The Wednesday Weigh-In : Week #30

  

We're at 351 Pounds!

    

     It's was really nice to get away for a week and to celebrate our cousin laurel's wedding (in Hawaii where she lives).  While we were there we had a great time going to farmers markets and trying local fruits and vegetables.  We tried several fruits we had never encountered before like chico and soursop.  We also really fell in love with fresh passion fruit!    

     While we were gone the garden exploded with the warm summer heat and ample rain.  Our neighbors helped keep everything in check but we were still greeted with an abundant harvest when we returned.  Over the last two weeks our little urban plot produced 73 lbs of food.  The chickens laid 47 eggs weighing in at 5.7 lbs.  The remaining 67.3 lb was all produce with the top three producers being:

     19.4 lbs of tomatoes

     17.5 lbs of cucumbers

     15.0 lbs of summer squash

 Only 1649 Pounds To Go 

  

The Sunday Supper

   

     We just love summer squash season!  We've been harvesting a couple squash every day lately.  One of our favorite preparations for any kind of squash is grilled.

     We usually drizzle a little olive oil over them them then sprinkle with salt n pepper.  A little thyme, rosemary, or crushed red pepper make a nice addition too.

     After 3-5 minutes on each side they have nice little char on them and taste oh so good. 

 

     The squash tonight, as the photos depict, was grilled with tomatoes, and spring onions.  We used the grilled veggies to top a fresh salad.  The entire meal went from garden, to grill, to plate in under 10 minutes!

    

Drying and Curing Garlic

    

     With the majority of the garlic harvested we let the soil still attached to the garlic dry out a bit.  Onc it was dry we roughly brushed the bulk of it off before bunching each kind of garlic and preparing it for curing.

     By hanging the garlic in a well ventilated place shaded from the sun it can dry out a little and start to cure.  We've setup a rope pulley system in our garage so the garlic can hang from the lower rafters.  This is an ideal place for curing garlic since it's completely shaded, dry, well ventilated, and not being used for anything else.  After a couple weeks curing the flavors will become more rich and complex.

     Once the garlic is sufficiently cured we'll finish removing any remaining dirt and trim the roots & leaves off.  The garlic is then ready to be stored and consumed.  We'll save some of the softneck variates from being trimmed for making garlic braids to hang in the kitchen.

     

Garlic Harvesting

  

     When about half of the leaves turn brown its a signal that garlic is ready to be harvested.  Having planted the garlic cloves last October this is a much anticipated event.  We've now harvested about two thirds of our garlic with just the Porcelan, Purple Stripes, and Marbled Purple Stripes still growing in the ground.

     In another week or two the rest of the garlic will be ready to harvest.  In the meantime we need to clean off and cure the couple hundred bulbs we've harvested!

       

Saving Heirloom Pepper Seeds

      

     We grow mostly heirloom plants which means with a little planning most of the seeds we need to start plants next year can be saved from the plants we are growing this year.  Not only does this save on the cost of buying new seeds each year it also helps preserve genetic diversity.  

     Today we took steps to be able to save pepper seeds later in the summer. Pepper plants are in the Capsicum genus of the Solanacae family (tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes and eggplants are in this family as well).  All members of the Capsicum genus are inbreeding plants.  That means they do not need cross-pollination because they are self-pollinating.  That said, bees and other insects can cause cross-pollination in pepper plants.  If you want to save seeds (and know what you will be saving) you need to isolate the pepper plants from one another to ensure insects do not cause cross-pollination between variates.

     If you have a lot of land this can be done by separating pepper plants by 500 feet or more, but for those of us in urban environments with limited amounts of land there are two more effective techniques.  The first is to cage the entire pepper plant with a fine mesh that keeps bees out.  While this is effective we opt to use the second method:  When the pepper plants start flowering we choose a couple flowers that have not opened up and place a plastic bag (with a few tiny ventilation holes) around them.  Then when the flower opens it is isolated from insects and the resulting pepper is genetically pure.  Once the pepper forms the bags can be taken off (assuming you have some other method of identifying the isolated pepper for seed saving).

     Later in the summer once the peppers are ripe we'll harvest them, separate the seeds, and dry them for next year.  We'll keep you posted when their ripe and ready for processing!

     

The Wednesday Weigh-In : Week #29

    

 
     We're out of town for the Wednesday Weigh-In this week but our neighbors are looking after things for us and will be harvesting and dining from our urban lot in our absence.  They're keeping track of what they harvest so week #30 will surely be a big one!

