Life's a Peach

Whew!  I'm so glad that's over.  It all started with this...

This is the harvest from our big peach tree.  I even weighed them - over 200 pounds.  Pretty unbelievable, isn't it???  Factor in the fact that I thinned over 50 percent of the peaches off the tree when they were about the size of an olive.  One branch on the tree was completely unreachable, even with a ladder, so it didn't get thinned and yep, it broke under the weight of the peaches.  Oh, and I harvested about 30 additional pounds from the baby peach tree.  Yikes!  After convincing my children that they needed to eat some, I started processing.

Remember the empty freezer?  It's not so empty any more.  I sliced thirty oversize quarts worth of peaches to go into the formerly empty cavern.  (I usually process peaches into 5 cup 'quarts' as after the juice is drained, there's just enough peaches for most recipes.)

Then I fired up the canner.  First day, I made 'sploosh' for Ben...

He was a bit disappointed with the flavor, thought it was a bit weak compared to the apricot sploosh that he'd been drinking from past years.  So, I tweaked the recipe a bit.  On the next canning day, I went all out...

Ten quarts of sploosh and seven quarts of peach halves in extra light syrup.  Whew!  What a day!  Makes for a pretty picture, though, I think.  I hadn't canned peach halves in a long time, so I thought it was time to refresh my skills. 

I also made three peach pies, but forgot to get a picture before we ate one and put two into the freezer.  In addition, I've sliced up about three gallons of peaches that have gone into the fridge and then mysteriously disappeared.  Apparently Yehudi likes peaches.

After I rest a bit, I'll post about all the other goodies I've made lately.

In The Garden - April 12

All of a sudden - Poof!- it's spring around here.  Everything's blooming, everything's growing and if it's not doing either, it's time to plant it or prune it!

There are dozens of these little pea plants.  They look so sturdy and green against the brown soil.  Can't wait until they start producing those yummy peas!

My very disappointing asparagus bed.  With about 50 square feet of asparagus bed, I'd hoped for more than 3 spears at a time.  Grrr.

Looks silly, I know, but this method has been working pretty well for the last  couple of years.  After laying the beet and carrot seeds in the bottom of an appropriately deep trench, I fill the trench with sand.  The sand doesn't crust over like our soil does so that the seedlings don't struggle to come through.  I still add a few radish seeds to each row to help mark the row and because I like having a few radishes at a time.

This is a good news, bad news, pic.  In the foreground is the incredibly productive Italian soft-neck garlic that I planted last fall.  Every single clove produced a plant.  They're growing great and will be an awesome addition to my salsa and tomato products.  The bad news is the elephant garlic that is fizzling in the middle of the bed.  I planted 12 cloves and only two came up.  That is really disappointing.  Behind them are the onion seedlings that I bought at Lambert Floral last week.  They have the best onions! 

My 'Rutgers' tomatoes are staying warm and cozy in their walls o'water.  The temps have dipped to 28 since I planted the tomatoes, but they didn't even notice the cold.  I also added two 'Early Girl' tomato plants (again from Lambert) to the bed.  Those will be my own 'put tomatoes on everything' crop.

Close up of the Korean spice bush.  So beautiful and sooooo fragrant!

The Korean spice bush in all its spring glory.  The fragrance fills the back yard.  I've even caught Peri sniffing the flowers.  lol. 

We had an unusual 'snow' storm yesterday.  All these petals on the deck in the back yard came from the Callery pear tree in the front yard.  The air was thick with the petals, a kind of sweet spring blizzard.  The street in front of the house is covered as are the sidewalks, lawn and cars.

I Looked Out My Window - 2012

Arriving a little earlier than last year...

 Popcorn!

 

Popping!

on my apricot tree.  We pruned the tree hard after last year's harvest, so there aren't as many blooms as last year, but there are still plenty of them.  Mike helped me get the dormant oil spray on the trees just a few days before the first blooms opened.  Whew!  That was close!

Baby Salsa II or In The Garden - January 28

Winter has finally come to Utah, but my garden is growing pretty well all the same.  I posted about my newborn tomato plants on January 17.  They've done much growing since then.  They've developed their first set of new leaves and today, were ready to each move out of the nursery pot and into their own home.

Getting pretty crowded in there!  Only eight of the eleven plants that originally sprouted were really worthy to move on to bigger pots.  The best of the best, as it were.  After scrubbing and bleaching the four-packs that I'd saved from last year, I moved the little plants, one by one, into fresh soil in a four-pack.  That step always makes me a bit nervous as there is so much that can go wrong.  Crushing or bruising the stem can  kill a plant that tiny.  Fortunately, I think all of them made it this time.  *crosses fingers*

Here they are, getting used to their new digs, so to speak.  I will probably need to repot them into bigger pots at least once, perhaps twice, before they go out into the garden in Walls O' Water around April 1.

