2009 Harvest and Preserving Totals

Out with the old year and in with the new. The old lists for 2009 now reside here. 2010 will go up when we start the harvest. :)

Just over 200 lb. harvested.
Banana Pink Jumbo Squash 10 lb.
Basil leaves 2 lb.
Beets 5 oz.
Blueberries 1/2 c.
Broccoli 2 lb.
Cabbage 9 lb. 2 oz.
Carrots 4 lb.
Cauliflower 1 lb. 2 oz.
Corn 16 ears
Cucumber 2 lb. 12 oz.
Edamame (in pods) 1 lb. 5 oz.
Eggplant (12) 6 lb. 10 oz.
Italian Prunes 45 lb.
Lettuce a lot!
Parsnips 3 lbs.
Peas 11 1/3 c.
Pumpkins (9) 29 lb.
Radishes 6 lb. 8 oz.
Rhubarb 4 lb. 8 1/2 oz.
Rutabagas 7 lb.
Strawberries 8 lb. 4 oz.
Tomatoes, Beefmaster 2 lb. 8 oz.
Tomatoes, Cherry 2 lb. 13 oz.
Tomatoes, Purple Cherokee 10 lb. 3 oz.
Tomatoes, Roma 25 lb. 8 oz.
Turnips 19 lb.
Yellow Squash 10 oz.



Apple Slices, frozen 24 c.
Blackberries, frozen 2 gal.
Blueberries, frozen 2 gal. ($1/lb.)
Cabbage Burger Filling, 7 qt.
Corn on the Cob, frozen 54 half ears
Hard Apple Cider 25 bottles (22 oz.)
Marinara, 8 qt. ($3/qt.)
Peaches, 20 qt. ($2/qt.)
Pesto, 13 meals (9+ cups)($4/pt.)
Pickles, 13 qt.
Plums, canned, 6 qt.
Pumpkin, frozen 4 1/2 c.
Strawberries, frozen whole 7 gal.
Stock - chicken, turkey, and beef - lots.
Tomato Paste, frozen 18 oz.
Tomato Sauce, canned and frozen, 9 qt.
Tomatoes Diced, canned and frozen, 14 qt.
Turnips, diced, frozen 1 1/2 gal.

The Pumpkins

Apples are amazing. Here are the 4 green pumpkins we sealed in a box full of apples for a couple of weeks (can't even tell which is the one that came off the vine orange can you?)...

Hmmm....maybe ordering that turkey wasn't such a good idea since Q and I should have an exclusively pumpkin based dinner apparently. After all, the pumpkins above are in addition to the 6 c. cooked I already have in the freezer.

After the new windows were installed we rearranged the living room. It is better in every way.

The Driveway is Empty

Yes, it really took over 4 months to finally disperse the last of the soil pile. It's weird having a whole driveway again.

Where it went...

• A large amount got moved in below the front window (visible below) for next year's asparagus bed, which requires deep soil. There's so much fill rock there that it was way way easier to just build up a bed.
• To the left of the driveway, there has been a challenging weed patch on a thin layer of soil over rock, so hopefully the cardboard/dirt combo will take care of that.
• The irises on the right of the driveway have been way overgrown for a very long time (since even before we moved here 5 years ago). I knew grass had invaded them, lurking there. The grass used this stronghold to mount an attack on the new corn/bean/squash bed this summer, which means it was time to fight back. All the dead iris got pulled but there was such a mass of root that I couldn't even begin to weed out the grass from it. Scorched earth became the new tactic. If the iris survives this harsh treatment, good for it. If not, too bad, new things will be planted there. That soil should get moved over in bits this spring to the other end of that bed, where we're putting in a potato box.

In a true me-like moment, the reason the dirt getting moved made top priority is because I'm hoping to get the City to deliver 7 cubic yards (the only size available) of dead leaves on our driveway. Grass and weeds are in several places where they have no business being and hopefully sitting under a foot and a half of leaves all winter will kill them dead dead dead. Anything that hasn't disintegrated into nothingness by the end of the winter gets thrown into the compost bin and it's a win from every angle.

Due to the time sensitive nature of this endeavor and the relative lightness of leaves, I'm anticipating that the leaf pile will get much more quickly dealt with. After that, I'm considering pressure-washing the driveway to discourage any more hare-brained schemes for a while.

