A Busy Weekend and a Winner
On Thursday afternoon the mail lady honked her horn in the driveway to deliver a few packages. When I went out to get them I realized it was 10 lbs of meyer lemons from the Lemon Ladies Orchard and 20lbs of organic olives from Chaffin Family Orchard. We had plans on Thursday night and yesterday was spent working and getting my taxes ready to go. I also spent some times reading up on brining and preserving olives.
That means today I’ll be spending my time cutting olives, soaking them, salting them and working my way through the entire box (most likely I’ll be doing it again tomorrow as well). I’m planning on using three different preservation methods, water curing, brine curing, and dry salt curing. That will help me decide which kind of preservation method I like. I’m a really big fan of Kalamata olives, so I’m thinking I’m going to like the water cured olives the best. I’ll post more about the process later next week, although sadly I won’t be able to talk about the outcome for quite a while, olives are a definitely a SLOW food! Just in case you’re interested in information about brining your own olives at home here’s the link to a great booklet from UC Davis Home Curing Olives.
Are you doing anything exciting this weekend?
We have a WINNER!
Congratulations! Head on over to Morgan’s blog Grounded and read about things like: making your own seed balls, how to build a worm bin and what life is like in Southern California.
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Friday Favorite: Home Canned Tomatoes
One thing I do enjoy about winter is that I have more time to cook. I really love to cook and enjoy spending the winter days making big pots of stews, tender roasts, trays of lasagna and baking fresh sourdough bread. One of my favorite things about gardening is the fresh fruits and vegetables that it provides for the kitchen. Since I live in NE Ohio, the winter months prove to be a little more difficult when it comes to gardening and fresh vegetables harvests. Since I’m still in the learning stages of winter gardening, I supplement with things I canned and froze during the bountiful months of spring/summer/fall.
If I could only preserve one thing from the summer it would definitely be tomatoes. My pantry is filled with home canned tomato soup, jars upon jars of crushed tomatoes, roasted tomatoes fill the freezer, and dried tomatoes stock the kitchen pantry. Cracking open a jar of canned tomatoes brings back all the joy of summer gardening.
Of course they’ll never take the place of an heirloom tomato picked while it’s still warm from the sun, but they make the nine fresh tomato free months here in Ohio more bearable.
If you could only preserve/can/freeze one summer vegetable what would it be?
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Long Winter Evenings
“It is most amazing how much literature you can cover during the long winter evenings. We read fairy tales and legends, historical novels and biographies, and the works of the great masters of prose and poetry.”
Maria Augusta Trapp The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
One of the things I do love about winter is that I have time for reading, not as much as I’d like since I’m pretty busy with my day job right now. I’ve always been a bit of a bookworm, and it doesn’t get better as you get older. I have a list a mile long of new books I want to read, and yet I find myself often flipping through old favorites that live on my bookshelf. This time of year I find myself often referencing gardening books while ordering seeds and planning my summer garden.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, the book quoted from above was one I read in December and I throughout enjoyed it and would highly recommend it. It’s a wonderful story of a thoughtful life. I also really enjoyed the The River Cottage Cookbook and the The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes both cookbook/stories. I’m now moving on to Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land and a few photography books. I’m always on the lookout for great books to add to my list.
Read anything great lately that you can recommend to us?
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Soil Testing?
I have a confession to make – I’ve never tested the soil in my garden *gasp*. Any time you read a gardening book they tell you to do a soil test first thing before you start gardening. I always wonder if I should but have never taken the time to do it. I do have a pH test kit that I purchased several years ago just for fun, which I have used a few times.
Knowing your soil pH is pretty easy to determine if you have hydrangeas. Pink your soil is sweet, blue and your soil is acidic. We have fairly acidic soil here in the garden of Chiot’s Run. My hydrangeas were deep blue when I first started gardening and as I’ve been adding more and more organic material to the soil they’ve been getting more pink so the soil is sweetening up a bit.
As I was looking through the catalog for my local organic farm supply store deciding how much greensand, gypsum, rock phosphate and lime I wanted to buy I came across their ad for soil testing and wondered if I should have one done.
I’ll have to do some research because I think my local extension office will do fairly extensive soil testing as well and they offer advice on how to deal with deficiencies or problems.
Have you ever had a soil test done? Was is beneficial?
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The Edible 2011 Garden is Here
On January 16 I started my first flats seeds for the 2011 edible gardening season. I started half a flat of each ‘Red Burgundy’ and ‘Borettana Cipollini’ onions. Onions like warm soil, so I put it on the 10″ x 20″ seedling heating mat my mom lent me. I covered the flat with a clear dome to keep in the warmth and the moisture and waiting, checking on them every day of course.
When I checked them in the morning on January 21 and I had germination! That’s pretty quick for onion seeds, they always seem to take a little extra time. Of course there were only a dozen or so tiny shoots on that day. Seeing those first little green shoots of the seed starting season is always an exciting thing!
Yesterday every soil block in the flat had at least one little green shoot and most of them had three. Looks like these onions will be ready to plant out in the garden come March. I can’t wait!
I also have other onions in the basement planted only 2 days later, but since they’re not on a heating mat they haven’t germinated yet. I ordered a 48″ x 20″ heating mat which will have enough room for four flats. I’m hoping it arrives soon so I can start 4 more flats of onions. If you’re planning on starting a lot of vegetables that like warm soil as onions, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes, a heating mat is definitely a good investment. Especially if you happen to have your seeds starting area in a 55 degree basement like I do. At least it’s the perfect temp down there for spinach and lettuce seedlings, which I take full advantage of mid-summer when starting my fall greens.
Do you use heating mats in your seed starting efforts?
