No
longer is August the month of the hammock and the cold drink in the
shade – not since I realized that how much you preserve of your
harvest makes a huge difference in how well you can eat from your
garden over the long haul. When harvest season is in full swing,
like it is right now, dealing with the abundance is the major focus
of the home gardener.
There
are several ways to deal with fresh produce that will allow you to
eat from your garden long after the heat of August is gone. You can
dry the produce. This is the easiest way. Beans are simply left on
the plant until the pods are crispy and ready to drop their seeds on
the ground – yes! Those inner beans ARE the seeds! How easy can you
get? Gather them up and lay them in a dry, location out of direct
sunlight and splashes of water to dry for a couple of days. In
Southern California that should do nicely in short order. Putting
them away with too much moisture might result in moldy beans by the
time you want to cook with them; to ensure they are dry, whack one
with a hammer, if it is dry it will shatter. Once you have beans that
shatter and not splat, give them a quick two day stint in the freezer
to kill any larvae that might be lingering and then seal them up
tightly in a glass jar, keeping them cool and dry until time to cook
or plant! Double duty beans!
Other
fleshy things can be dried in a dehydrator. If you grow to store a
lot for the months ahead, consider a dehydrator – these
contraptions will take care of an over-abundance in very short order.
Not only does drying shrink the size of a lot of what you store, it
is a type of storage that depends no power to keep the food from
spoilage, making the food wonderful for emergencies and camping trips
as well as a regular addition to your daily fare. And while you can
use dehydrators on beans, I'd suggest not doing that. The bean seeds
will dry plenty fast enough in SoCal without tempting fate with
overheating in a dehydrator.
A
lot of the food we eat came from humans finding different ways to
store food in the days before dependable refrigeration. Cheeses,
ciders, beers and wines to name but a few of the ways humans have
preserved food through the centuries. And each culture has its own
methods and processes to accomplish this. Most of these preservation
techniques are held in high esteem in the cultures that created them
What
else can you do with all this produce?
Pickling
is easy and doesn't require a degree in food processing. Using what
is known as the “hot water bath” process, you can make pickles of
all sorts as well as jams and jellies from the sweeter produce.
Pickling relies on vinegar (acidity) to prevent organisms from
ruining your food while jams and jellies use sugar for the most part.
You don't need a pressure cooker and while most folks use a dedicated
canning pot, it is not essential. Last year, we had a very successful
pickling class making Spicy Pickled Carrots. It was fun for all and
all the students got to go home with a delicious jar of spicy carrots
which was more fun to make than real work!
I
would be remiss if I didn't mention all the fermentation going
on these days! This is a throwback to what I mentioned above –
mankind has had many ways to preserve the harvest before modern
appliances. It seems like you can ferment everything including the
kitchen sink. Exploring this phenomena is on my to do list and I'll
get back to you soon with a report!
Canning
– without adding sugar or vinegar, preserving the harvest becomes
much more involved process and including owning, or borrowing, a
pressure cooker and learning how to work it. It is not nearly the
same as pickling or making jam. If you want to keep food that is not
sweetened or pickled, you have to learn how to use one of these
pressure cookers. While uncommon today, in my youth many families
had pressure cookers and used them year in and year out. We 'put by'
quarts and quarts of green beans and corn to be able to enjoy
something to eat when the ground was frozen solid. Get a good book on
canning and pickling and discover this whole different world you've
missed and save a lot more of your garden!
The
final option is freezing. In many ways, freezing is the
easiest method, but it is also rather fragile in that one power
outage could loose you the whole lot. By the way, here's a tip I
learned to know if your freezer has been without power too long –
even if you were away when the power outage hit: take a small
container, small cup or bowl, that will hold about a half cup of
water. Freeze it. Now, lay a coin on top of the frozen water. If you
open your freezer and the coin is no longer on top, you know there
has been a power outage and the contents of the freezer are suspect.
Inspect everything thoroughly and even if you don't detect spoilage,
you might consider tossing the lot if the coin was at the bottom of
the ice. Since I've started using this, I've had no chance, thank
God, to test it!
