It's Strawberry Time! (or it was not so long ago)

I love strawberry season! Most years it seems to fly by with only a few chances to get away and spend some time in the field turning my fingers red. This year I've resolved to make an extra effort both to get out pickin and to also experiment some on what I can do to preserve the berries. If you need help finding a berry farm near you, check out the Pick Your Own website. You How to Pick a Peachcan sort it geographically and it tells you about lots of other produce in addition to strawberries.

I got out at the very beginning of the season and caught an unusually cool and cloudy day for strawberry picking (it even rained). I'm used to it being so hot that I can't pick as many as I want before feeling like I'm going to pass out. Anyhow, I went home with ~10 pounds of fruit.

From there, the adventure of preparing strawberries as many ways as possible started. Of course plenty went straight into our bellies or in fruit salad type dishes. My more labor intensive projects were strawberry sorbet (similar to past recipes) and strawberry jam. (David is taking the finished sorbet out of the ice cream maker in this picture).














I've been reading a book called "How to Pick a Peach" and it has information about the origin of food crops, how choices are made of what varieties are sold in stores, storage information, and recipes. I've found it really interesting in my gardening geek way- but do be warned that people who see you with this particular book will suggest that you just go and pull the peach off the tree.

The strawberry jam recipe sounded exciting to me because you do small steps spread out over 3 nights (as opposed to hours in the kitchen in one day). You sugar the strawberries to soften them. Then the next day you add simple syrup and lemon juice. The final step is to cook the jam until it starts to jelly up a bit and then can it. The whole process went pretty well except that my jam is not so solid. It never set. So there wasn't enough pectin in the fruit alone to do the job. I guess this means I'll have to try another recipe.
Night 1:














Night 3:

Spring (aka pollen) is in the Air

This winter I was busy changing jobs and then planning my garden so I haven't posted in a while. But, now that temperatures are (mostly) rising, its time to get started again. Spring really is my favorite season even though allergies kick my butt every year! I've had many of the same plants come up again this year but here are a few new pictures:














In my ongoing quest to make my gardening efforts go further, I've changed up a few things. First, I traded in the old peat pods for small cow pots filled with potting soil as my method of starting seeds inside. My inner hippy was having trouble with the practice of harvesting peat to make the starting pods so I went for a more eco-friendly option. So far, they seem to be working about the same though the little pots take up a little bit more room. Here are my eggplant sprouts:


I also expanded the cold weather operation onto the front porch in a mini greenhouse of sorts. I can verify that it gets mighty toasty in there. I've actually started to leave it open during the day for ventilation so that it doesn't get TOO hot. Thank you Alex for giving me the idea! As the weather has warmed, different things have moved in and out of the "greenhouse" as they are able to handle the outside world.






Out in the garden, I only have garlic from the fall and snap peas. I really like the trellis design that we've used for a couple of years now. Once again David helped out with the construction while I worked on other projects. My challenge with the peas this year has been a bunny rabbit who thinks that the pea shoots are for him- doesn't he know that they sell them by the bag at the farmers market :)

Another new thing I'm trying out this year is growing squash in pots. We've had horrible luck with growing squash in the past thanks to squash bugs. But David really wanted to grow squash this year so I concocted a plan to grow them in pots (where the soil won't harbor any overwintering bugs) and to cover them with a black plastic of sorts to help keep the bugs out. As they grow, I imagine that I'll only have one plant per pot but I started off with 3 in each to make sure I have enough. Fingers crossed that this will help.