipping frequently if the marinade doesn't cover the ribs. Either bake, or grill the ribs like normal.

Husband and I did the pork in the crock pot with some sweet onions. It came out tasting more like a delicious pork roast than ribs, but it was still tasty tasty stuff.

Ok, I think that's it for today. Time to go continue my cooking.

Tomato Sauce for freezin'

So today I'm making tomato sauce. Because I have tomatoes that are ripening faster than I can eat them raw. So I'm doing a basic sauce.

Lazy Freezer Sauce

You'll need:

Tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Basil (fresh if you've got it)
Parsley
Oregano
Thyme
Rosemary
Garlic
Bay leaf

Wash your tomatoes well. Cut them into chunks. Toss them (seeds, skin and all) and the seasonings into a sauce pot on low. Let them simmer for 20 minutes covered. Uncover and let cook down about another 20 minutes to thicken. Strain to remove the seeds and skins if you want to, then put it through the blender until it reaches your desired consistency. Then toss the sauce into freezer bags and freeze until you're ready to use it.

This is a good basic red sauce, when you thaw it you can add meat or cheese or more veg depending on what you feel like having for dinner that night.

Tomatoes and cold

This month has been unseasonably cool. While this is nice for those of us who are heat sensitive and can't eat if it is too hot, it is not great for veggies. My cucumbers have decided it is fall and are done. They have died back and I think they are completely done producing. There may be one or two little cucumbers left from them but nothing like the multiple dozen I was harvesting a week.

But I'm not here to talk to you about cucumbers today. No. I am here to talk to you about tomatoes. Delicious nightshades, the base for red sauces and chili, the lovely red slice atop your burger. I could continue but I will not. Tomatoes are delicious is what I'm getting at here.

Tomatoes also love heat. They ripen best when left on the vine in the hot days of July and August, lazily turning ripe while the world slows down and butterflies drift by. Except this year. It is mid-August and it almost hit freezing at  night this week. Tomatoes ripen very very slowly in cool weather. And won't ripen at all after frost hits.

So what is a gardener to do? For as long as the weather holds out and frost stays away, leave them on the vine and just wait patiently. If however you see frost in the forecast? Harvest everything. Even the green ones. You can ripen them inside.They won't be as good as ones that are vine ripened, but they'll be better than store bought and better than having lost half  your crop because Mother Nature is a frigid bitch this year.

You need:

A box.
Newspaper.
A place that doesn't get too cold and has very little draft. Like a basement, or a count on your kitchen if you only have a few tomatoes.

Carefully wrap the green tomatoes in news paper, pack them into the box. Set the box in your chosen place and wait a few days. Check your tomatoes frequently because you don't want them to zip past ripe and into overly-ripe/almost rotten territory.

That's it. Ripen your tomatoes indoors and outsmart Mother Nature!

Tune in next time where I'm sure I'm going to pay for that comment somehow.

Jerky 2: The reckoning

Ok, so there was something I left out of my little expose (can't get the accent on blogger drat it!) on jerky the other day. Something I'd assumed was obvious, yet apparently needed to have been articulated to Husband.

When slicing meat for jerky, slice it thin. Otherwise it doesn't dry out correctly. Which then leads to having to bake it in the oven at 390 for about 30 minutes to kill off anything living in it and to properly dry it out. After it spent 12 hours in a dehydrator. And I'm still a bit suspicious of whether or not I should eat it. It looks and feels like jerky. It breaks apart like jerky. However food borne illnesses are a thing and I'm not sure I've avoided them entirely.

Food science friends, please advise.

Other thing I made the other day as Peppa Sauce.

Peppa Sauce is apparently a Southern Staple. It is hot peppers in vinegar. That's it. I had hot peppers and apple cider vinegar, and garlic. My husband likes spicy things so I figured why the heck not and thew a bottle together. Specifically a fancy bottle.

This fancy bottle

I found the recipe (such as it is) here: http://ourdailybrine.com/southern-pepper-sauce-recipe/

The changes I made were:

Apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar (I'm on a budget I had to work with what I had)

A mix of Bird's Eye Peppers (7 or 8 of them), Jalapenos (about 10) and some whole dried red peppers for color (a handful 'cause they're wimpy). I cut each pepper in half so the vinegar could get to all of the rind, and left the seeds in for added burn. I also tossed in about 1 tsp of minced garlic and Husband wanted ground black pepper added because he likes black pepper and we didn't have whole pepper corns. 

It's been sitting on my counter for two days now. It has opinions. It would like to share these opinions with you. Mostly by clearing out your sinuses when you sniff it. I wonder how it'll taste.

Jerky

Here we depart from things directly going on with Fwigf to discuss preserving something I can't grow in my garden:

Meat.

The day I find a steak tree that'll change. But until then I must buy my meat from a store. But buying meat in bulk is cheaper long run so we need to discuss how to preserve it. Sure you could toss it in a freezer, but where's the fun in that? And what if (like me) you lack a freezer big enough?

That my darlings is where jerky comes in. Jerky is a pre-refrigeration method of preservation. We've got all kinds of accounts of smoked or dried meats from almost all cultures (to the best of my knowledge, someone correct me in the comments if I'm making things up). Jerky is dead simple to make, or complicated as hell depending on your preference. I am lazy, I prefer dead simple.

Jerky is created by long, slow, drying and cooking and low heat. This means the heat doesn't get intense enough to properly kill off pathogens lurking in your meat. So, a few safety precautions:

1. Use lean cuts. Fat takes longer to dry out than muscle.
2. Brine your meat. In addition to adding flavor an acidic brine helps kill nasties.
3. Make sure your dehydrating method of choice gets to and maintains a temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Sanitize you work surfaces
5. Use either the pre-roasting or finishing method to be extra sure

Pre-roasting or pre-boiling the meat either in brine or water is the safest way to make sure your jerky is cooked all the way through and safe to eat. However it produces a crumbly/crunchy jerky. If that's your thing then by all means! Boil your meat in the brine for about 10 minutes, or roast it at 350 for about 15 minutes before putting it either in your dehydrator or oven at 155 degrees for 4-6 hours.

Me? I prefer chewy jerky. So I'm going with the finishing method. Which is basically roast it at 350 for 10 minutes after it's spent it's time in the dehydrator. My source for this information was a paper by the University of Wisconsin, link in the bibliography page.

So now that you know how you're going to cook your meat lets actually make brine!

Mia's Jerky Brine

You will need:

Apple cider vinegar
Brown sugar
salt
pepper
garlic powder
onion powder
smoked paprika

I put my meat strips into a quart sized freezer bag, covered them with the apple cider vinegar, then added the different spices to taste, then sealed the bag and smushed everything around and left it over night in the fridge. There are no measurements given because I'm a rebel that doesn't actually measure her spices, I just kind of eye ball it and call it good.

If you're pre-boiling you don't need to marinade over night, just boil in your brine.

The next day take your tasty brined strips of raw meat and layer them on the  trays in your dehydrator (after confirming it gets to and keeps 155 degrees), turn the thing on, and ignore it for 4-6 hours. I'm doing 6 to be safe.

