Freezing green beans

This spring, I planted a row of bush beans. I had a bunch of old seed, and I wasn't sure how fertile they were, so I dumped all of the seed packets into a bowl and spread the seed melange willy-nilly into the row I'd prepared for them.

As it turned out, most of the seed was still fertile, and grew vigorously in the mild, wet weather we've had this year. Consequently, I've ended up with an unprecedented harvest of green beans overall.

This morning, I went out and picked a 5-gallon bucket full. The beans were so fresh and crisp that they snapped off the plant at the stem, so I didn't even need to snap and string most of them when I got them into the house. I just washed them, snapped them in two pieces and threw them in a colander to prepare them to freeze.

To freeze beans, you must first blanch them in boiling water to stop the enzymes and bacteria in the beans from robbing their flavor, nutrients, and color in the freezer.

1. Heat your water to a full rolling boil. I added a pinch of salt.

2. Fill the colander with green beans and slowly submerge in the boiling water. Set the timer for 3-5 minutes. I set it for 5 since I'm at altitude and my beans were huge.

3. When the timer goes off, immediately remove the colander of beans from the boiling water and place it into another pot or bowl of ice water. This prevents the beans from cooking any longer, which might make them soggy or mushy.

4. Empty the beans onto some towels to dry.

5. Repeat as desired. You can reuse the boiling water up to 4 or 5 times. You will need to add more ice to your ice water bath after each batch.

6. When beans are dry, measure the amount of beans you want per bag and vacuum seal.

Alternatively, you can just fill up a few gallon Ziplock freezer bags and use a handful at a time. Store them in the freezer for up to a year.

My family eats frozen green beans all winter long, and home-grown is so much better than store-bought. But I don't need to tell you that!

Eden Garden Update-Year 2

Lettuce and spinach reseeded itself among the broccoli

 It's been two full seasons since we completely converted our garden plot in the fashion described by a movie called Back to Eden. (See blog post Experimenting with Eden.) We have learned a lot since we started (See blog posts First Eden Experiment Update and Eden Garden Update-Year 1 Lessons), and we can now count the project as mostly a success.

As soon as the snow melted this spring, we began seeing signs that the lettuce and spinach seeds that we sowed in Fall and believed to be long gone were not only still viable, but had indeed germinated! This was our first positive sign from our previously unimpressive mulch bed.

I got a slow start on planting the rest of the garden due to a death in the family and a catastrophic knee injury that resulted in a 3 month lay up and surgery. It was all I could do to crutch through Home Depot to pick out vegetable starts in late May, and if Home Depot didn't have it, well, it didn't get planted this year.

I coerced the Hubby into putting my store-bought starts in the ground, and I laid, with icepack on my elevated knee, staring out my bedroom window at the rising tide of bindweed spilling into the garden from the pasture. I emailed friends and acquaintances my desperate pleas for help pulling weeds in exchange for harvest rights, at least until I could sit in a chair and pull them myself.

Summer came, temperatures rose, and I finally ditched the crutches. Other than the spring greens, which had by this time bolted and gone to seed, the only thing that was doing really well was the bindweed. "Physical therapy" became a euphemism for weeding the garden, and was actually pretty effective from a mobility and muscle development standpoint, and my surgeon was rightly impressed with my muscle tone by my 3-month post-operative visit.

By July, I'd removed at least 1000 pounds of bindweed from in and around my vegetables. I was ready to burn the entire garden to the ground because my paltry vegetable plantings were failing to provide food in proportion to the amount of work I was putting into keeping them happy and weed-free. I decided I'd pull out the remaining bindweed and then rake the mulch down to the dirt to rip any tiny shoots that may be running undetected beneath the ground cover. Then we got a good rain.

About a week later, I went out to evaluate the effectiveness of my bindweed destruction plot and discovered something very interesting. Volunteers. Dozens of baby tomato plants were thriving in the part of the garden I'd abandoned because of last year's vole infestation. And the lettuces and spinach that I let go to seed after they bolted, had re-seeded themselves everywhere. I even found them in my pasture where I'd pitched the dead plants when I replanted the row. Of course, some mulch made its way to the other side of the fence as well, along with the dead piles of bindweed.

Tomato volunteers

I now believe that all of those viable seeds were trapped somewhere in the mulch beneath the bindweed, and that by vigorously raking the mulch, I reunited the seed with the soil, and aerated the entire environment at the same time. This caused a flurry of growth in a way I hadn't seen to date in the garden.