While I had the potting soil out, I started Genovese basil, tomatillos, and a small, ornamental grass called Lagurus ovatus.  I'm hoping to use it in the barrels and pots instead of buying the expensive, already grown versions.

I've got the heat mat plugged in so that the seeds will germinate a bit faster.  It also seems to help the growth of the little starts at this early stage.  I moved the lights up out of the way so that I could get a photo, but usually the lights hang about an inch above the little leaves.

Baby Salsa

Have you ever wondered what newborn salsa looks like?  lol.  Probably something like this...

This is actually 11 newly germinated 'Rutgers' tomato plants.  After some extensive research online as to the best variety of tomato for home canning, I found that 'Rutgers' appeared on virtually every list.  And it was the only one that had such universal popularity.  So, although I rarely try to be with the 'in crowd', I'm going with the popular tomato as over 25 canners can't all be wrong.  Right?

And for the sake of full disclosure, I really did say that "no one needs ten tomato plants" back in August.  At the time, I believed it with all my heart.  That was before I tasted homemade catsup.  Now, I'm addicted.  The only way to have homemade catsup without a (expensive) visit to the farmer's market is to have about ten tomato plants in full production.  So, I'm eating my words.  With catsup on them. 

In The Garden - January 2

Even though the high temperatures this week have been record-breaking 50s, it's still much to cold to be planting outside.  However, it is the perfect time to be starting plants inside!  And I'm ready:

My seed order from Pinetree seeds arrived this week.  As always, I'm so impressed with their customer service.  My order was in my hands just three days from ordering all the way from Maine.  These are all the seeds I plan to plant this year ( I think).  Only about half of them need to be started early indoors.  And I'll be starting the first ones tomorrow now that I have the equipment cleaned up.

I scrubbed all the flats and pots with a brush and then soaked them in a bleach solution to kill any fungus that might affect the plant growth.  Yesterday, Mike and I stopped at Home Depot and bought seed starting mix and some peat pots for some of the finicky seedlings. 

Tomato seedlings take a while to get to optimum size for setting out so they're first on the list.  Then I'll be starting seeds every week or so until early summer.

Salsa Verde - ish

I think I've finally finished the canning for 2011!

This is a batch of salsa verde, made with tomatillos and peppers grown in our garden.  Yes, I realize that salsa verde is supposed to be all green.  I tried. I really tried.  But while I was waiting for the tomatillos to finally ripen a large enough crop to make the salsa, the jalapenos and serranos turned red.  So my salsa is 'verde-ish'.  lol  It's also pretty dang hot as most hot peppers get hotter as they ripen.  Gonna need some help eating all of this as the gringos around here aren't going to want much of it!

Message To Myself

I picked tomatoes for salsa today.  I realized that no one needs ten 'Celebrity' tomato plants.  Nobody.

harvest from one plant

Remember this next year when you plan the garden.  Thank you.

Agastache Obsession

It appears that I have developed a full-blown agastache obsession.  Five years ago, I purchased this variety and the rest, as they say, is history...

Silvery, soft foliage, licorice scent, bi-colored flowers, ability to attract hordes of bees and hummingbirds -  what's not to like!  This was my only agastache resident for a few years and then, I discovered Deseret Nursery in Salt Lake City.  He apparently has an agastache obsession, too, as every time I visit, he's got a new variety.  So I began collecting.

Actually has periwinkle blue flowers

I have three more plants but they aren't blooming at the moment.

So far, I've learned that all agastache have that fantastical hummingbird attracting quality.  And they're all quite drought tolerant once established.  Also, I haven't lost one yet over the winter (knock on wood.)

Last, but not least, there is some debate about the pronunciation of 'agastache'.  Some seem to prefer a version that rhymes with 'mustache'.  I personally prefer 'a-gas-tacky' mostly because I love the look in salespeople's eyes at nursery's when I say that.  lol.

Presto Change-o

I've blogged before about the pleasures of having a garden.  In spite of the fact that I complain A LOT about the amount of work a garden entails, the pleasures are many and often delightful.  Take today, for instance.  I went from this...

...to this...

...to this...

 
in less than an hour. Yummmmm, apple crisp.  I did have to wait another hour for it to cool off to get a taste.  It was worth the wait. 

I'm Done

Planting, that is.  It'll be quite a while before it's all harvested, but the garden is as planted as it's going to get this year.  We planted the last crops of beets, carrots, lettuce and next year's garlic yesterday.

Coffey Garden 2011

It's quite a sight.  Overwhelming a bit, when I realize that I have to eat and/or process all that food.  The light-colored rows are plantings that I covered with sand to prevent the native soil from crusting.  Also helps to know 'exactly' where I put those carrot and beet seeds.  The sunflower on the right is about ten feet tall.  It's a volunteer and, apparently, a mutant.  I'm looking forward to seeing it bloom.