Once the leaf mulch gets put down the garden will officially be put to bed for the season and I'll just keep occasionally checking my three winter beds, ready to throw protection over them if a serious frost is expected.

(Sidenote - don't the new windows look nice? I'm in love with them.)

Finally, the fate of the banana pink jumbo squash. I baked this half for about 25 minutes, cut side down, then turned it over, filled it with bread stuffing and baked it, covered with foil, for 35 minutes more. I should have used more butter in the stuffing and should have baked the whole thing probably about 15 minutes longer to get the squash really mushy. It was delicious anyway and served as our primary food source for most of the weekend. The other half got baked later (only one half fit in the oven at a time!), cubed, and frozen.

On Halloween Day, I pulled out the last of the vines and brought in my last 6 pumpkins. (I'd harvested 3 before.)
One was ripe - stuffed pumpkin or pumpkin soup in its own shell for dinner later this week? One was irrevocably green. I found recipes online that suggested paring it, slicing it thin and baking it like you would apple pie. I will report that experiment's results when it is completed.
Four were not quite ripe. The handy internet suggested placing them in a bag with apples. Apparently, the apples release ethylene gas, which will ripen the pumpkins to orange. It warns about less flavorful pumpkin but that's what nutmeg and ginger are for, right? Another experiment that I will report on when I learn the results. Pumpkins are currently locked in a box surrounded by Jonagold and Golden Delicious apples from Thistledown.

We siphoned the pear cider off into the other carboy on Saturday. It seems like it's going to end up tasty. A little weird right now but the apple was also not as fantastic when it was totally fresh. We're letting it sit a bit longer to clarify and then we'll probably add more sugar to get it nice and sweet like I like it, used Campden tablets to kill the yeast, then bottle it.
The last bottle of the apple cider was drunk on Halloween night. It was very bubbly and very alcoholic. Fermentation had continued quite nicely, even in the fridge. I know it's desirable to have it a bit bubbly but I'd like a product that can age for a few weeks at room temperature in its bottles this time, even if that sacrifices sparkle.

The Catch Up Post

Digit seems to be on the mend and we've been busy, so here are the last few weeks. :)
Our new super awesome windows are being installed this week. We had to make one of the windows in the bedroom bigger to meet egress requirements so we decided that while were at it to just put in the sliding glass door we always talked about in there. It's very cool. They're probably going to finish the last ones Saturday morning. Their guarantee is that our climate control bills each month will decrease by at least 40%.

Hungarian Mushroom Soup from Sunday. This is the first time we tried this recipe. It is definitely a keeper - and pretty quick to make.


The Banana Pink Jumbo Squash. I'm looking forward to baking it. It ended up 8 lb. 5 1/2 oz.

Here's early October's massive root vegetable harvest and tomato plant removal "party" (party of one - me). Q finished our last compost bin that day.
This is the harvest of "early" cabbages. We've still got the late variety out there. They looked like little heads, especially weird since some were about perfect "baby-head"sized.
I sauced the last of the tomatoes that I pulled off the plants while I made a double batch of cabbage burger filling. We froze seven quarts of filling. (You can see the jar of sauerkraut I was starting hiding behind the coffee maker. It's in the fridge now. It sure smells like sauerkraut - working up the nerve to taste it!)

Cabbage Burgers
1 lb. ground beef
2 lbs. shredded cabbage
1 medium onion, chopped
1 1/2 t. salt

Brown beef, add cabbage and onion and cook until tender, adding oil if needed. Drain and freeze or use fresh.

Dough - Dissolve 1 pkg. yeast in 1/2 c. lukewarm water. Add 1/4 c. sugar and 1 t. salt. Scald 1 c. milk, melt one cube butter into the hot milk. When cool enough, add this mixture plus 1 c. water to the yeast mixture. Beat in 2 eggs. Add 5-6 cups flour to make a soft dough. Let rise until double, roll 1/4" thick and cut into 4" squares. Place filling at the center of each square and seal; place seam-side down on a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

We used our first quart of filling for dinner early this week and have had the leftovers for lunches all week. I used the gluten free flour blend for the dough and it worked well, although it had to be a bit thicker than usual - continuing to perfect the combo.When the filling's already made it's a pretty low work meal although letting the dough rise takes time.