If you didn't pre-boil then after 6 hours pop your jerky strips in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Let them cool, then keep them in an air tight container and they'll last for about 2 months. Unless you devour them all first.

Corn!

Guys we have corn! Successful and tasty corn!

See? Isn't it cute?!

This year we grew Jade Blue Dwarf Corn (Hudson valley seed library) and I highly recommend it. I planted about 20 stalks, 10 down either side of Fwigf. My tallest one is about 3 and a half feet tall (just over a meter for our metric friends). The advertised average was about 2 mini-ears of blue corn per stalk. I'm looking at 3 or 4 ears each. The ears themselves are not large at all, they're about 3 - 4 inches long (6-8cm), so each one yields about one side dish serving of corn per person. Not the massive ears of sweet corn that I'm used to, but tasty none the less. I'd actually like to try these as container corn. They didn't take up much room at all and frankly I believe a nice big pot will hold three or four stalks and give a decent yield of corn. So there apartment dwellers, you too can have corn!

They were less sweet than commercial sweet corn, but they had more corn flavor if that makes any sense. I think these would stand up very well to being frozen. The good news is we will have enough to freeze, and we can freeze one meals worth in a quart sized freezer bag. So yay corn!

This weekend also marked my acquisition of a dehydrator. And by 'a dehydrator' I mean 'the dehydrator my parents had when I was a child that they used maybe all of twice in the early '90s'. It is an ancient beast. There are no thermometers, no digital timers, the temperature is regulated by turning the top to open or close vent holes. But it works. And it was free. And the company is still in business, so even though the box says 'as seen on tv' it wasn't a one hit television wonder invention.

Current cunning plan is to make jerky. Then start making soup mixes out of on sale seasonal veggies and meat. This will save us money this winter. Provided my wonderful new-to-me dehydrator doesn't take off like the UFO it resembles (guys, this is a creature of the early 90s and looks it). The other plan is to attempt to make drink mixes by buying seasonal fruit (Read: all fruit) when it's in season (read: summer) and dehydrate it then smash it into powder. But first, we try jerky. basic jerky. Salt, pepper, garlic, and a little bit of vinegar. That's it. Baby steps.

Spinach and Carrots

Yesterday I went back out to Fwigf to do some harvesting, attempt to get my pumpkins under control, and reinforce my tomatoes. I have given up getting my pumpkins reigned in. The determined jerks are now growing through the chain link fence and making a bid for the street. I'm just going to let them. Worst case? The world outside Fwigf gets some pumpkins. It's not like Husband and I will be able to eat all of them. Though he is going to use some to make beer. Pumpkin ale from our own pumpkins. This pleases me.

Anywhozle! I harvested spinach yesterday. A lot of spinach. I'm debating what to do with all of it, since Husband and I will not eat all of it as salad before it goes bad. I'm thinking of blanching and freezing it. But whatever I do I need to do tomorrow. Otherwise it won't get done.

But this spinach is weird guys. It was a gift from another gardener so I'm not sure what variety it is. But it's waxier than I'm used to, and the leaves grow off of central stems. It's more bitter than regular spinach, but the after taste is surprisingly nutty. It's got a good mouth feel; the leaves are thicker and crunchier than I'm used to, so it's very satisfying. It's also a big producer. I harvested less than half of what I could have from my garden, and there will be more on Monday when I go back.

That brings us to carrots. Guys? Garden carrots are awesome. I didn't know carrots were supposed to have a flavor beyond 'orange'. But they do. They're spicy without being hot, and finish sweet without being cloying. They're not as crunchy as commercial carrots, but what they lack in crunch they make up for in flavor. I may have to rethink my plan to not grow carrots next year. If I end up with room in Fwigf I'll plant up some carrots. Husband and I don't use many, in fact the amount we planted this year will probably be all we'll end up using until next season. I'm going to blanch and freeze those too.

The fall of Jerkface

Jerkface terrorizes Fwigf no more.

For years Jerkface has held all in the garden in perpetual frustration fueled terror. He viewed himself as king rodent over all, and the plants he devoured within our carefully tended plots were his tithe.No lettuce was safe, no carrots went unmunched. Our gardens were his salad bar, and we were but his servants.

Jerkface was a clever beast. No trap, no matter how cunningly laid, would claim him. Assassination was out of the question, as poison was forbidden within the garden. And so his reign continued unabated.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday Jerkface finally fell into a trap laid for his removal. The scent of the bait was too enticing to ignore, no matter how plump the other offerings. And so Jerkface was captured, and set free elsewhere. Far from the borders of Fwigf.

Today I harvested. And tried to deal with my out of control pumpkin vines. This did not work as I had hoped. They remain uncontrolled. I have achieved 'screw it' and my level of give a fuck is negative. So grow pumpkins. Grow.

I did manage to harvest some carrots today, and a whole lot of some weird spinach thing. It was a gift from another gardener, I don't know what it is exactly. But it's tasty.

Here, have an example of everything I've harvested so far.

The above is of course not everything I've harvested. It is however all the jalapenos, all the carrots, all the birds eye peppers, a jar of pickled snow peas, a jar of pickles, the mass of green in the upper left is the spinach stuff. And then a small head of lettuce. And cucumbers. 

Tomorrow I pickle. And freeze the carrots. And deal with the chili that is made with my garden carrots and peppers. 

Peppers!

The garden in my back yard has been giving me jalapenos pretty steadily for the last week or so. Which means I have about 15 of the little green peppers of awesome in my fridge waiting to become something. Then today I went out to Fwigf and discovered that my Bird's Eye had peppers on it, not just flowers. I'd never had birds eye peppers, I had no idea what they tasted like. So I handed one of the small, green, thin and long peppers to my husband to taste. 

Darlings? Bird's eye peppers are Hot. Angry hot. I've had hobs that were more restrained and polite. I now have 5 or 6 of these devil peppers in my fridge waiting to become something. 

The thing with peppers is you can't can them. Botulism is a thing. A thing you'd rather avoid, trust me. Ergo home canning peppers is not something I want to risk. I'll leave that to professionals in sterilized kitchens. So what CAN you do with a windfall of hot peppers?

Chili. 

And so my dears I give you:

Mia's Crockpot Cheater Chili

You need:

Roughly 1 pound of sweet sausage

1 medium sweet onion

1 large can of crushed tomatoes

1 large can of diced tomatoes

2 table spoons of minced garlic

1 ounce of tequila

Jalapenos

Bird's Eye Peppers (or any unreasonably hot pepper will do)

3 stalks of celery

about 2 carrots

either 1 can of kidney beans or 1/2 a cup of dried beans

2 medium sized potatoes, diced

If using dried beans: Soak over night and rinse well (multiple times) before adding to the chili. 

Cut the sausage up if you have it in links. Brown it in a pan with the garlic and onions (roughly chopped). Put the browned sausage, onions, garlic, and pan drippings into the crock pot. Seed and dice your peppers. Dice your celery and carrots. Add everything to the crockpot set on low (do not drain the tomatoes). Proceed to ignore it for about 6-8 hours. 