The only real disappointment this year, garden-wise, is the pepper crop.  I planted bells and hot peppers and all of them have been, well, wimpy.  I think it's probably due to the cooler than usual weather that we've had this summer.  I may end up having to purchase peppers at my favorite Mexican market to bring the salsa up to its anticipated hotness.  Oh, and, ignore any weeds that you see.  I weed every *&$@ day, but they are relentless.  *sighs*  Adam's curse is fully evident in my garden.

A row of butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii) forms a hedge of sorts along the back of the garden.  They have been great at attracting pollinators into the garden to increase the vegetable pollination rates.  The flowers are particularly lovely this year:

Currant News

Although I've already posted about my currant-juice-making adventures (here), I want to update as to the quantity of the finished product.  This year, I bottled 20 pints of strawberry currant juice total.  Last year, we ended  up with 12 pints so this year's harvest was substantially larger.  And that's including the few pounds of currants that the grandkids ate during a recent visit.  lol.  Normally those berries are waaaaay to tart to eat plain, but the berries were also larger and sweeter than in past years.

So to recap, this year's currant harvest was bigger, sweeter, later and juicier than in years past.  *insert big grin smiley here*

Salsa

Ever wonder what salsa looks like when it's first planted?

I planted ten of these little fellas today.  They're actually Celebrity tomatoes, the basis for my favorite salsa recipe.  And since it's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow (it is General Conference weekend, after all)...

...I gave them all a warm winter coat to wear until mid-May.  And yes, there are actually 12 plants hiding in there.  I also planted two Early Girl tomato plants so that I will have tomatoes to eat every day for lunch.  I can't wait for those poky Celebrity plants to get my fresh tomato fix.

I Looked Out My Window...

...finally.  Yesterday, there was one open bloom.  Today, there are a few hundred, literally.  This tree has bloomed as early as late February in previous years, so this is really late.  I was beginning to wonder!  And too bad I can't post pics with sound.  The whole tree is humming.  Although you can't see them in the picture, there were dozens of pollinators working their craft on the blooms.  Anybody want an apricot???  I think I'll have a few extra.  lol.

In The Garden - March 12

Perfect day for some work in the garden!  I found some signs of life.  A pansy just beginning to bloom...

A crocus...

Time to attempt to regain control of the orchard.  This supposedly dwarf apple tree has been giving me fits for a couple of years.  Last year, I gave it a severe pruning to completely reshape and resize it.  It retaliated by producing only two apples.  This year, I gave it a renewal pruning to get it ready for fruit production.  I'm hoping for a few more apples this year.  lol!

I also pruned the two peaches and did a little work on the apricot tree.  I usually do the heavy pruning on it after I harvest the apricots.  If we manage to dodge a late last frost, we may have enough apricots to make jam for the entire neighborhood on that tree.

One of my favorite spring projects every year is pruning the grape vines.  I feel a bit like Michelangelo as I remove all the parts of the vine that don't look like a productive plant.

The vine on the left is a Niagara white juice grape.  It is easily the most obedient and easy to care for grape vine that I have experience with.  The finished pruning job always looks just like the pictures in my pruning textbook.  It produces by the book, too.  Most years, it produces quarts and quarts of the yummiest grape juice.

The vine on the right is a Canadice pink table grape.  While it produces a very yummy seedless pink grape, the vines are just crazy.  Most years, all the growth will be on one side of the plant.  Pruning is difficult because the whole vine is lopsided.  It's the grandkids favorite grape, though, so I coax it into shape and usually it will cooperate by providing enough grapes to give each child a bellyache from eating too many at least once per summer.  lol.

In The Garden - March 2

All the new seedlings are up...except for the spinach. Figures, since it's the one I'm most anxious to EAT!  Actually, the spinach always seems to take longer to germinate, so I'm not terribly surprised.  I am amazed at how quickly everything else has sprouted.  They were all up, out of the soil, yesterday, but I didn't get around to removing the plastic bags until today.  I forgot just how well that heat mat works!

In The Garden - February 26

Even though the ground around here is covered with about three inches of snow, I started planting my garden today!  It's time to begin planting all the cold-tolerant yummy things like spinach, chard, lettuce and kohlrabi.

The planting process is pretty simple.  I plant the seeds in small pots where they'll stay until they have their first set of true leaves.  Then, I'll move them into bigger pots where they'll live until they go into the garden proper.  In practice though, the process takes quite a while as everything needs to be completely clean and sanitized to prevent the damping-off fungus that can kill little seedlings.  So, I spent about an hour scrubbing old pots with a brush and then soaking them in a bleach solution to kill any lurking fungus.