Freezing
has it's upsides too! Got a couple hundred extra tomatoes? Easy
peasy! Slice 'em in half and core them about a dozen at a time. Set
into a low pan coated with olive oil. If you have some garlic, chop
that up and sprinkle over the tomatoes with some olive oil, salt and
pepper. You can add what you might have on hand, parsley, cilantro,
oregano, basil – whatever cranks your tractor. Roast in the oven
until tomatoes are looking a little blasted. Allow to cool. Put in
the blender and whiz 'em for a short time. Measure out the whizzings
into plastic bags of two cups of sauce each, more if you have a large
family. Toss in the fridge. Use different recipes each time you do
this – different ingredients/spices. Use these throughout the
winter to sauce pizzas, sauce for pasta and so on.
Beyond
these suggestions, let me make a radical proposition: If you have
more than you can use, share it with your neighbors and friends.
That's yet another way you can “extend the harvest.” With the
amount of food wasted worldwide estimated to be 40% of all food
grown, let's not add to that figure.
Planting
in August – for most the month, at least – is dicey. The weather
can be hot and vile – this year we have humidity so it feels a lot
like the mid-west. The plants suffer from the unrepentant sun, and
watering is almost useless. Large leaved plants will even wilt with
enough water in the soil because they cannot pump enough water in
from their roots. Wilting reduces the amount of leaf surface that
get sunshine diminishing the amount of water left. There are two
wilting points: The first is just the wilting point and the
plant recovers overnight by pumping in water from the ground. The
second is the Permanent Wilting Point. Guess what that means?
Try to not freak out at the first and try to never come close to the
second.
Which
brings to mind – if you have to use extra hand cream, or you are
drinking extra water, think about how your plants feel! Give them
some too. If you are bad about self-care but you are watering your
garden extra, maybe you should drink more fluids too – like water.
Non-alcoholic water.
Use an 18 inch stake
(available at almost any garden store) and a black plastic flat.
Place the flat on the south side of the plant and prop it up with
the stake – as in the photograph.
Starting seeds
in the garden or setting out transplants can work better if you try
this little trick – use an 18 inch stake (available at almost any
garden store) and a black plastic flat. Place the flat on the south
side of the plant and prop it up with the stake – as in the
photograph. This is a transport flat with fairly large holes, a
propagation flat with much smaller holes provides much more
protection, sometimes too much. Leave this setup until the heat wave
abates or until the plant has the stamina to make it without the
shade.
Remember
to consider how long your new plant is going to take to fruit. Will
it still be warm enough to set a crop? Right now in August, I would
plant only a very few varieties of tomatoes because most will begin
to flower in late November. Yes, I know there are warm days in
November, but how many? Can you count on enough warm days to get
tomatoes from pollination to ripe before the cool nights cause it to
rot on the plant? I think that's a poor bet. Instead, I think we
should try to get cool season crops in before they really like to be
set out. You could also grow a quick summer crops like beans.
Mind
you, I'm not saying you can't. I am saying it's a gamble. How much
space do you have for gambling? I mean more than just the normal
gamble of trying to grow food in a normal world.... (Note: I'm a
gambler and I gamble a lot more than I admit to. There are times when
something is just too good to pass up!)
August
is the time to contemplate the fall and winter garden; in addition
to the stuff above, I'll plant seeds of artichokes (a perennial).
Start
These In Containers
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Start
These In The Ground
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Move
to the Ground from Containers
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Broccoli
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Cabbage
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Kale
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Cauliflower
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Fava
beans
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Onions
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Leeks
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Refer
to the text for exact dates.
Figs On the Grill
This
is only a 'recipe' in the loosest sense of the word, but it's worth
your attention. Gardener's in the Mediterranean Climate should be
seeing figs getting ripe right now or soon. Pick figs that are soft
to the touch and slice in half. Put face down on a grill until warm,
flip over and warm on the back side as well – you are not trying to
'cook' them so don't overdue it. Just leave them long enough to heat
throughout.
Remove
from the grill, put a dollop of a good stout, plain yogurt (I like to
find yogurt labeled 'Greek') on top of each slice. Drizzle with
honey.
It
will taste so good, stand carefully to avoid falling over.
I'm so glad you're back.
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