The End of Summer: Harvesting and Canning

Pasta with homemade pesto & homegrown parsley & tomatoes

Yesterday I took the last big batch of basil that I had harvested from my kitchen garden and whipped up some pesto. I had meant to freeze some of the pesto in ice trays but then couldn't find the ice trays because they had been stored somewhere I can't recall when we had the kitchen remodeled this summer. My son-in-law, whose recipe for pesto I mostly followed, freezes his pesto in a small jar to use as needed. For last night's dinner, I mixed the fresh pesto with warm pasta, Sungold tomatoes and parsley that I had gathered that day in the big garden and in my kitchen garden. What a yummy dish that was.

Adam adds arugula to his pesto, and I have done that, too, as well as making an all-arugula pesto. The last time I made arugula pesto, however, the pesto was so bitter that I threw it out. Perhaps the leaves had been too old and tough, or maybe I need to do what Adam does: include a small portion  of arugula and a larger portion of basil in the recipe (Adam also substitutes spinach for the smaller portion of arugula).

What is the best thing about gardening? Is it the winter planning, the leafing through gardening catalogs or, these days, scrolling online through gardening and seed source websites?  Is it watching those first seedlings magically appear? Or going out every morning to check on the ripeness of tomatoes? Or is it harvesting the produce, eating it fresh, or canning it for later?

This past weekend, in the middle of tomato canning, Tom said, "I love doing this!" The tomato canning continues over weeks as tomatoes ripen on the vines in the big garden and in the greenhouse. We grew a lot of yellow tomatoes this summer (Lemon Boy, Golden Jubilee, Big Rainbow) that Tom canned separately from the red tomatoes.

On the left, Tom's canned tomatoes; on the right, his canned beets

After we returned from our daughter's wedding in Georgia, I gathered grapes from the large vine that we've trained to grow on the chain-link walls of my Secret Garden room (a dog kennel left by the previous owners that I decorated as an outdoor room). Birds had eaten quite a few of the grapes--I often startled a juvenile robin among the grape vines this summer--but there were enough grapes left for sixteen half-pints of what I labelled our Lavender Blue Grape Jelly. I suggested to Tom that he add some lavender blooms from my kitchen garden to flavor the jelly.

a bunch of grapes on our grapevine

more grapes than apples this year (late freeze killed the apple blossoms)

Here at the foot of the White Mountains, an early freeze can take out a garden with tomatoes still green on the vine. Several days ago we had a couple of nights of predicted freezing temperatures, so I gathered all the peppers and many of the tomatoes, leaving a lot of green tomatoes, hoping that temperatures wouldn't drop so low as to kill the vines completely. We are still in the process of freezing and drying the bumper crop of poblano peppers. Tom has put to good use the dehydrator I bought for him a few months ago.

an anxious harvest before a freeze

a tomato galette I made with Sungold and Indigo Ruby tomatoes

My aunt Lynelle Sikora suggested that I make chow chow out of the green tomatoes, so we did a test run of a small batch this past weekend.  I knew I liked chow chow as I had grown up eating it as a side dish, but I wanted to make sure that we both liked it well enough to make several pints instead of a few half-pints. The end result was tasty, so I have decided to can more of the sweet tomato relish this week.

The tomato mix (green tomatoes, red and green peppers, onion, pickling and canning salt) stands in the fridge overnight. Then the mixture is drained before cooking it with spices.

green tomato relish mix cooking in the spices (light brown sugar, yellow mustard seeds, whole cloves, minced garlic, celery seed, red pepper flakes--I used three red peppers from my kitchen garden rather than dried pepper flakes)

a small batch of chow chow

After the next round or two of tomato canning, it will be time to clear the garden in preparation for next year. I will then clean out the chicken pen, raking up all the straw, chicken crap, and vegetable matter remaining from the scraps I and my neighbor have thrown to the chickens this summer. I'll fill up a wheelbarrow with the yard waste as well as the waste from inside the henhouse and spread it all on the garden. Winter's snow will pack it down, and in the spring, Tom and I will dig the composted chicken waste into the soil to feed another summer garden.

I still have a few herbs I hope to dry for the winter, and then my gardening for this year will be done. But our firewood gathering for the winter has just begun.

Distraction #3, Gardening and Canning: How I've kept from getting too depressed during the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Cassie at the greenhouse door

I should have noted in the past two posts that these techniques to avoid depression during a more-than-usually contentious presidential campaign are ones that work for me; other people will have their own ways of coping. What I'm promoting here is the need to step away from the 24-hour news cycle, whether one accesses it on the Internet or cable television, to maintain one's equilibrium during these divisive times. I am also referring to depression as a general feeling of powerlessness and sadness in response to the focus on hatefulness in the news. Do we really need another conspiracy theory to rile up a mob of voters? Can we stand another video of so-called patriots screaming "Lock her up," suggesting that it's a good idea to prosecute one's political opponents? 