Serve over rice with cheese and sour cream. Keep a glass of milk handy, just in case. 

I am going back to Fwigf tomorrow since there is a lot of work that has to get done. Life has eaten me so I haven't been out there as frequently as I should, and I want everything back to organized chaos before life eats me again.The plan for tomorrow entails:

Weeding. The weeds are taking over. I do not approve.

Picking lettuce. It came back. I do not approve.

Planting Turnips where the lettuce was. Turnips are much better.

Tying up my tomatoes

Reigning in my pumpkins

Harvesting some spinach

Not getting heatstroke and dying. 

Picking through the dead potato buckets for potatoes and mounding the living ones with the dirt. 

We will see how much I get done.

Potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew

Just don't try to grow them in plastic buckets.

This was my first attempt at potatoes. I will be attempting again next year. Potatoes are a thing with me. I get grumpy if I don't have potato products for several days. My husband goes and gets me french fries the way some partners buy chocolate. Growing potatoes isn't so much an attempt to cut the food bill as it is an attempt to keep living with me acceptable. We planted two varieties, Russet (the potato-who-should-not-be) and Blue potatoes (the ones that are purple all the way though. I like colors. Deal with it.)We decided to try mounding the potatoes in 5 gallon plastic paint buckets.

Do not do this. This is a poor decision.

My poor potatoes are cooking in their buckets. The plastic is keeping too much heat, and reflecting too much light onto the undersides of the leaves. I've lost 2 or 3 plants out of the 7 I planted. The ones that are still alive are sheltered and shaded by my pumpkins. The pumpkins are trying to take over the garden and in doing so have sent out vines between the potato buckets. The potatoes who live in the shade of their leaves are still alive. I figure they're being kept cooler and the sun isn't reflecting off their plastic prisons to roast them alive.

So yeah. Next year we're doing wood or cloth. No more plastic.

Safety and pickles

Today we are going to discuss something newly near and dear to my heart: kitchen safety. As I'm sure you're aware your kitchen is a very dangerous place. It's chock full of things like knives and stoves and other things that can either cut or burn you, or give you a rather squashed big toe. You should avoid getting cut, or burned, or squashed. It's generally unpleasant. Generally just be aware of your surroundings, avoid grabbing sharp things by the sharp end, or  hot things by the hot end, and you should be ok.

This PSA brought to you by: Mia is a dip who missed the jar and poured a ladle full of boiling brine all over her left hand and wrist. Remember my dears: Mia, screwing up so you don't have to!

Moving right along, I made three different types of pickles today.  And I still have 30 some odd cukes to deal with later this week. The aforementioned burn caused an early end to apicklypse  today. I made four jars of Alton Brown Bread and Butter Pickles, four jars of dill pickles, and a dozen tiny gift jars of my great grandmother's chunk pickles. I will share none of those recipes exactly (because the only one that is *mine* is Nana G's chunk pickles and she passed away in 2008. I got the recipe two weeks ago. It's 2014.) I will however give you a bastardized version of sweet pickles that I am going to attempt next.

Fwigf Sweet Present Pickles

You will need:

12 half-pint jars
About 6 or 7 good sized cucumbers
12 Allspice seed/ball things
Tumeric
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 cinnamon sticks (broken into quarters)
celery seed
mustard seed (I used Garlic Mustard seeds, I'll explain those later)
1/4 sweet onion
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Sea salt
2 cups water
a caner of some kind.

First things first. Sterilize your jars and lids. Combine the vinegar, salt, water, and sugar (both kinds) and bring it to a boil. This is your brine. Wash your cucumbers and slice them up into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Cut your onion into chunks. Into the jars place 1 allspice seed/ball thing, 1/4 of a cinnamon stick, a couple pieces of onion, a pinch of celery seed, a pinch of mustard seed, and a pinch of tumeric. Pack your cucumber slices into the jars and cover with the sweet brine. Screw on the lids and process in your water bath caner. I did about 10 minutes at a rolling boil. Remove and set on a towel to cool.

Now then, what the heck is garlic mustard?

Garlic mustard is a noxious weed. It is invasive and very Very prolific right on the edges of forests. It is also edible, tasty, and packed full of nutrients. It comes into season in the early summer, the leaves are tasty and you can treat them like spinach, the roots are also edible but I haven't tried them. In the mid-late summer their seed pods mature. The seeds make a very strong, very tasty, mustard. The flavor is very close to a spicy brown mustard with a hint of garlic after taste. So, delicious, nutritious, free, and doing your local ecosystem a favor by removing it? Yes. Go eat garlic mustard. It's out of season now, but next summer you'll be prepared. Won't you?

Random garden update

AKA wherein I have no idea what is happening.


Accurate.

I went out to Fwigf the other day and harvested ALL THE CUCUMBERS EVER (as referenced in my previous post). But I realized I forgot to give an update on everything else.

First and foremost: I HAVE CORN! Or rather I have corn developing on some of the stalks. One is stalk is being an over acheiver and attempting to put out four ears instead of the two that it should. But hopefully by the end of next month I'll have a few small ears of tasty blue corn.. We shall see.

The tomatoes are... doing well but the trellis needs some rethinking. The wind comes in from one side of the garden pretty steadily. And it has shoved all the plants to the left. Which would be fine if the were in cages, but since they are supported by a rope trellis they are just sliding along the rope and shoving the plant next to them over. They're all doing fine, no one is dying and everyone is producing. But the one furthest to the left has been shoved off the trellis entirely and is now growing along the ground. Next year the tomatoes get cross pieces AND the thicker stalks get tied to the trellis.

The potatoes are flowing! Holy crap potato flowers are beautiful! Little delicate purple stars with bright yellow centers. This makes me happy. Sadly we've lost one potato plant (Husband broke it while mounding it into the bucket) and we have a second one that isn't happy. But losing two out of the 6 planted isn't bad at all. Russet the potato who should not be is still living and growing.

My beans are thriving now that we added cross pieces to their trellis. I have a feeling they are going to end up forming a solid wall of vegetation and that's ok with me. They'd shade out the peas and spinach which can tolerate it.

My one pepper plant is flowering. So we'll see what we get from that. And the spinach is growing. But spinach can be blanched and frozen, so that's a green I'll keep.

My pumpkins are insisting that the chain link fence is a trellis. I can not convince them otherwise.

A Word On Anticipated Harvest

My darlings I have a new rule of thumb when it comes to planting. Look to the average yield of each individual plant you wish to grow. Then plan on getting half that, but have a contingency plan in case you get double.This way you won't be disappointed if you get less than average yields (everyone and everything has bad years).

But on the off chance your plants decide they must go forth and fulfill some sort of manifest destiny you won't be overwhelmed by their um... generous out put.

Case in point: in my fridge I have 42 cucumbers. Forty-two. Three and a half dozen. The answer to life, the universe, and everything. And that doesn't count the two dozen or so I've already eaten or pickled earlier this season. No my darlings, that 42 cucumbers are only the ones harvested This Week.

