View Full Version : putting garden produce by!
earthshepherd
7-22-11, 7:04am
Well, we had a bumper crop of green beans already. I put up 21 pints and 4 quarts with the first picking last night. I am willing the edamame beans to wait until I return from Africa in mid-August, and then I will shell, blanche and freeze them. Cucumbers are very prolific this year, and the tomatoes look like they'll come on while I am traveling -- so DH will have to learn to make sauce -- uh oh!! He wants me to leave him specific instructions on canning everything, so I am writing him a BOOK on how to put it all by. Good year despite the heat here.
Mrs. Hermit
7-22-11, 10:10am
Tomatoes frozen whole would keep until you get back, if hubby is too apprehensive. Once you get back, you can turn the frozen tomatoes into sauce. Just make sure to freeze them in well closed plastic bags. I've had to "dance" when a bag spilled open in the freezer. I opened the freezer, and all the frozen tomato-poolballs went looking for my toes!
I'm afraid my garden isn't doing much yet. The spring rains slowed things down, and now the heat is slowing things down. I've gotten 2 cucumbers and 2 zuchinni and a couple cherry tomatoes. The Roma tomatoes are sort of laying on the ground and not growing up at all, but at least they're making green tomatoes. I'm seeing a couple small butternut squash growing. My Kentucky blue pole beans didn't grow. The Blue Lake poles are growing, but not producing any beans yet. (plus the deer were munching on them for awhile).
The peppers are coming along.
I think everything will eventually be okay, but I probably won't be doing much freezing until September.
I did freeze some store-bought blueberries.......about 18 quart.
Can't wait for "real" tomatoes!
Ellen....have a safe trip to Africa.
Mrs. Hermit.......what an image your frozen tomato poolballs falling out of the freezer gave me! lol!
earthshepherd
7-22-11, 3:33pm
thanks for the tip, Mrs. Hermit -- I will definitely tell DH to just wash and freeze as many as he can.
I'm dealing with tomatoes right now. Today I am cutting and putting them in the dehydrator. One shelf has chopped peppers, but the other 8 are crammed with tomato slices. I did not weigh them beforehand, but there were a lot of them. A lot for a city gardener, that is. ;)
In the past I used to roast them down and then freeze the paste. It is great stuff, and I did some of that with the san marzanos a couple weeks ago, but drying just seems easier today. :)
I'm looking forward to the chiles being riper, fire-roasting and peeling them, then drying the flesh. Could be another couple weeks however. No matter when it is, it will be hot.
I'm trying to put less in the freezer this year since it seems already so full.
Hi Gina,
Could you elaborate on how you've roasted your san marzanos? I'd love to know more about your method.
Gina, What kind of dehydrator do you have?
Hi Gina,
Could you elaborate on how you've roasted your san marzanos? I'd love to know more about your method.
The san marzanos are a paste tomato with very little liquid or seeds in them, so I just cut them in quarters, microwaved them covered for a few minutes to get them up to really hot (to save oven time), spread them out in a roasting pan, and let them cook down to the desired consistency. If you are only doing a small batch, you have to stir them fairly frequently since the edges can burn. But I prefer them to brown a bit here and there for the flavor. I do prefer using a teflon roasting pan for less sticking and easier cleanup.
If you don't like skins on your tomato products, you can peel them first, or you could run them through a food mill at some point.
I do this with standard tomatoes too, but those I cut in half, squeeze out the seeds and really wet stuff, then roast what's left. Also an excellent product.
Gina, What kind of dehydrator do you have?
This past year I purchased an Excallibur. I have a fairly good older round dehydrator, but decided to upgrade and have not regretted it at all. The square trays are so much more versital, and the plastic mesh that comes iwth the trays sticks much less than those difficult to clean round, awkward trays. I was able to just put the cut tomato slices and place them right on the mesh, and when dry, the slices come right up unlike wiht the old dehydrator. And they are so nice and pretty and red. Flavor is really good too, and this will save a lot of freezer space. :)
We've been eating most of our produce, but have managed to preserve a few things for winter use. We've frozen some blueberries along the way, although our blueberry crop has been small this year. Today I froze the base for sage pesto. I'll make some more apple leather today, too, but that seems to get consumed as quickly as I can make it!
@Gina - thanks!!
@cdttmm - I'll bet sage pesto would be amazing on sweet potatoes....is it the same recipe as basil pesto but with the herb substituted?
@cdttmm - I'll bet sage pesto would be amazing on sweet potatoes....is it the same recipe as basil pesto but with the herb substituted?
The sage pesto is basically a combination of sage, EVOO, walnuts, garlic, salt & pepper, a little bit of lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese. I don't measure anything, I just kind of throw it all in the food processor and then adjust to taste. Toasting the walnuts first adds a little more flavor. You can skip the lemon juice, but I think it adds just the right hint of...I don't know...something. I've made it with Romano cheese when we haven't had Parmesan on hand and that seems to work out equally well. And, yes, we've put it on sweet potatoes. Oh my. :D
We typically use it on pasta and also to make sage pesto pizzas.