     In the meantime we've got a couple interesting posts lined up so stay tuned...
    

Beautiful Garlic

 
     We currently grow 22 different cultivars of garlic.  Among those cultivars many of them send up scapes or flower stalks.  These scapes form umbel capsules at their ends containing tiny flowers and bulbils (which are genetically identical to the plant and, in addition to the cloves, can be planted to produce a new plant).

     In all but a few plants we remove the scapes early in their development.  As the scapes grow they become woody and fibrous rendering them inedible, but at an early stage the scapes are tender and very tasty (Sunday Supper June 13, Sunday Supper June 27).  Besides wanting remove the scapes to eat them removing them also directs the garlic plant to focus its energy on growing larger bulbs.

     Each year we do leave a few scapes to fully mature because they are really interesting to look at.  Tonight we thought we would share a few photos of the scapes with their umbel capsules, bulbils, and flowers.  The photos are from a Asiatic variety of garlic known as:  Korean Hot.

The Sunday Supper

 

     This weeks Sunday Supper was 2/3 from our garden.  We made slow cooked smoked short ribs with grilled summer squash and sauteed collard greens.  Everything except the smoked short ribs, and oil was from our garden this week.  If you want to replicate this meal here is the recipe:

     Smoked Short Ribs

     1.  1 pound short ribs

     2.  dry rub of your choice

     3.  1 cup red wine

     4.  4 ounces mesquite wood

     Soak the mesquite in the red wine for at least two hours before cooking.  Coat short ribs in a dry rub, we used a Dinosaur Barbeque Rub.  The ribs were smoked for 2.5 hrs.  To smoke them we used a Weber charcoal grill keeping the temperature near the ribs around 200 deg F.  The burning charcoal was on the opposite side of the grill as the ribs, and we added a few mesquite chips about every 15 minutes atop the charcoal to keep it smoking.  The grill lid was positioned so the vent was near the short ribs causing the smoke from the wood chips to envelop the short ribs before exiting the vent.

     After smoking the ribs we wrapped them in aluminum foil and placed them in the oven for 6 hours at 200 deg F.  The foil helps to keep the ribs moist and from drying out.  We could have done this on the grill but the oven keeps the temperature constant without any effort.

     Sauteed Collard Greens

     1.  1.5 lb collard greens

     2.  4 hot peppers

     3.  6 cloves garlic (we used Thai Hot Turban)

     4.  1 tbsp oil or fat

     5.  hot pepper vinegar

     Steam collard greens until tender.  In large frying pan on medium-high heat add oil or fat and peppers.  After one minute add collard greens and mix well.  Wait 2-3 minutes add garlic and mix again.  Cook for another 2-3 minutes, add hot pepper vinegar to taste and serve.

     Grilled Summer Squash

     1.  8 oz yellow zucchini

     2.  8 oz midnight lightning zucchini

     3.  8 oz patty pan squash

     4.  1 tbsp oil or fat

     5.  Crushed red pepper

     6.  Salt n Pepper

     This can be done with any summer squashes, the ones above are what we had in the garden.  Cut the squash into bite sized pieces then drizzle the oil/fat atop squash.  Sprinkle with crushed red pepper to desired spice level then salt and pepper to taste.  For us this was about 1/2 tbsp of of each seasoning.  

     Grill at 400 deg for 3 minutes then flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes and serve.

  

Baby Chickens: Update

   

     Earlier in the week we shared photos of the baby chicks we added to the flock a few weeks back. Tonight we thought we would share some more recent photos of the little girls.

     Taking cues from their mom the little chicks have ben learning to forage for bugs, clover, and tender blades of grass in the backyard.

     They have been growing more independent of their mom starting to do a little exploration on their own.

     Never venturing more than a few feet away, they are quick to run back for protection.  What place could be better to hide and stay dry when it starts raining than under moms wing?

The Wednesday Weigh-In : Week #28

   

We're at 278 Pounds!

    

     It's been a really great week with many of the warm season crops starting to mature.  We're harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash more regularly now.  For the week we produced 22.9 lbs of food.  2.4 lbs was from the 19 eggs our chickens laid.  The remaining 20.5 lbs was from produce, and the top three producers were:

     2.8 lbs of lettuce

     2.8 lbs of midnight lightning zucchini

     2.7 lbs of patty pan squash

 Only 1722 Pounds To Go