Canned Plums and Even More Tomatoes

I canned 6 quarts of plums from the batch we picked from our tree earlier this week. I love their magenta color only second to the golden yellow of peaches when canned. Unfortunately, it was dark when they got out of the canner and I couldn't get artificial light to shine through them at the right angle, so no picture.

We picked another 10 1/2 lb. of Romas today and I simmered it down to sauce while I was working on the plums. Since the canner bath was already hot I decided to can this batch rather than freeze it - 4 more quarts of sauce.

I only have 18 empty quarts and 8 empty pints left and I'm trying to decide how to use them. Probably 14 quarts of peaches and the rest as applesauce. We've already drunk half of our apple cider so another couple boxes of apples wouldn't go amiss regardless. It's just so satisfying to share a bottle with dinner.

I was playing with tomato numbers today. We have four plants this year and I think they're going to give us about 40 pounds altogether. (Assuming frost and cool weather don't prevent the rest of my harvest.) My tomato needs are almost met right now. I used 175 pounds that we bought and 25 that we grew or were given, so I need around 200 pounds each year. That's 20 plants? Seems impractical in the space we have...perhaps I'll have to continue to support my favorite local farm. It would just be nice to know that they were all organic from my yard. I also don't know if I'm under or overestimating how many pounds we'll get off the plants. There sure are still a lot of pink tomatoes on those vines, even after today's picking.

Mmmmm...Curry

The vegetables of the previous post turned into the curry above on Sunday night and have provided me with scrumptious lunches for the last two days as well. Since it was a recipe of my own invention, I'm putting it here before I forget what I did and I spend the rest of my life kicking myself for losing it. (Yes, it really was that delicious to me.) I'm pretty sure we broke some sort of rule using garam masala and curry powder but it was good anyway. It was lacking something toward the end and somehow the garam masala was just what it needed.

Mixed Vegetable Curry

olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 t. onion powder
1 1/2 T. curry powder
2 t. garam masala
1 T. salt (or to taste)
1 large eggplant, cubed
1 large yellow crookneck squash, cubed
1 head cauliflower (8 oz.), cut into bite-sized pieces
green beans, handful cut into pieces
3 ears of corn, corn cut from the cob
3 large tomatoes (I had Cherokee Purple), diced

Heat the oil in a large flat pan, add the garlic and saute until fragrant. Add onion powder and half of the curry powder. Saute the eggplant and squash until they start getting tender (5 minutes?). Add the cauliflower and beans. After another couple of minutes add the corn and, finally, the tomatoes. Add the rest of the curry powder and the garam masala now. Cover and let the whole thing simmer, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour. Everything all blends together. If it's too watery (probably depends on the nature of the tomatoes, mine were quite meaty), simmer to desired consistency, uncovered. Serve over jasmine rice.

It's been fun having leftovers from a dinner made from garden produce, broccoli from our garden, and homemade yogurt with frozen local strawberries mixed in for lunches. A whole new delight comes with eating food you grew yourself (and I like food an awful lot to begin with).

Q and I harvested plums tonight. This is just under twenty pounds. There are a few more pounds on the tree that we'll take tomorrow night. It was getting dark. I'm going to can tomorrow night. Thankfully, plums are easy. I think they're going to replace pears in the desired canning list for the season. Q said he'd be just as happy with them in his lunches. A couple more boxes of peaches this weekend, some apples into applesauce in a couple more weeks and canning will be done for the season. The small batch tomato processing continues with 3 lbs. I harvested tonight on the stove simmering into sauce right now. The last batch ended up as 12 oz. of paste in the freezer. There seems to be an almost endless supply gradually ripening out there.

Another huge batch of turnips really should be picked to let light in to the parsnips planted among them. One of the cabbage varieties is basically ready so cabbage burger filling needs to be frozen and sauerkraut needs to be made. The eggplant has about 6 that will be maturing within a couple of weeks. There are 3 orange pumpkins, 2 big still green ones, and at least one smaller green one on the vine. I just measured the banana pink jumbo and it is 16" long!