For context 42 cucumbers looks like this:

Two liter bottle included for scale

I had not anticipated such a generous yield. I can get 3 (maybe 4) cucumbers into a single jar for pickling. That means between 10 and 15 jars. For this batch alone. And heaven help me there are more on the vine. So pickling will happen on Monday when I'm off from my day job. And after I've acquired more jars.  

Thankfully about 1/3 of this goes to a friend of mine who bought a row of cucumber plants for Fwigf earlier this season. But as she is going out of town I get to pickle her share for her. Monday will be a long, hot, day in my kitchen. 

The great Krautastraphy.

Guys? Remember that lettuce kraut recipe I shared  the other week? (If you don't here's the link to the post: http://fwigf.blogspot.com/2014/07/dealing-with-lettuce.html)

Don't do it.

No seriously. Not kidding. It was scary and gross. I ended up throwing it out without tasting any and my bowls are green and flies won't even go near my trash.

This was poor decision theater all over my pantry. I can not recommend this. Which means my beloved darlings? You have to either eat your lettuce fresh or compost it. I think I'm going to just compost it and I am NOT growing lettuce next year.

Complimentary Planting: How not to sabotage your garden

So yesterday we discussed planning and the importance thereof. If you didn't read that one go do that first. I'll wait.


...


Ok? Good, welcome back. If you're working with a small space (and smaller budget) it's important to look into how your plants play together when sharing close quarters. Don't plant a field of alternating tomato and potato plants without reading up on how they grow when put in the same plot (poorly and prone to disease in this case). It'll also help you figure out crop rotation for following seasons. If you plant the same thing year after year it'll keep pulling the same thing out of the soil. So the tomatoes you planted for the third year in a row will be much less robust than the ones you planted year one in the same spot. Looking up complimentary plants will help you keep your soil productive.

Here is a helpful infographic:

(curtesy of http://visual.ly/ultimate-guide-companion-planting) 

Anything that has a little checkmark? Can be planted either together or one right after the other. An 'x' is a no go my darlings. 

Now that's out of the way I want to discuss a very famous and specific type of companion planting: Three Sisters. The three sisters refer to corn, beans, and squash. This is an (by all accounts) ancient style of growing these crops throughout what is now the Northern US and Southern Canada. According to history books and oral records the three sisters were grown together, eaten together, and celebrated together. I've got a degree in history, and I'm a story teller, doing something in a way that lets me connect to how it was done in ages long past? Makes my tiny black heart go pitter patter. So I'm trying this next year. 

Apparently what you do according to the Old Farmer's almanac (link in the bibliography) is make a circular mound about a foot high and four feet across. You then plant corn in the mound about two feet apart, in a circle, for a total of 6 stalks of corn. About a week or two later (once it's established and growing) you  plant four bean plants, evenly spaced, around each stalk. A week or two after that, once the beans are established and growing, you plant a total of 6 squash, evenly placed, around the whole thing. 

Why does this work? Why don't they choke themselves out? Well you see my dears apparently the corn provides a bean pole, the beans fix nitrogen into the soil to fertilize the heavy feeding corn, and the squash's leaves keep weeds down and provides a sort of living mulch that produces food. Which is all a very fancy pants way of saying 'it works, I'm going to try it.' 

So yeah. Research your plants, plant things that play nice together, and you won't be left in a dead or disease ridden garden fighting the beetles to the one living tomato. 

A Word (ok several) on Planning

This year Fwigf was a wee bit hodgepodge. And by a wee bit I mean "Oh shit I have a plot a year early and have no money for more seed! What have I planted in the back yard that I can start?! OH! I have $15?! Cool, I'm buying seed!" My plan consisted of "Get shit in the ground and see what grows". So the space wasn't exactly utilized to the utmost. Next year though! Next year I am going in with a plan. And I'm going to share with you how I arrived at that plan.

Step the First! - Figure out what you'll eat.


First and foremost I took stock of what plants my husband and I eat. I went a bit overboard on lettuce this year, as you may have gathered from previous posts. We do not normally eat a lot of leafy greens. I know, I know, shame on us, but it's true. So I now have A Lot of lettuce that's probably going to go bad before it gets eaten. No one wins. Next year I'm growing things we'll actually eat, and preserve well if we don't eat it all fresh. Lettuce does not appear on this list. Anywhere.

Step the Second! - What are your limitations?

 The fine folks at Fwigf helpfully rototill every plot in the spring. So anything that needs to over winter? Is going to get chopped up. So everything needed to be edible come fall. As much as we love brussel sprouts and asparagus? The wouldn't mature fast enough to be able to eat. I'd spend a season babying plants that would end up tilled under. Your limit may be a lack of sunlight. Or a neighbor with a horrible allergy to potatoes. In any event, figure this out before you lay out the garden and buy seed.

Step the Third! - Know thy space.

Today I finally got Fwigf measured. I knew it was 400sqft. But I didn't know if it was 10x40, 20x20,15x30 or some weird thing that made no sense. Turns out it's 16x29. For the sake of planning I'm pretending it's 15x30. It makes everything easier.

Step the Forth! - Graph Paper. 

Graph paper will help you figure out the scale of things. Decide how big a foot is according to your paper. For me it was 3 squares. Now, draw out your garden shape to scale. For me it was a rectangle 45 squares by 90 squares. Then (I suggest pencil, but I was dumb and used pen) draw out where your plants are going and keep the diagram to scale. DO NOT FORGET WALK WAYS AROUND PLANTS! Otherwise you won't fit in everything you thought you would, or you'll end up trampling your turnips.

I ended up with 2 5x5 plots of Corn, beans, and squash (yes next year is 3 sisters planting) 1 plot for peas that's 1.5x5. Then I had 7 beds that were 2x13, 1 bed that was 1x13 and one foot walk ways around the whole thing, and between each bed.

I'm going into 2015 prepared. I am not going to suddenly have a garden with no forethought. Maybe then I won't suffer the manifest destiny of the cucumbers, or the overwhelming amount of lettuce.

Next year's all stars: (number of plants)

Purple Peacock Broccoli (5)
Butternut Squash (6)
Long Island Cheese Pumpkins (6)
Ashworth Sweet Corn (12)
Red Noodle Beans (24)
Nor'easter Pole Beans (24)
Scarlet Ohno Revival Turnips (20)
Tall Telephone Shelling Peas
Oxheart Tomatoes (5)
Double Yield Cucumbers (5)
Purple Vienna Kohlrabi (10)
Listada di Gandia Eggplant (10)
Matchbox Peppers (5)
Sweet Siberian Watermelon (7)

Yes. All of that will fit in 400 square feet with 1 foot walk ways all the way around each bed. It's amazing what you can fit into a garden with a little planning and diagramming.

Compare that to this year:

Potatoes (6)
Jade Blue Dwarf corn (10)
Cheese pumpkins (8)
Red Noodle Beans (8)
Tomatoes (8)
Lettuce (7)
Peas (2)
Horseradish (1)
Spinach (6?)
Birdseye pepper (1)
Cucumbers (too many to count!)

