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.

Helping Friends I Don't Know and Other Updates

The other day, Caela helped me make a connection between my self proclaimed "friend supported agriculture" and my most recent efforts to organize people here to help others. She is doing her anthropology field work in St. Lucia where Hurricane Tomas recently caused significant damage to the island. People there are currently searching for water and working to figure out when they will have sources of income again.

One of the supplies they expressed a need for was seeds. This way they can plant gardens to feed their families in the upcoming months as they get back on their feet, replant farms, and excavate their houses after landslides.

In response, I went down to a and asked for their help. Not only were their seed packets marked down to half off but they generously offered to help me find any seeds I needed. To say the least, I was happy to see my many hours and dollars spent there result in their willingness to help me help others. And as a gardener, I feel very strongly in empowering and enabling otheres to grow their own. That's why I started this blog after all!



As an update on my garden, it is now put "to bed" for the winter. Based on my observations this morning, it looks like last night was the first killing frost of the year. Considering that it's late November, that is pretty remarkable. Luckily I pulled out the rest of my tomato and basil plants yesterday so nothing went to waste. Now I just need to do something with the green tomatoes and basil on my counter...

Fall is for planting (from October)

Or at least the botanical garden likes to tell people that the fall is the best time to plant native wildflowers and other plants. So, as my summer vegetables are limping along and still producing a little bit, I'm working today on the flower garden. I've been gradually turning the "grass" in our front yard into a native plant area to attract pollinators and to just plain look pretty. Today, while David is at work (I'm working this weekend so I'm off during the week) I can work on messing up his grass mowing patterns :)




There are many methods out there for making this transition. One of the easiest is to cover the grass and kill it and then plant things on top of it (keeps the nutrients there from the grass). But that takes a while and I want to get plants in the ground today. The solution is that I'm stripping off the layer of grass, digging out the yummy Carolina clay, putting in topsoil/compost and then adding the plants and mulch. There is something strangely satisfying about swinging a pickaxe at the ridiculous clay that is my yard.






Then the hard part of digging holes in a clay and gravel soil begins. After a day's worth of labor (or at least a few hours), I had a hole about a foot deep covering the ground I wanted for this part of the garden addition. I even found the remains of an old pipe or culvert that was made out of clay.


In case you're wondering, all of the grass and clay stay here at the Cranford casa. I use the grass to try and establish grass in other parts of the yard and the dirt goes to even out other spots in the yard. We try to not throw "away" anything- that whole sustainability, low impact thing. Unfortunately we don't produce enough mulch and compost here to keep up with the growing garden so I have to bring that in to supplement the home grown stuff.

At the moment, my garden is mostly successful. The tomatoes are coming off a few a day, eggplants are producing really well, the cucumbers are small but plentiful, and we're having trouble keeping up with okra. And the melons continue to slowly produce yummy fruits. I even have 1 pot of lettuce still producing.






Today's harvest and the largest of my watermelons.























I need to plant my fall crops sooner than later so that they'll be ready "on time". So far I think that I'll be growing acorn squash, pie pumpkins, broccoli, and kale. And of course I'll be putting in garlic again.
In the meantime I've turned some of my focus to my wildflowers that I sprouted this spring. They've become super root bound so I'm putting them into larger pots so that they can get a bit more established before I put them in the ground this fall. I'll have extras I'm sure so let me know if you'd like to trade native wildflowers for anything else.
Growing up, my Mom never put up any fruit or vegetables that I remember. So I've been working the whole canning thing with a healthy dose of apprehension about doing everything the right way. The most recent achievement in my kitchen was canning tomatoes.

Berrytastic Times

As the summer draws on, the challenges are high temperatures and figuring out what to do with the produce. For me, the latter gets accelerated when I make trips over to David's parents' house.


For blueberries (from the in-laws), I've been making sorbet for a few years. My newest experiment is these blueberry cupcakes. Both turned out great and are disappearing fast!

Give me a shout if you want hot peppers!

A bloomin' good time

I've had quite a few questions lately about the various flowers of vegetables (and fruits) in my garden. So you can either guess which plants the flowers below belong to or just scroll down the page to see a list of answers.

You choice are:
eggplant
tomato
tomatillo
cucumber
canteloupe
watermelon
bean


a-

b-

c-

d-

e-

f-









And the answers are:
a- cucumber, b- tomatillo, c-cantaloupe, d-eggplant, e-watermelon, f-tomato