Crop of Many Colors

All it takes is leaving the garden unattended for a couple of days while I started school and it crept up on me. We're going to have a mixed vegetable curry thing over rice for dinner. Cherry tomatoes are for snacking, carrots are for lunch vegetables, and Romas are simmering down to sauce with the picking from Thursday. Yogurt is working on setting for lunches this week. Laundry is in the washer, in the dryer and on the line. Still need to do some ironing and finish an order (ideally 2). Hopefully, there will be some time this week when I feel like I can breathe a little.

Freezing Lasagna

I made and froze lasagna this morning. It's such a delightful food but is so time consuming that it never seems practical to make it from scratch on a school day. Thankfully, it freezes well. I used this recipe for inspiration but the recipe below is what I actually did. :)

Lasagna
(this recipe made 3- 9"x13" pans)
3 lbs. ground beef
3 quarts marinara
3 lbs. ricotta
8 c. shredded mozzarella
1 1/2 c. Parmesan
6 eggs
3/4 t. salt
1 1/2 t dried parsley
1 1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t ground pepper
1 1/2 lb. lasagna noodles

1) Cook the noodles, drain, and run cold water over them.
2) Brown the ground beef and drain. Add the marinara, stir, and simmer while you prepare the cheese.
3) Mix together the ricotta and eggs. Add the salt, parsley, oregano, and pepper. Mix in the mozzarella and parmesan.
4) Place a layer of sauce in the bottom of each pan. Next, place 3 noodles over the sauce. Spread half of each pan's cheese mixture over the noodles and cover this layer with sauce. Repeat the noodle, cheese, and marinara layers. Finish with a layer of noodles, a thin layer of sauce, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Freeze.
5) When you're ready to eat it, thaw the lasagna then bake it, covered, for 50-60 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Uncover and bake another 10 minutes.


These three eggplants, about 8 oz. each, came out of the garden this morning. I prepared extra meat sauce and noodles as I made lasagna and they're going to make up dinner tonight. Yum.
I also got enough tomatoes out of the garden to simmer down 2 c. of sauce while I cooked.

Harvest Season is Upon Us

I had my first meetings of the school year on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so this week already felt busy. It's amazing how much of the day feels gone when meetings (and going there and back) take up 5 hours.

Q had his last day at the old job on Friday and doesn't start new job until September 8, so he's got a few days of well deserved rest.

Saturday we went to the State Fair in Salem and stayed overnight. I'd never been to the State Fair and it was a really good time. There is so much to see. We saw a glassblowing demonstration and watched a bowl being made from start to finish. We bought the very bowl that we saw made and had to go back to retrieve it this morning after it had had its time in the annealer.Since we stayed in Salem last night, at a hotel about 1 mile from the fairgrounds it was not a big deal to go back. We also passed a small grocery on the way there and on the way back we got 28 ears of corn at 7/$1, onions at $.33/lb, and garlic 5 heads/$1. I'm going to blanch and freeze the corn still on the cob and the onion and garlic was necessary for the marinara and pesto. It seemed like a really good deal.



On the way home, we stopped at Thistledown and got the 200 pounds of tomatoes Valerie and I need for Wednesday morning's canning adventure. It looks like we're canning 42 quarts diced and 7 quarts of sauce this year. I also still need to make another 8 quarts or so of marinara. Marinara's working out to $2.65/qt for ingredients this year, so probably $3/qt adding in lids and energy costs. I have no idea how much the energy cost was but even my records don't need that level of obsessive-compulsiveness.

When we got home the decided to harvest the basil, since it really, really needed it. I've been pinching off flower starts for quite a while now. I can't believe we got 2 pounds of leaves. After looking at the bowls full of leaves, I decided that now was the time to upgrade our food processor from the little 3 cup one. We now own this one from Sears and so far I'm very happy with it. I did all 9 1/4 cups of pesto in one batch and now have 13 meals worth in the freezer. There are still a few immature plants that were hiding among the giants (as you can see from the middle picture below) so we'll see how much more basil I get. Making some rough guesses on water usage and counting the cost of basil seeds, pesto works out to about $1.50/meal ($4/pint) this year. That only works out to about $1 savings/pint from last year but it's a little skewed because the olive oil is organic and both it and the parmesan were more expensive this year ($2.50 total). Growing my own basil probably saved close to $1.50/pint.

We harvested the first Purple Cherokee tomatoes and the first eggplant today. We'll see.
Jumbo Pink Banana Squash just keeps getting bigger and there are at least 2 more started.