And a lot of wasted space. Planning your layout avoids wasted space and lets you get the most possible out of the garden space you have. And, I at least, think it's fun. It lets you visualize what your garden will look like when you can't get out there. So do it.

Right! I promised a thing!

Let this be a lesson my dears. Well a couple of lessons. 1. Don't make promises you can't keep. 2. Don't trust me to remember anything. Because I will forget. 3. Pickles are tasty and easy.

Ok, so in yesterday's post on salads I used some pickled pea pods and pickled onions and promised the recipe to you guys today. And forgot until I was messing around with the formatting on my blog and accidentally read that post. Thank goodness this blog exists to remind me to share things I promised to!

Though if I didn't have this blog I wouldn't have promised anything. Oh well, not the point, moving on!

Perfect Pickled Peas

You need:

1/3 cup Apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup water
2 heaping tablespoons salt
2 sprigs of fresh dill
A handful of washed sugar snap or snow peas still in the pod

These are refrigerator pickles, they are not shelf stable. Put the vinegar, salt, and water on to boil. Warm up a jar to avoid temperature shocked glass (on one's friend). Fill the warmed jar with your beautiful peas and dill. Pour the brine over the peas. Secure the lid. Let the jar sit in a draft free place for at least over night to cool to room temperature. Then stick them in the fridge.

Here comes the hard part: Let them sit for a week without eating them. Then feel free to devour at your leisure. They'll last about 3 months or the length of time it takes you to eat them ALL. The brine gets caught in the pods, so each bite releases little pockets of goodness. The peas themselves stay sweet and crisp. All around excellent.

Pickled Onions

Same as you do for peas. Only replace the peas with either a large onion cut into chunks, or several mini-cocktail onions. I use the large white onions because that's what I had. They are amazing. You should make them.

On Salads, Over Eager Pumpkins, and Tomatoes

Today I harvested the last of my lettuce. I have 7 full heads of lettuce in my fridge. My husband and I take two weeks to go through a head. This will not stay good for 14 weeks. My psudo-kraut is still fermenting, so I don't know if that's a viable preservation method yet. Also it kind of scares me. It looks and smells evil. I've been reassured by my friendly neighborhood food scientist (don't you have one of those?! They're so handy!) that yes, it is supposed to look and smell evil because it's rotting. In a controlled way that hopefully leads to food. But still. Rotting. On my counter. Yum.

Anyhow! Lettuce has one primary use. Salads. So lets talk salad for a minute my friends. Salads are like the box of chocolates of the vegetable consumption world. You can put almost anything on them, in almost any combination, and you *should* be ok. They can be hot, cold, warmed slightly, or be generally cold with a hot protein. Or something. This has started to get away from me. Salads are easy is my point. They don't take a lot of time to make and with the sheer number of combinations you can put together? They don't have to be boring.

That being said, I find salads boring. A salad is not a meal, it isn't even a side dish. It's a rabbit food garnish. I grew up with salads coming from a bag with iceberg lettuce, carrots, and red cabbage already mixed in. You dumped it into a bowl, slathered  in in dressing and you were good to go. Anything else was for special occasions because adding tomatoes and cucumbers take effort. For every day salads? I was child one of three with two very busy full time parents. Meal times needed to be quick, easy, filling, and cheap.

However! I am currently in the middle of an Apocalypse of Lettuce, and that means figuring out how to make salads that aren't boring and are a meal in and of themselves. Challenge accepted dear readers, challenge accepted.

Today I made:

Lemon/Dill Salmon Green Salad

You need:

Olive oil
a splash of lemon juice (I'd estimate half a lemon's worth)
Salt
pepper
garlic powder
dried dill
Salmon filet
Lettuce
Fresh sugar snap peas
Pickled sugar snap peas
Pickled onions

Heat the olive oil in the pan. Ad the lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill, garlic and salmon. Cook covered on low heat, flipping occasionally, until the salmon is cooked all the way through. Then turn up the heat and fry your salmon uncovered for a few seconds on each side to make a tasty crust.

While that's cooking, wash your lettuce and fresh peas. Put them in a bowl. Add the pickled onions and snow peas (I'll post a recipe for those tomorrow). Top with your hot and tasty salmon. Eat.

This doesn't need dressing. The pickle juice from the peas combines in the bowl with the juice and fat from the salmon and makes a tasty vingery dressing all its own.

Now that that's out of the way, lets move on to the other things in Fwigf.

My pumpkins. As I mentioned before I'm growing long island cheese pumpkins. They don't taste like cheese, they're sweet pie/preservation pumpkins. They're called cheese pumpkins because they look like wheels of cheese apparently.

My pumpkins are planted along the back of Fwigf. Right by a chain link fence. You clever darlings can surely see where this is headed. Yes. They started climbing the chain link. I think I'm going to let them. I'll make little slings for the pumpkins as they develop but I'm just going to let them climb the fence. Better than having them invade my neighbor's plot I suppose.

Tomatoes. My poor tomatoes.  I hadn't been weaving them in their trellis. And they're getting rather large and were starting to fall over. Thankfully I was able to save them and weave them into their support system. Let's see if this helps. They are developing little green tomatoes.  See?

The Ballad of Jerusalem Artichokes.

My darlings today we are going to discuss something that is unexpectedly dear to my heart. Invasive species. Nutrient hogs, enemies of the free peoples of Fwigf...Jerusalem Artichokes.

Jerusalem Artichokes are (in theory) a cash crop. They sell for roughly $6-$10 a pound. They grow Everywhere, and propagate like horseradish. If there is the smallest bit of them left in the ground a new plant will grow. They are impossible to fully get rid of and are heavier feeders than corn. You either need to heavily fertilize to avoid depleted soil or keep removing them forever and ever amen.

We hates them precious.

"But Mia!" I imagine you saying "your garden has a rule against planting invasive species. Jerusalem Artichokes aren't native to Eastern New York! How did Fwigf fall victim to this scourge?" Well friend, I'm going to tell you.

Once upon a decade ago, one of the gardeners in the community garden where Fwigf is located saw a wonderful new vegetable. They were easy to grow! Tasty! Nutritious! Expensive! And her little gardener's heart started beating faster. She spoke with the garden organizers about bringing this new, rare, never-before-seen plant into the community garden. They agreed.

On one condition.

She must contain them in a lined raised bed. With chicken wire around them. Because there had been the rumbles of rumors of their darker nature. Our intrepid gardener agreed.  She built their box, set up the chicken wire, and planted her demon plants Artichokes. I like to imagine a shadow fell over the garden that day.

For a time all was peaceful. Her plants grew, her artichokes were contained, she was pleased with how things were progressing. Then the squirrels came. Her wire was insufficient to keep the fuzzy minions of evil out. They liberated the artichokes from their well deserved isolation. One by one the free plots of the garden fell victim to the curse.

Some resisted! They covered their gardens in plastic over the winter, in hopes of preventing the artichokes from returning. But alas, it was too late. The artichokes had laid firm claim to all lands within the confines of the garden. The garden was lost.