Lettuce in the pasture

I discovered that last year's less-than-impressive mulch bed is now practically a living, breathing organism all on its own. Colonies of pill bugs are evident, along with all of the beneficial companion bugs that help compost and break down soil. Worms are abundant and healthy and the soil just an inch down is moist and dark black with organic matter. What a marvel!

Pill bug colony (I think)

Later research revealed that my nemesis bindweed is actually renowned for restoring fertility to an area. The website Home Remedies For You claims:

"Bindweed finds other uses in restoring the fertility of agricultural land that has been subject to the extensive use of chemicals and pesticides. It is researched and believed to eradicate chromium, copper, and cadmium from the soil.Bindweed also exhibits properties similar to that of nitrogen fixing plants. The presence of calystegins in the roots of bindweed act as a source of carbon and nitrogen to the rhizobacteria that is responsible for nitrogen fixation. Thus, the fertility of the soil is enhanced for agricultural use."

So to recap, the Eden Experiment does not work as advertised. It is not a solution to the problem of weeding, at least not in parts of the country where bindweed grows. It is, however, an excellent way to return fertility to your soil, create an optimal environment for plants to grow, and minimize water usage throughout the season.

Eden Garden Update-Year 1 Lessons

In our first year of implementing the Eden Garden program, (See blog post Experimenting with Eden) we experienced some ups and downs.

Successes
Year one's garden produced a humongous harvest. My cucumber yield alone was nearly commercial in scale as I was harvesting 10 pounds of pickling cukes per day. I was able to give hundreds of pounds away in addition to canning 3 cases of dill relish, 6 cases of garlic dill pickles, 2 cases of spicy dill pickles and a case or two of my new invention, "burger stackers". I also had great watermelons, peppers, and tomatillos, and a satisfactory harvest of potatoes and slicing tomatoes. I made several cases of different salsas and tried a great peach, pepper jelly recipe that I'm determined to repeat.

Failures
The corn was a total bust as we got corn smut (didn't know it was a delicacy until after we threw away the infected ears), and we wound up trapping 5 pillaging raccoons, but by then, they had consumed every ear of good corn left. The zucchinis never survived the squash beetle infestation and the monstrous cherry tomato plants turned into habitat for voles, which threatened to take over the rest of the garden. It's hard to tell at this point in the experiment how much of our failure was due to the 80 degree temperatures starting in March and the historic drought conditions, and how much was related to growing pains in the new system. We do know that we definitely made a few mistakes that affected our success rate. This is what we learned.

Mistake #1: Installing the new mulching system in the spring.
While it kept the weeds at bay, the new mulch began composting at the soil surface and robbed the soil of the nitrogen it needed to feed our seeds, thus, most of the seeds we sowed directly did not germinate. In hindsight, we should have plowed our old garden under in the fall and installed the irrigation and mulch then. That way it would have had the entire winter to compost under the snow and perform its necessary nitrogen exchange, leaving the ground fertile by springtime.

Mistake #2: Mulching over the seed.
After sowing our seed, we covered the newly planted seed with the mulch, not even considering that the same mulch layer that inhibits growth of weeds would surely be a barrier to our new vegetable shoots as well. To combat this problem in later plantings, we left rows open until the shoots were above the mulch line, then pushed the mulch around the new greens.

Mistake #3: Over and under-watering.
With the mulch present, it's difficult to tell when the plants need water, because you can't just observe the dry soil. When we planted our starts, many of them shocked right away so we gave them plenty of water. They snapped out of it, but then looked droopy the next day so we watered again. We just kept watering any time one of the plants looked limp and droopy, and ultimately, many died. When we dug the poor plants up, we discovered they were sitting in a pool of water. We finally bought a moisture meter and used it each time we thought we should water. Mostly, we were completely wrong about when the garden needed irrigation and when it didn't. The majority of the plants snapped back when we used science, rather than passive observation to determine if the poor buggers needed water.

End of year one
At the end of the year, we put the garden to bed by pulling the large dead plants, and letting anything that fell off join the mulch to compost naturally over time. That means that frost damaged tomatillos, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, etc, were left on the surface of the soil to decompose throughout the winter, and the plants got pitched over the pasture fence.

Exhausted from an epic year of planting, harvesting, canning and freezing, we sowed just one row of lettuce and spinach in the fall, and built a row cover for the top, but one blasting windstorm ended our row cover, so we just left the poor seeds on their own until spring. Hopefully year two will reveal more success from the Eden Experiment.

First Eden Experiment Update

About 6 weeks ago, I filled you in on a new gardening concept from a movie called Back to Eden. You can read all about it in my post Experimenting with Eden. Since then, we've noted some interesting aspects of this gardening style, some that are good, and some, not so good. Here's the list.