The first pea seedlings from the newest planting. The broccoli, cauliflower, beets, spinach, and a single parsnip have also sprouted. No kale or onions yet.

Marinara and Turnips

I finished processing the marinara that I roasted on Sunday today. It made 8 quarts + 1 serving. I'd already boiled my turnips for lunch when I realized I had one serving extra so I just sliced the turnips into strips and had marinara and parmesan over them. Pretty good. A little unusual but good. I'm still waiting on the canner to see if I was successful. Worse case scenario, I freeze it. I am determined to figure out why I fail so miserably with pressure canning though.

Today's Harvest

Radish Seed Pods

Late Lupine - I have no idea why this lupine decided to send up one more stalk of flowers but I went out this morning and the flower was wearing and orange blossom as a hat.

I did my best to capture how full this eggplant is. It's almost 3 feet tall. Shown are the larger eggplants. There are a bunch of smaller ones all over the plant as well.

Banana Pink Jumbo Squash keeps growing. We've got a second one properly started (about 4" long) now as well.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherokee Purple tomato

Sneaky Cucumber was originally hiding under it's vine, some tomato branches and a couple of corn leaves.

I also planted winter/fall varieties of beets, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, parsnips, onions, spinach and snow peas today. We'll see what happens. If it's a "normal" year, I've likely still got 1 1/2 months or more before first frost. My first sprouts from the bush peas I planted last week were just visible this morning but they weren't feeling very photogenic.

Cider's done!

We bottled the cider yesterday and ended up with twenty-five 22 ounce bottles. Twenty four went into boxes to sit for a bit to hopefully get a tiny bit bubbly. The twenty-fifth went into our tummies. It was good. Q got us a bottle filler and a capper from the brew store on his way home on Friday and these tool are so cool. I really like using the capper. We're talking about picking the blackberries for our wine next week now that we have two empty carboys. After the cider, wine will feel like it takes forever, and we won't get to use the capper but... mmmmm, blackberry wine.
Our largest tomato harvest yet this year, including the monster beefmaster that was finally ready. It weighed in at 1 lb. 5 oz.! We had it as slices on hamburgers last night. A single slice exactly covered the bun.
Since we had five romas and we were at Thistledown Farm anyway (buying lots of corn on the cob for Q), I bought a box of tomatoes, some garlic, and onions, and have been reducing them down to marinara for the last couple of days. I think I'm going to try pressure canning again, although my results were so partially successful last year.
When we stopped at the grocery, the red tape banana man was just finishing. I don't know if others find this a mark of a red letter day but I was so excited I exclaimed with delight. Q resignedly said, "I'll go get a basket". We came home with over 16 lbs. of bananas, most of the them organic, and I've got about a 35 smoothies worth of bananas peeled and frozen now. Yay!

Garden Progress

The edamame crop came in today. I picked a tester batch yesterday and Q thought they were delightful before dinner so everybody else came in. Weird to have a crop that just ripens all at once. We got over a pound more, so the total is about 1 1/2 lb. for the year. Not bad for 4 square feet of bed, especially when you think about the nutritional value of the little buggers. (By the way, isn't that nutritional data site awesome? I especially like the "more filling"/"nutritious" matrix. )

We had the most fantastic dinner last night but the camera batteries were being silly so no pictures. It was mashed turnips, peas, pan-fried kielbasa, and onion gravy. It was inspired by bangers and mash but any English person who saw it would be mortified. However, the turnips made it much more nutritionally balanced than potatoes. Truly divine and it has to make it into the regular rotation.

We now seem to have four pumpkins started and a ton of blossoms. Two that are about the size of the top picture, the one in the bottom picture, and one that is smaller.

This is the first Jumbo Pink Banana Squash, which seems to be growing rapidly. There are many other blossoms and I think there may be a couple more just beginning.

This monster keeps getting closer and closer to ripe. Maybe tomorrow?

Eggplants also seem to be growing remarkably quickly. I've got three this size and a few more started.

This morning it's cloudy and damp and all the snails were out feasting. I removed over 20 adults from the front perennial bed and removed an entire lupines. It seemed to be entirely infested with them and a potential source of the trouble. I wasn't too sorry though since it really was too close to the corn. Hopefully, it will aid the slug/snail problem to have it gone.