And so my darlings, we continue to fight this scourge to this day. And so I beg of you, whether planting in your own yard or a community garden, a container or open field, please, for the love of peas and carrots, do NOT plant invasive species. Check before you plant to see if what you're putting in will reseed itself, and if  so under what conditions.

If planting something like horseradish that grows a new plant for every cutting? Make sure when you harvest you don't leave any in the ground. Do not plant anything that will have those who follow you (this can also be future you) laying a curse upon your name.

On The Subject of Peas

I like peas. Snow Peas, Snap Peas, shucking peas, peas that come frozen in a bag. All of them are tasty when cooked correctly. Or raw. But I digress.

Peas are a cool weather veggie. This means that they need to be planted early, come into season in the early summer, and die in the heat of summer. Even in the Northeast.

What I'm trying to do is get around this. I'm trying to keep my peas cooler and alive all summer and try to get a fall crop. What I'm doing to achieve this in my garden at home is keep the peas shaded by my cucumbers. That's helping to keep the temperature down for them. This appears to be working (in combination with the oddly cool weather we've had for the last couple of weeks) since my home peas are blossoming a second time and I have a few more pea pods forming. One or two have fully developed peas in them. I'm letting those age a bit longer on the vine while I research some seed saving methods.

At Fwigf I planted a trellis of pole beans right behind my peas. Which means once the beans become mature they'll provide my tiny peas shade and let them grow for a fall harvest.However when I tried to plant peas in Fwigf most of them didn't live. Only two plants came up. My advice? Get your peas in the ground *before* the average temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But I'm still trying. if it works then I'm trying to save the seeds to plant my heat hardy double producers. If not then I'll try a different starter strain next year.

Peas don't need a lot of fertilizer. So they're an excellent thing to plant after a heavy feeder like corn. They'll do just fine with almost depleted soil, you just want to add a little manure to help them out. Really the only care they need is: planting before it gets hot (you can direct sow peas before the last frost if you really want to), water, and something to climb. That's it. They are the most low maintenance veggie I've ever tried to grow. Carrots are harder.

You can also grow peas in a container if you don't have a lot of space. They do well (in my experience) in containers with tiny trellises. You don't get as big a harvest, and the pods themselves don't get as big, but you can grow peas in your window with minimum investment. I'd only suggest 1 plant per 3 inches in a deep pot. That information isn't coming from anywhere specific, just my own observations with pea plants. Remember if you're growing indoors you may have to manually pollinate your flowers to get pods. Since I'm assuming you don't keep bees, butterflies, or other pollinating insects indoors as a general rule.

So I mentioned 'cooked correctly' up above. Cooked correctly does NOT EVER mean boiled into a sad and tasteless mush. When you do that you make your peas cry. You can't see the tears in the boiling water, but they're there. There are so many ways you can eat peas! Shuck them and steam the peas themselves without the pod, or toss the peas into a soup or salad raw. Or blanch them and freeze them. I have been known to eat frozen peas in the middle of the summer instead of popcicles. I mentioned I have a love of peas. Don't judge me. If you get a variety that you can eat the whole pod you suddenly have almost limitless options! I eat them raw by the handful more often than not. However if you can resist that urge you can pickle them (just treat them like cucumbers and pickle them whole. Soooooo good).

If you must cook your pea pods here are two ideas. Both of these are great either as side dishes or garnishes for salads.

Barbecue Pea Pockets

You will need:

Tinfoil
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dried red pepper flakes
Garlic powder
Sugar Snap or Snow Peas

Lay out a sheet of foil. Oil it lightly. Put your raw peas on the lightly oiled foil and season to taste with the aforementioned spices. Here comes the hard part, folding the foil into a packet.

Take the long edges of your foil and bring them up to touch in the center. Roll them down together until they are firmly against your peas. Next roll each of he short edges in until they are firmly against your peas without tearing the foil. You should have a roughly rectangular shape. Now the reason these are called barbecue peas is because you cook the packet either on a barbecue grill or over hot coals. Your cook time will vary based on how hot your coals are, but generally takes us about 10 minutes.

The peas steam themselves in the packet and come out tender and delicious. The seasonings mixed with the sweet flavor of the peas themselves makes this a sweet/spicy side dish that goes great with any meat cooked over coals. Or by themselves because you share my unnatural pea love.

"But, Mia? What if it isn't summer? Or grilling weather?" I'm so glad I imagined you asking that theoretical reader!

If you're trapped indoors I suggest you try:

Fwigf Skillet Peas

You need:

Olive oil
Sugar snap or snow peas in the pod
minced garlic
a small finely diced onion
salt
pepper
a pinch of sugar (trust me, I won't lead you astray. Well, I won't lead you far)

In a skillet heat the olive oil over medium high head. Add your onion and garlic. Saute them until the onions are clear. Add your peas and season with the salt and pepper to taste and add your pinch of sugar. Saute everything together until your onions are caramelized and your pea pods are bright green and tender.

This is a sweeter side dish so I find it goes really well with spicy meats, or over crisp green salad if you're not carnivorous.

There you have it my dears. Go forth and eat peas.

Dealing with Lettuce

As I mentioned yesterday I am currently dealing with an over abundance of lettuce. As in I'm not done harvesting but I've gotten two Large plastic shopping bags full of the stuff. That is... considerably more than my husband and I can eat fresh. I managed to offload about half of it to my neighbors two doors down, along with a cucumber and a jar of pickles, as a thank you for unexpectedly mowing my front lawn yesterday. It was getting really long, my husband hadn't gotten around to it, I hate dealing with the getting the gate open to get the mower out. But Awesome Neighbor noticed and just mowed it for us. Didn't even take credit, we had to wander over to his place and ask if he'd done it before we found out who our mystery mower was. So he and his wife got garden produce.

But that still leaves me with A Lot of Lettuce. I scoured the internet for ANY lettuce preservation method. Lettuce is a delicate and testy thing. It is mostly water, so freezing it ends with mushy, slimy, black sludge. Not Appetizing. It doesn't stand up well to high heat, so canning it is Right Out. Fresh lettuce only stays that way in a fridge for about a week.

There had to be something I could do (other than toss it on the compost pile and shrug).

It is here that I discovered lacto-fermented pickled lettuce. Apparently pickled lettuce is a popular condiment/relish-thing in South East Asian cooking. I figured since you could buy jars of the stuff off the internet there had to be a way to do it at home. Seems logical right? I found a simple enough recipe and decided to try it with half of my remaining lettuce. That way if it failed I didn't ruin ALL of what I had harvested, but if it worked I could use all my lettuce before it goes bad.

Disclaimer! This is the recipe I am currently using! I can not attest to it being tasty or working. I'm still in the 'this is fermenting' stage of things. There will be another report when I taste it.

Pickled Lettuce/Psudo-kraut

You need:

A big, deep bowl
A smaller bowl
Plastic wrap
things to weigh the smaller bowl down with
Lettuce. An inadvisable amount of lettuce
sea salt
water.