After labeling each pot, I filled it with dampened seed-starting mix (contains no fertilizers) and planted the seeds at their preferred depth.  I put each pot into a clear plastic bag to keep the moisture at a constant level and moved them down to the basement to live on a heat mat, under the plant lights.

This batch of seedlings will be able to move out into the garden in early April.  I'll start additional spinach, lettuce and kohlrabi in about a month so that I have a long harvest of those yummy vegetables.  (Truth is, I'm afraid that I'm going to starve to death before I can begin harvesting that spinach again.  I simply can't afford to buy as much spinach as I would like to eat!)

I'll start the more tender plants such as herbs, zinnias, and morning glory in a few weeks.  I haven't grown my own tomato and pepper plants in many years as I have been soooo pleased with the plants that I get at Lambert Floral.  I usually make my first spring pilgrimage there in early April for the tomatoes that I'm also waiting hungrily for.

Big Job = Big Taste

Although today was the first time that I've ever canned chili sauce myself, I have had a long time love for it.  No, not the store-bought stuff with HFCS 'corn sugar' in it.  The lovely homemade tomatoey, spicy, sweet kind of chili sauce is what I'm talkin' 'bout! 

Over the years, I've tasted many people's version of this condiment.  Some were really awesome (thanks, Aunt Mary!) and some were pretty awful (names deleted to protect the innocent.)  I knew what I wanted my chili sauce to taste like and finally found a recipe that looked like it might work in the Ball Big Book.

After a trip to the Farmer's Market for tomates, I was able to harvest pretty much all the rest of the vegetables needed from the garden.  My one change to the recipe involved a jalapeno pepper.  I just couldn't figure out how a cook could call her finished product 'chili sauce' if it had absolutely no chiles in it.  So, I added one to give it a teeny, tiny little kick. 

Three and a half hours later, I was finished.  Holy cow, that took longer than the peach pie filling that I've previously whined about!  I ended up with 7 and 3/4 pints.  Since my canner only holds 7 pints at a time, that meant that I had to sacrifice and begin eating the 3/4 pint immediately.  Sam was good enough to help me out.  We ate one bowl full on tortilla chips.  Yum, yum, yum.  Then we put it on our cheeseburgers instead of catsup.  OMGosh!  It was lucious.  I'm going to really enjoy the fruits of my labors, but I don't think I'll be making another batch until next year.  I'm pooped!

Peachy Keen Redux

Whew!  I feel like I had a walk on the wild side.  The peachy wild side, that is.  I checked the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving out of the library.  Got sucked in immediately.  lol!  So many 'I gotta try this' recipes in there.  Anyway, I quickly discovered that I had all the ingredients on hand to make several recipes.  My first new recipe was Peach Barbeque Sauce...

The batch was exactly four pints, so I only got a little taste, but it was yummy!  We're going to try it out tonight on oven-bbqed pork chops.

The next recipe I tried was peach salsa, one of the most beautiful salsas that I've ever seen...

Again, the batch was exactly four pints, so licking the spoon gave me my only taste.  It was good, but not as flavorful as the salsa that Carin and I made early in the summer, I don't think.  I'm going to need several (dozen) more tastes before I make up my mind.

Update:  Oh my heavens! For dinner, we had those bbq-ed pork chops that I mentioned earlier.  They were so delish!  The sauce turned out to be sweet and just a little spicy.  Woo Hoo!  I think I'm going to make another batch.

Peachy Keen

My cup runneth over.  With peaches, that is.  Between my little, baby peach tree and the full-grown monster peach tree, I'm estimating we have 3-4 bushels of peaches.  Since the freezer still contains much of last year's bounteous peach harvest, I've had to be creative.  Four batches of peach jam hardly made a dent in the crop.  So, I've been canning peach pie filling for the first time.

It's a labor-intensive process.  Many more steps than any thing I've ever canned.  The first couple of batches came out six quarts to the tablespoon so I didn't really get a taste of the finished product.  This last batch had about half a cup over six quarts so I've finally gotten a taste.  It's very good...will be even better when I'm not absolutely sick of looking at peaches...oh, say, February.

This is also my first canning project using the starch known as Clear Jel, or Thick Gel, as the brand I'm using is called.  That is some powerful stuff!  Think cornstarch on powerlifter steroids.  The first batch I made was so thick that I nearly broke a spoon stirring it.   I cut back on the amount by 1/2 cup in subsequent batches and that seems to be working much better.  I have a few other variations that I want to try as I work my way through mounds of peaches.  I'm going to try juicing some of the softer peaches, then use that juice instead of all lemon juice in the pie filling.  I should probably get around to making a pie out of this stuff, too, to make sure that it really does hold up through the baking process, too.  Pie anyone?!?