Fall crops are up!

When I pulled the garlic from my kitchen garden, at the end of July, I immediately started prepping that space for fall crops. Garlic harvests best when the soil is dry, so that soil was very dry. I added a couple of buckets of compost, and roughly hoed that in a little. Then a bunch of water, (the kids wanted to play in a sprinkler, it was a win-win operation.)  Then I  seeded Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, the last of the onion sets that were still in a plantable state, some green beans, white turnips and Cylindra beets. It might sound like a lot, but there's only 2-3 feet of each one.

Thanks to a week of rain and a waxing super moon, I had GREAT germination on all of them, and with any luck, it will be a welcome wave of fresh veggies at the end of the season.  I'll be curious to see if the beans will have enough time to produce, they are bush beans, so I only need them to put on that first big flush.

Worst case, they'll shade out some weeds and be interesting from a research/trial-and-error stance.  But I'm betting at least half will give me food. That Swiss Chard and Kale will probably give me food well into winter, they are both super hardy.

Some notes for future reference. No onion sets for sale this late in the season. Keep more onion sets in a dry dark location after spring plantings. That means I have to buy enough in the spring so I'll have leftovers that I can plant in fall. And actually get them into a safe place. I had probably 3 little bags of sets this year leftover, but one got wet during a watering "incident" that soaked my whole gardening basket, so it rotted. One was left in a sunny place and sprouted, then rotted.  Only one was in a dry dark place, and of course, that was totally by accident.

Other food related things going on, include a bunch of canning. Dave has really stepped into the lead on preservation work, but we still work together on most batches.  We've done a couple rounds of zucchini relish. Bread and Butter pickles are still to do this week.  Some sweet corn next week. We've dried a lot of herbs. Tons of oregano, some mint and parsley.

I don't know if we'll get a tomato glut this year, it's been so mild, there are barely enough heat units to ripen anything. I'll just have to wait and see how the rest of August plays out.

Dried Fruit Thoughts

I dried a lot of new fruits this past summer. New to me anyway. I figured maybe some readers would be interested in how they turned out, and what we'll be doing different next year.

Apples - This one wasn't new. We dried a bag or two of crisp tasty apples. The only thing we'll do different next time is to dip them in some citrus juice to avoid the browning that occurs naturally. (Although, I think I say this every year, and every year I'm always just too stinking busy to mess with the extra step.)

Pineapples - I forget how we ended up with excess pineapple. There's a price point above which I won't buy them, and that means we usually only have a couple of pineapples a year. Must have been a fire sale or something. Because one got dried last year. It turned out really good. I'd never had any before, and they looked odd, so hubby had to push me a little to try it. I'm glad he did. I was pleasantly surprised. We dried them as chunks.


Plums - one of the new ones. I really like dried plums. Yes, they are also called prunes. Prunes just had terrible PR, and dried plums sounds much nicer. These were a wild plum. So they dried smaller and tarter than any prunes you'll ever buy. I really like them like that. Hubby has a bit more trouble with them and has demanded that we marinate them in sugar before we dry another batch. :-D


Raspberries - A neighbor has a long row of raspberries. She was nice enough to gift us several pickings from them. We ate plenty of them fresh and made a bit of jelly. There were still enough to dry a batch, so I did. They dried all crunchy and tart. I love putting them in oatmeal. I had to use the herb screens I made for the dehydrator, as once they are dry, most are small enough to fall through the wide grid of the trays. Those screens are nothing but window screen material, cut in a circle a little smaller than the trays.


Blue Berries - These are like the pineapples in that we usually only get them 1 week a year when the price drops below my limit. We eat plenty fresh for that week, but I always buy enough to dry some. Again, oatmeal and pancakes are livened up by these little gems.

To round out our supply of dried fruit, I buy large quantities of raisins and in smaller quantities I buy dried apricots and cranberries.

Besides my favorite applications in oatmeal and pancakes, there are a couple other things we do with our dried fruit.

Yummy 7 layer bars. Choc, coconut, dried fruit (chopped small), evaporated milk, all layered on a graham cracker crust. Mmmm

Stewed fruit. Or fruit compotes. This has the benefit of being a good use for both the dried fruits and the storage apples that are past their prime.

Dried fruit sampler snacks. :-) Instead of a piece of fruit for snack, we occasionally mix things up and have a cup of various dried fruits. Rowen eats raisins like there's no tomorrow, and little else. Hubby and I like the variety though. Add in some cheese chunks, and a bit of hummus with bread and you end up with a reasonably well rounded quick meal.

Hubby made some "garbage" cookies that had bits of several dried fruits in the dough.

There's a pork chop dish I occasionally cook that calls for dried apples and raisins.

Anybody have something new for me to try? :-) Chime in with a comment!