1. As promised, the soil does stay much moister now than without mulch.

2. The worms LOVE the new layer of mulch, and are now evident in astounding numbers. In fact, I can scarcely sink a trowel into the earth without uprooting a half dozen fat crawlers.

3. The weeds are no where near as bad as last year, with the exception of our old friend Perennial Bindweed. This European invasive weed has been known to bubble asphalt driveways, so it's no surprise a 6 inch layer of mulch hasn't slowed it down. Even the bindweed is easier to pull though in the mulch.

Potato patch

4. The potatoes and onions are happy and prolific in the mulch. The movie claims that no mounding is necessary for potatoes using the "Eden" method, but that remains to be seen. I was pleased to discover though, that my potatoes are strongly out performing the ones at the nearby demonstration gardens.

Yellow onions from sets

5. Only a few rows of my direct-sown seeds have emerged. Of those, only one or two are thriving. The others like the beets & lettuce died instantly, and the radishes stalled in their maturation and are the same size now as they were 3 weeks ago. We have speculated at length about why this is happening. The theories include bad seed, predation, cold evening temps, longer germination period because of the added layer of insulation, or that the deep mulch too heavy for seedlings to push through. It is clear, however, that I will either have to re-sow many of the veggies I planted, or buy starts from the nursery to catch up on production. Fortunately, we started so early this year, that I should be able to keep up with prior years' production even after replanting.

The dill seems happy!

6. Several transplanted starts have stressed badly and burned up their leaves. This is another mystery. I picked up a bunch of starts from the greenhouse, hardened them off over a few days and put all but one of them in the ground. The soil was moist and I planted them close to the drip line. Within 3 days, the starts I planted in the garden shocked badly, but the one I kept out and didn't plant was fine. The survivor was still in the 4-inch pot so it would have been even more affected by the evening temperatures or daytime sunlight if that was the problem, so I am frankly totally baffled...

Watermelon in shock

Basically, this continues to be a learning experience as we determine what works and what doesn't. Periodically, when I'm feeling frustrated, I look over at our parsley plant, and am encouraged. Parsley, you see, is a single season annual here in our climate, and is notorious for being temperamental about reseeding. However, its placement here in the mulch by our patio has allowed it to be productive beyond our wildest dreams, and it comes back larger and with renewed vigor every season. It's the parsley that reminds me that this is a good system designed by God, and I just have to learn how to work with it, not against it, and remember to give it time.

Experimenting with Eden

A couple of months ago, I was introduced to a movie that literally turns traditional vegetable gardening on its head. It's called Back to Eden. As soon as you're done reading this, watch the movie. It will blow your mind.

All along, I've been doing gardens like everyone else. Clear the ground, till it, amend it, plant it, water it, weed it, repeat ad nauseum. This movie will put an end to it all.

Last year's garden area was 24' x 32'. Each bed was outlined with weed fabric to delineate growing space from walking space, making the actual surface growing area less than half of the total square footage of the plot. We ran out of room for all the things we wanted to grow, and found ourselves limited in what we could add later in the season, mostly thanks to sprawling pumpkin plants.

This year, we decided to cultivate an additional 15' x 48' strip adjacent to the original garden, to give the space hog veggies their own bed with lots of extra elbow room. As we tilled the ground in the new plot and added compost to amend its soil, all I could think was "how am I going to weed all of this?" You'll perhaps recall my ode to weeding from last year...

Then we saw the movie. TEASER: I won't have to weed the garden by hand any more. (I know. You NEED to watch the movie)

This weekend, we prepared our newly expanded garden area using the process outlined in the movie. I will describe the simplicity of the process.

Step 1: Smooth the plot.

Step 2: Lay down irrigation. Ok, so they don't actually have this step in the movie, but it mostly takes place in Washington state and we live in the high-plains desert, so, to be on the safe side, we added it. We use Netafim driptube with emitters built in. It's the same stuff we used last year, so the process to this point  is identical to what we've done every year. Last year, we would have quit here, but this year, we added another step.

Step 3: Cover the whole plot with 6 inches of wood chips. (!!) Crazy, huh?

According to the movie, God, in His infinite wisdom didn't design the ground to be bare. That's why He sends weeds, or leaves, or grass, or whatever to cover it, the minute we idiot humans disturb it. In fact, the ONLY place you will find bare earth is where people have disturbed it. Stop God from covering it and you toil non-stop with endless weeding, spraying, and watering. Leave it uncovered for too long, and you end up with the Dust Bowl.