One note, sage is a much drier herb than basil, so you need more EVOO with sage pesto than with basil pesto. Experiment with it - you will likely love it! We can grow sage as a perennial, but basil is only an annual. Suddenly we ended this prolific sage plants and no idea what to do with them...when I read a recipe for sage pesto we knew exactly what our abundance of sage would become!
Aside from putting a few things in the freezer I am not very good with putting up any produce. I did freeze some excess tomatoes this year and as blueberries have been on sale I purchased extras of those and froze them too. When I lived in the PNW I enjoyed so much more fresh produce and liked to make jams. I came across a recipe for grapefruit jam this past summer and will try that this year (I always have more grapefruit than I can use). I also juice my lemons and freeze them in ice cube trays then use them for salad dressings, etc.
A friend belongs to a produce club (not a csa) and from time to time they will have extra bulk purchases available like heirloom tomatoes. I remember she said she bought those and canned them up, the same with pickling cucumbers. This is a good idea to me and something I've never really considered.
As I write DH is making a batch of kosher dill pickles to be canned (as opposed to fresh). He has also made a batch of bread and butter pickles earlier and may even make a batch of those today because the canning kettle will already be hot and that seems the most time consuming and aggravating part of canning. I will also grate cooked beets for the freezer again...it made a nice salad with mustardy vinaigrette. Fruit in freezer till we can get around to jam making. Also planning to make pear chutney... We get such great satisfaction during the winter to pull something, herbs, shallots, garlic sauce etc made from our garden yield during the cold winter months...
I just got back from an organic farmer's conference- this morning I heard a talk on pressure canning, root cellaring and dehydrating. They were several things on my must-try list, the top one being dehydrating cucumbers, and rehydrating them with the brining liquid you would use to make pickles, for "instant" pickles. I would never have thought to dehydrate cucumbers.
I'm processing some chutney (peach) as I type this. Then I will go out and pick beans we'll probably just eat for dinner. I didn't really grow enough to put by.
Our tomatoes are huge, but green still. It's been 67 days since I planted my corn (70 days it says on the pkg) but the ears are just forming and tassels just showing.
The PAC NW has only had an extended spring this year; no summer yet.
A few years back I was browsing Powell's Bookstore at the airport in Portland and I remember I saw a great book all about preserving the harvest and of course I didn't buy it or remember its name. So, does anyone have a favorite preserving "cookbook" they can suggest. You all have got me thinking now, planning ahead for next year. Thanks!
Raspberries are going crazy here: we have 2 ice cream buckets full in the freezer, gave baskets to several neighbors, eat them every day, and there's more coming. We planted 4 new bushes this year so next year there will be even more. Are we nuts? (don't answer that :) )
Kevin
I am still putting greens into the freezer. Every morning I get up early, put the stock pot on to boil, go out and pick, pick, pick, then chop, blanch, squeeze, and freeze. Repeat. Repeat. I'll keep up this pattern until the summer crop is all put up, then wait for the fall crop to grow big enough to do the same thing. I love having garden greens in the winter.
We're just getting our first ripe tomatoes here at 7000 feet, and I'm too busy eating them fresh to get serious about preserving...favorite recipe right now: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/grilled-portobello-mushrooms-with-tomatoes-and-fresh-mozzarella-recipe/index.html Holy cow.
Simpler at Fifty
8-16-11, 7:58pm
I canned 4 quarts of tomatoes tonight. We might have to buy tomatoes to can this year. We don't have a lot of big ones on the vines this year. Blossom end rot is starting on some of them.
Storage doesn't get much easier than for onions. I usually grow a red variety from sets, because they are quite expensive to buy, and this year I used around a third of one of my large raised beds, say 6 feet by 5 feet. Got about 80 onions with a range of sizes, seen here drying on my greenhouse bench, from where they will go into open fronted storage bins in the bottom of the larder:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6182/6061872720_1e1839343c_b.jpg
Kevin, nice looking onions. Have you thought to braid them? They supposedly keep better if air circulates all around them. I have braided this year's shallots and though they're not pretty enough braids for the fair or photography, they'll do. I'm making hot dog relish today from the Meta Givens cookbook. I'm using the cukes that "got away from me" by seeding them and keeping the skins on. Almost didn't do it because relish is so cheap at costco but I do remember fondly the last batch we made years ago and how proud we were about growing the cukes and making the relish. Hope DH will also make some pickles again today since the canning kettle will be hot. Hmmmm dill chips sound good...Happy preserving everyone....BTW can that book be "Keeping the Harvest"?
Merski, I have braided garlic in the past, but with onions I don't have anywhere cool and dark where it would be convenient to hang them. They generally last until the following spring / until they all get eaten (whichever is sooner) as long as they have some ventilation.
When I was a kid I remember seeing onions hanging in old pairs of nylon tights (er, think that would be 'pantyhose' in the US) for storage, but I much prefer the idea of braiding!
Kevin
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