Wash you lettuce carefully, leaf by leaf. Layer your leaves in the large bowl, alternating with a layer of sprinkled sea salt. Don't be stingy with the salt. I'm talking about a teaspoon between each layer. When your bowl is 3/4 full stop adding more things to it. Put a layer of plastic wrap loosely overtop. The plastic wrap is only to help keep your smaller bowl from touching the top of the lettuce and to keep bugs out. Put your smaller bowl on top of your bigger bowl. Add weight until your lettuce is being squashed.

The next day:

Check it. If your lettuce has had enough water squashed out of it that it's sitting in brine? Excellent! Leave it alone for a few days, then put it in a jar and leave it in your fridge. If it isn't covered in brine add water until it is, then leave it for a few days, put it in a jar, and let it live in your fridge.

This (in theory) should last as long as refrigerator pickles (so a month or so). The longer you leave it the more intense the flavor gets but the softer your lettuce is.

2 Months of Gardening in One Post. Also Pickles.

Ok, here goes.

The day we got access to Fwigf we planted up everything motioned in my last post, as well as Russet The-Potato-That-Should-Not-Be (it was a commercial russet potato that sprouted, I said 'what the heck' and planted it in my yard. Then transplanted it to Fwigf. After transplanting I was told by another gardener you aren't supposed to transplant potatoes. Oops. But he seems to be doing well regardless). I was a bit concerned about my seedlings, since they were tiny, Fwigf looked huge, and I was convinced everything was going to die. Short version? It didn't.

Long version:

We lost two heads of lettuce to Jerkface. They were planted right in the front, so I wasn't surprised they were gone. They were small, easy to eat, and planted where they were essentially an offering to the wildlife to leave the rest of my crops alone. Even with that loss I'm currently suffering a lettupalooza.

We experienced critical Pea failure. Of the 9 plants I planted only 2 continue to grow. Peas are a cool weather crop, and do better being planted either in an area with fewer hours of direct sunlight OR early enough in the season that it's still below 80F on average. Fwigf in June is not that place. My backyard however apparently *is*. So I have peas from the tiny garden I'd planted out back before getting Fwigf.

In order to provide the tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans with support, without having to buy individual cages for each plant (which adds up quickly) we built a rope trellis for each. I got the idea out of The Backyard Homestead (full citation at bottom). Basically how a rope trellis works is you get two long/tall garden stakes (we used green fencing stakes from Lowes, they were about $3 each) per row of things you want to give support to. Then we took cotton clothes line ($2 from the dollar store) and ran the clothes line between the two stakes. We tied to one end, ran the line to the other stake, cut it, tied the end, then repeated back and forth up the stake. The fence stakes we used had holes in them at regular intervals so we pulled the cord through the holes and tied knots to keep them in place. For the tomatoes that's all the needed. We wove the growing plants between the strings and they are doing fine. that's about 7 or 8 tomato plants supported for roughly the cost of one cage.

The cucumbers and beans got an extra step. We tied clothesline going vertical in addition to the horizontal lines. This created a net that give the cucumber tendrils more places to cling, and gives the beans more support between horizontal cords. Again each trellis comes out to supporting 7 or 8 plants for the cost of a single tomato cage. And they're reusable, at the end of the season we just need to pull the old plants off, roll the stakes up in the netting, and set them in the basement until next year. They take up less room than a whole pile of tomato cages, and when the cord breaks or gets too old to be trustworthy we can just replace that as opposed to the whole thing.

Directions for making a rope trellis can be found here: http://www.ehow.com/how_12152993_make-rope-trellis.html

Trellises have the added benefit of letting you garden vertically. Which saves space and lets you can cram more plants into your available space. More plants in an available space means a higher yield and a higher return on investment. Any vining plant can be grown vertically. The amount of support it needs depends on how heavy the plant itself is. Next year I'm doing a heavy duty trellis to support pumpkins. And then planting those suckers right at the front of my garden to give bit of privacy to working in my garden and discourage Jerkface from eating my lettuce. And to stop this from shading out everything else I'm growing.

We've also hand to mound up our potatoes. I've never grown potatoes before (neither has Husband) so this is an experiment. Potatoes keep growing and reaching and putting out more roots (which is where the edible bits grow) for as high as you mound them before they flower. They grow a little bit, you throw a little more dirt around the base, and so on. This eventually means that you need something to hold all that dirt in place. I've seen a lot of different suggestions. Everything from commercial potato cages (which are expensive) to growing potatoes in garbage cans (also more money than I want to spend) to building boxes around them gradually to hold the dirt as you add it. Think Lincoln Logs or Legos. Husband and I debated all of these options. Including getting Legos in bulk and building colorful fortresses and castles around our potatoes. Because we are adults and we get to decide what being a grown up means. We ultimately decided to buy some 5 gallon buckets from the hardware store and cut the bottoms off. Those seem to be working for now.

Totally doing Legos next year though.

Right! I promised pickles. My backyard garden is currently experiencing cucumber manifest destiny. I harvested a dozen cucumbers a couple of days ago. And since this blog is about preserving food, rather than making sculptures out of a material prone to rotting thus making a commentary on the nature of life and beauty, I decided to pickle them.

First I made refrigerator pickles. I found a recipe online but ended up modifying it so heavily that it bares little resemblance to the original. Therefore I give you:

Fwigf Refrigerator Pickles

You need:

1 pint jar
3 decent sized cucumbers
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup salt
Sprig of dill
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 a medium onion

Put your water, vinegar, and salt into a pan and bring to a boil. While that is heating wash your cucumbers and cut off the ends, then cut them into spears or slices, whatever you want the final shape of your pickle to be. Cut your onion into chunks. Put your cucumbers, onion, dill, and garlic into your warmed and sterilized jar. You want the glass hot so you don't temperature shock it. Once your brine has come to a boil and dissolved the salt pour it into the jar with everything else. Screw the lid on and let it sit over night so the glass can cool down slowly. Again, temperature shock is bad. Once it's room temperature to the touch put your jar in the fridge. These will last roughly 2-3 months (or as long as it takes for you to stuff them all in your face, whichever comes first.) The pickled onion chunks are also tasty.

Perhaps you are running out of room in your fridge? Maybe you just want pickles that will last longer? In that case I give you:

Fwigf Shelf Stable Pickles

You need:

Everything listed in the refrigerator pickle recipe. Also either : A. a commercial water bath canner or B. A pot big enough to put your jar into without it touching the sides, and with enough room above it to have 2 inches of water over the top of the lid. Also a hand towel, ladle, and oven mitt.

For this the jar you are using needs to be a canning jar. One that seals. You know those mason jars with the two part lids? Yeah. Those. I found mine at Tractor Supply Company, but in the fall you can also find them at grocery stores and (if you must) Wal-Mart. And through all powerful Google.

Put your jar and lids in a smaller pot filled with room temperature water, slowly bring to a boil (again temperature shock is NOT your friend), this will kill off any bacteria that might be living in the jar/lid pieces that would spoil your pickles while they live on a shelf. Prepare your brine, onion and cucumbers the same as before.

Now if you're using a commercial water bath canner follow those instructions.