In contrast, where the earth is covered with leaves, bark, decomposing matter of all varieties, life is abundant and diverse, and moisture is prevalent and available, requiring virtually no supplemental irrigation. The decomposition of the mulching material amends the soil naturally, compaction virtually disappears, along with the hours of weeding, digging, tilling and toiling.

Here's what our plot looks like now with its beneficial layer of wood chip mulch.

If you're any good at math, you're probably wondering  how we could afford that much mulch. Even with our landscaper discount, it would still be cost prohibitive to buy all that mulch. But that's the beauty of this system. You don't need fancy, colored wood chips. Just plain old, ground up yard waste will do.

As it turns out, our town has a yard waste recycling center, and the have a huge pile of chipped up yard waste. This year, the pile is about 10 times its usual size because we had a massive storm in October that devastated most of the mature trees in the state, ours included. One phone call to the town and they practically begged us to take the beautiful, steaming, partly decomposing pile of ground covering off their hands. We were glad to oblige, and took 8 dump truck loads.

It's still a little too early to plant here, but I'll let you know how that goes once we get to it. Meanwhile, watch the movie...here's the link again so you don't have an excuse not to watch it immediately. Back to Eden. Enjoy.

Attack of the killer zucchini!

I forgot to harvest my vegetables before we went camping last weekend, so we came home to a couple of killer zucchini.

What a wonderful vegetable! They thrive on neglect, grow in the worst soil and produce in spite of every hardship. Each year, they exceed all my expectations with their voracious production, and each year I'm forced to exhaust my entire recipe library to manage the bounty.

But what do you do with those monstrous overgrown zucchini squashes? I read a report last year about a Montana woman who fended off a snarling bear using her 14-inch zucchini as a weapon. Then, there are the Italians, who stack the huge squash outside their house like cord wood before feeding them to the pigs, according to Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle. For me, it's totally excruciating to imagine "wasting" perfectly good produce on the livestock, especially if it hails from my own garden, and by now you surely know that if something was busting into my house, I would not be using a zucchini to defend myself...

So, my first tried and true solution to zucchini overload is zucchini bread. I shred tons of zucchini every summer with my Cuisinart shredder attachment and make batches of bread in bulk, often baking 6-8 loaves at a time. Once made, I wrap the cooled loaves in tinfoil, seal the wrapped packages in a Ziplock and pop them in the freezer. The frozen loaves last well for up to a year, which is much better than just freezing shredded zucchini.

Over the years, I've discovered that packing a still-frozen loaf for a camping or hunting trip is a perfect breakfast solution, as it travels well in it's solid state, and once thawed (usually by morning), tastes delicious and doesn't  dirty any dishes to enjoy.

I have two other favorite solutions for these freakish gourds: The first is a deliciously upscale pureed cream of zucchini soup, courtesy of Julia Child, and the other is a definitely down home zucchini casserole. Check the recipes, share them with your friends...you know you're gonna need them if you don't already!

*****************************************

Zucchini Bread 

(makes 2 loaves)

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup oil
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tsp vanilla
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup walnuts (optional)

Combine all ingredients, pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake 1 hour at 325 degrees.

************************************************

Cream of Zucchini Soup

• 1½ pounds of zucchini
• ½ cup minced shallot, or an onion, chopped
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1½ tsp. wine vinegar
• ¾ tsp. dried dill weed
• 4 tbsp. quick-cooking Cream of Wheat
• 1 cup sour cream

Cut zucchini into half-inch chunks. Cook shallots or onion in butter until tender, but not browned. Add zucchini, broth, vinegar, and dill. Bring to a rolling boil, then stir in Cream of Wheat. Simmer, partially covered, for 20-25 minutes. Puree with immersion blender (or in food processor or blender), adding sour cream, salt and pepper. Serve chilled.

**********************************************

Zucchini casserole

• 6 cups zucchini, diced in 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 of a red bell pepper chopped
• 1/2 cup grated carrots
• 1 can of mushrooms (drained)
• 1 package dry bread stuffing mix
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

Grease casserole dish. In a large saucepan, cook zucchini, carrots, onion and peppers until crisp tender. Mix in mushrooms, condensed soup and sour cream. In a small bowl, mix together stuffing and melted butter. Spread half stuffing into greased casserole dish. Add zucchini mixture. Top with remaining stuffing mix. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Pickles coming out of my ears!

So I've been slacking a bit in the blogging department because, well, the garden has taken over my life. I love this crazy time of year when the weeding has all been done and the garden no longer takes, it gives. And this year, mine is giving back to me ten fold.

Picture taken 7.2.11

Every year, I long to make pickles. I plant a few pickling cucumber plants and harvest a paltry few cukes, and usually end up running down to the farmers market to supplement my yield enough to can 3 or 4 quarts of pickles. So this year, I vowed to plant more cucumbers than I thought I needed in the hopes that I would end up with just enough.

I also tried another trick and I stuck all 5 plants in the same bed with 2 rows of corn. I thought the cornstalks might give the vines something to trellis on, and the cukes might in turn shade the corn's roots.

Well, it worked.

Picture of same bed taken 7.29.11

Since the 4th of July, I've harvested about 30 pounds of pickling cucumbers from my bountiful vines, and I bet if I go out there now, I've got about 3 more pounds waiting for me, despite having harvested 7 pounds this morning. Let's just say that I finally have enough to experiment with all of the pickle recipes I've ever wanted to try.

My favorite pickle is a crisp, sour, garlicky, dill pickle. Next best are the snappy, spicy pickles, and then there are the sweet slices of pickles that perfectly complement a deli sandwich on rye bread. All have their place at the table, and I plan to make a batch each of them before my vines quit for the year.

Here's the recipe I used to make my first batch of crisp garlic dills:

Brine: 1 cup distilled vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 Tbsp pickling salt, brought to a boil. Maintaining the proportions, make as much brine as you need. I think it's better to dump some extra down the drain than to run out mid jar.

To each hot sterilized quart jar I added:

• 1 tsp dill seed
• 1 sprig fresh dill weed
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, coarsely chopped (don't worry if your garlic turns blue or green after canning...it's just the acid reacting with the oils)
• 1/2 tsp either mustard seed or whole pepper corns...we'll see which tastes best
• Pickling cukes (which I first soaked in ice water for 2-3 hours) 

This year, I also learned that adding a grape leaf to the bottom of your jar before packing it with cukes helps keep them crisp (something about the tannin in the leaf helping to preserve the cuke's texture), so I incorporated that tip into a few jars. To the others I added the commercial pickle crisper, which my hubby informed me is the same chemical the snow plow distributes on the road in winter to melt the ice...hmmm...I hope the grape leaf works best.

Then I processed them for 20 minutes in my waterbath canner. I think at sea level, you'd be fine to process them for 15 minutes, higher altitudes need longer in the canner.

One more quick note: A shrewd canning friend taught me to keep my waterbath canner boiling on my barbecue burner outside to help keep the kitchen cool for canning. Mine now gets set on the barbecue burner in late June and doesn't come in until all the produce has been put up at the end of September.

So now the pickle jars are supposed to sit for a few (6-8) weeks for best flavor, but my friend Cathy couldn't wait and already popped the seal on the first batch. She said they were delish! I'm gonna wait for mine.

Getting in touch with my roots

Harvesting root vegetables holds the same breathless anticipation for me as unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. When I approach the veggie bed filled with sleek beet greens or frilly carrot tops, I have no idea what bounty is concealed below the surface. It's with trembling fingers that I coax the earth away from the bases of the greens in the hopes of catching a glimpse of just enough exposed vegetable to determine its readiness for harvest. And then, as I take hold of the tops and pull, I can revel in the satisfying sound of a bright, bulbous vegetable releasing itself from the earth! Oh the satisfaction of this experience is one that remains virtually unmatched throughout the rest of the harvest.

I love beets. My hubby introduced me to them recently, as he was reminiscing about some of his favorite dishes his grandmother used to make. We often prepare them as a side dish by removing all but about 2 inches of the green tops and boiling them for 30 minutes. When they are soft, we drain the water and slip the skins off. Then a quick slice and we toss them back in the pan with the greens, some butter and garlic salt and saute. When the greens are wilted, the beets are done! Even the kids love them this way.

This year, I thought I'd try pickling them as well. I've never really eaten pickled beets, except one surprising time when I selected them at a salad bar thinking they were slices of gelled cranberry sauce. Imagine my shock at learning they were beets! So, with very little experience with what they should taste like, I pressed the hubby for details. Are they spicy? sweet? syrupy? vinegar-y? He was no help. So off I went to research it online and I found this good old fashioned recipe and pickled up 3 jars.

 They smelled divine when I added the brine, and the color is truly gorgeous. I'll let you know about their flavor in a few weeks when I crack the seal!

Weeding the Garden

Pull this one,

Not that one

Down each row I go.

Nails black,

Fingers crack

The hard work starts to show.

Lunchtime-not done

Back out at One

How fast those weeds did grow.

Oh shit.

I quit.

Maybe I'll just mow.