If you're using my 'giant pot and a towel' canner: lay the towel at the bottom of the pot, set the full jar on the towel, away from the sides of the pot. Add enough water to cover the jar, plus two inches over it. Bring the whole thing to a boil and keep it boiling for 10 minutes. Your 10 minutes doesn't start until it starts boiling. If at any point your pot stops boiling, bring it back to a boil and start your count over.

When you've let it boil for 10 minutes turn off the heat and allow the water to cool for about 20 minutes or so. I did this to avoid temperature shock, and because I realized I had nothing to pull the blazing hot jars OUT of the water with. So I decided to let them think about what they've done while I scrambled around to figure out what the heck to do. Once you've finished that, realize you got your ladle and oven mitt out because I told you that you'd need one. Ladle out enough water to be able to safely grab the jar.

Set your jar on a towel in a draft free area. Let it sit over night. In the morning check the lid, if it's suctioned down (doesn't Pop back and forth when you push on it) you're sealed and you can set it on your self. If it isn't suctioned down put it in your fridge and eat them within a month or two.

Fwigf 2014: An Overview/ Starting Seedlings

This year we started our community garden a bit late. I'd called in early June to see about signing on for next year and got told there were still plots left in our preferred garden, and if we wanted one we could have it. We decided to go for it. I made a hasty garden plan and began starting seeds. A week and $30 later Fwigf was ours. A barren, flat, untilled piece of land, growing only sparse grass and Jerusalem Artichokes. I'd begun to think I was in over my head. I probably still am. Thankfully the gentleman next to us was a retired farmer and was able to explain how to build up mounds and lay out our garden most effectively.

There it is, the day we got our mounds made and our seedlings in. It didn't look like much there yet.

What we planted (from back to front):

Long Island cheese pumpkins, Adirondack Blue potatoes, Chinese Red Noodle Beans, Sugar Snap Peas and spinach, Bird's eye pepper and horseradish and spinach, carrots, cucumbers, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce. Along either side is a row of Jade Blue Dwarf Corn.

Our seeds came from the Hudson Valley Seed Library (http://www.seedlibrary.org/), which is an organization dedicated to the preservation of heritage variety plants. What does that mean? It means our plants are open pollinated, which is the vegetable version of open source. We aren't growing GMOs, nothing is patented, and we can engage in seed saving and have our seed be viable. Nothing has been bred to be sterile and unable to propagate itself. Which means if we do this right we won't have to buy seed every year, and we're growing veggies that are a bit more unusual.

I mentioned up top that I started the seeds. What that means is I essentially planted the seeds themselves in a tiny greenhouse at home so I could plant the seedlings where they were a bit bigger and stronger and less likely to get eaten by Jerkface the groundhog. I used one of these: http://www.plantationproducts.com/pages/cfJiffy.cfm which is essentially a plastic tray with a lid and some pellets of peat moss that you put the seeds in. I liked this because all you needed to do was add enough water to hydrate the pellets, put the lid on, set it in a sunny spot and forget about it for about two weeks. Evaporating water condensed on the lid then 'rained' on the peat pellets. Which meant I didn't have to worry about over or under watering. When the shoots appeared I had to prop the lid open and start hardening off the seedlings so they'd be able to live outside. All that means is exposing them to out side conditions gradually.

I also started seeds by planting them in a container filled with potting soil and covering it with plastic wrap. Did the same thing and I was later able to use the extra potting soil to mound my potatoes. I think next year I'll skip the jiffy tray and just start in pots with plastic wrap. The steps are the same, I just think the pots method leads to more reusability and lower long term costs, but it is a more expensive initial outlay.

Direct sow is easier and cheaper, but has a higher risk of failure. Direct sow means you skip the starting bit entirely and just plant your seeds directly where you want the plant to grow. I don't care for direct sowing because I live in the Northeastern US where our growing season isn't what it could be and I want my plants to have as long a growing season as possible. If you direct sow too early your seeds won't germinate because the ground is too cold. If you direct sow too late you won't get food off your plants because they didn't have enough time to mature. Therefore I cheat and start my seeds indoors.

When the seedlings were big enough and hardened off they were ready to go in the ground. If you're using the peat pellets just pop that sucker in the ground, water it, and go about your business. If you're using the pot method you need to carefully remove your seedling (making sure to take ALL the roots), then put it in the ground, water it and go about your business.

If you're doing direct sow then pop your seed in the ground, water it, and keep coming back every day to make sure it's got enough water and hasn't been eaten by Jerkface and friends.

Mission Statement

This year I began gardening in earnest. I also began looking at preserving food beyond just putting something in the refrigerator. I have been making a ton of posts on my social media sites about what is going on in my garden, what my pickling recipes are, how I making things, and I decided to start this blog to have it all in one place.

This is where you will find updates from Fwigf (the name of my garden). It will be a collection of what I'm growing, how I'm growing it, how much produce I got out of it, and how I laid it down for later eating. I am growing my garden specifically to cut down on the costs of food, my goal is to grow as much food as I can, as cheaply as possible. If I found a tip online I will post a link to the place I found it, if I found it in a book I will have a running annotated bibliography, complete with ISBIN numbers if you want to find the book yourself. If the tip or recipe came from a family member or friend it will be credited to that person. If it's something I decided to try for the hell of it then that'll be mentioned too.

What is Fwigf?

Fwigf stands for two things: Field Where I Grow Fucks (when it is barren and lifeless) and Field Where I Grow Food (when it is not). Fwigf is a 400sqft plot of land in my local community garden. If I tried to grow everything at home I'd lose at least half my crop to my much beloved, yet very assholeish dogs. I highly recommend looking for community garden in your area if you don't have space to garden at home. If there isn't one near you? Don't worry, I'll also be adding tips and information on container gardening for apartments/urban areas. You can get a surprising amount of food from a stunningly small space.

The community garden is an organic practices only garden. Which means I can't use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or weed killers. Fertilizers that I can use are things like compost, manure, fish emulsions, that sort of thing. Weed control can be done by pulling weeds by hand, or laying down landscaping fabric. You won't find any reviews on MiracleGrow(tm) or Scotts(tm) here.

Your growing rules will vary by garden. Obviously if you're in your yard then you can grown whatever you want. My community garden limits me to non-invasive species (no mint, no oregano, no Jerusalem Artichokes ect), no trees, no cane fruit (raspberries, black berries ect), and nothing that takes more than a year to mature (no asparagus or anything like that). The reasons for these rules boil down to being considerate of your fellow gardeners. Your wonderful apple tree may shade out your neighbor's tomato patch, your Artichokes won't stay in your patch and your neighbors may not want to spend the next 5 seasons pulling those nutrient hogs out of their own gardens, you may not have your patch next year and you don't want to leave someone who hates asparagus an unwelcome surprise when they try to plant their lettuce. Always check your community garden's rules before getting your heart set on planting something if you go the same route I did.

So that's it. That's the purpose of this blog. Sit back and enjoy if you want to, or get out a note book and a pen and dust off your library card. Either way this should be fun.