Those of us committed to facts, logic, and spirited but thoughtful and respectful debate have been bombarded with headlines throughout this campaign season that suggest our commitment is a delusion. Sometimes I think that if I hear or read one more "opinion" with no supporting evidence, I'll scream. But then I head to the garden to gather produce or just to look at the plants still surviving here in late fall. Fortunately, the presidential campaign will be over by winter and the first snow.

I find solace in a garden. Part of that comes from the heavy work early in the season; nothing quite pulls one's focus away from a spiral of worries than good, physical labor. Then there is the magic of germination; I never fail to be surprised every year as those hard, tiny seeds I planted break apart and push that first bit of green above the soil. Plucking the spring greens or gathering the first tomato is occasion for celebration. Who can be sad in a garden?

Our first full summer of gardening in Arizona brought us more bounty than we expected. Since Tom re-purposed an old chicken house into a greenhouse in which we planted tomatoes and peppers, our tomatoes there were turning ripe long before those in the larger, open garden. And we still have tomatoes blooming and producing here in mid-October, Sungolds in the outside garden, Celebrities, Sungolds, and even Black Krim in the greenhouse.

I have described in earlier posts some of our Arizona gardening experiences--here, here, here, and here--so there is no need to reprise those. We ate well from our garden this year, and then we began canning our produce for later consumption, learning as we went. 

preparing to make and can apple chutney

Tom started first on the tomatoes; he canned a total of about 53 pints. Then we began canning the apples from our apple trees; we had so many that we shared boxes of apples with neighbors. I first tried an apple chutney recipe. Tom began with apple sauce and then apple jam, discovering after the first batch of jam that we should pulse the apple pieces in a food processor for a prettier jam. With apple slices, apple jam, apple chutney, apple sauce, Red Hot apple jelly, and apple-serrano-pepper jelly, we have enough canned apple products to share over and over again.

canned apple slices

apple jam

draining apple juice for jelly

apple-serrano pepper jelly

When the first snows manage to get above the mountains and  settle into the dryer Round Valley, we will still be eating tomatoes from our garden, in soups and salsas; spreading jam and jelly from our apples on our morning toast; making apple pie from apple slices we canned; topping our ice cream with apple sauce and adding the sauce to recipes for muffins and pancakes. When the 44th President of the United States moves out of the White House and the 45th is sworn in, we will be enjoying the sweetness of our summer garden--and forgetting, I hope, the bitterness of that same summer's presidential campaign.

our summer canning

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: 'It is simply a matter,' he explained to April, 'of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.'

--Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol, 4: Season of Mists

Cooler Days for Gardening

tiny bee on a globe mallow in our front yard

After an out-of-state, nine-day trip, we've almost put away all the stuff we had packed for our travels though the tent that we used in an overnight camping adventure in the Cascade Mountains of Washington still sits crumpled on a chair in our study. When we returned to Arizona, early fall seemed to have arrived. The wildflowers in our yard were blooming prolifically, temperatures hovered in the fifties at night, and with the windows open at night we could hear elk bugling in the nearby mountains. 

Globe mallow, a native plant, growing in our front yard

While we were gone, one of our neighbors picked the ripening vegetables in our garden and the apples that fell from our trees and canned salsa, spaghetti sauce, and apple butter. Tom got busy the first weekend we were home and canned more tomatoes--35 pints total for the season so far. And this week, I have been cleaning up the garden and planting seeds that I hope will have time to germinate, grow, and produce before the first freeze. I should have planted the seeds --two kinds of arugula, a spicy mustard mix, Crimson Crunch radishes, a mesclun mix--mid-August, but I didn't free up any room for fall planting until I dug the potatoes. Then Tom transplanted onions into two of those rows. But when we returned from Washington state, I cleared out the cowpen daisies that were past their bloom, and Tom pulled up a couple of dead tomato plants. Gardening here is an experiment for us, anyway, and we can always blame any failures on our being newcomers and unfamiliar with the climate.

Yesterday I spent all afternoon making salsa from tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro from our garden. I'm a slow worker when it comes to cooking anything more than dinner. I'll chop up some vegetables, take a break and read some headline news on my computer, return to chop up more vegetables, take a break to check on the garden, and return to the work at hand. That's why it took me all afternoon. Also, I simmered the salsa for 75 minutes to get it to the right consistency. 

salsa ingredients from our garden, serrano peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro

And after all that work, I got only 6 pints of salsa (we ate one pint already) out of about 12 tomatoes. I am freezer-canning the salsa rather than pressure canning and hope to can some more salsa as tomatoes continue to ripen in our garden and greenhouse.

Salsa simmering on the stove

five little half-pints of salsa for the freezer

This morning I took the cats out for a brief romp in the yard before their second breakfast. (We space out small meals throughout the day; Tom feeds them first around 4 AM.) Taking them out before meals makes it easier to call them inside.

Sunlight and shadow--cats getting their morning yard time

Cassie in the daisy fleabane flowers that haven't opened yet for the day

While the cats sniffed around the yard, I wandered into the garden. The birdhouse gourd vines have covered the back fence, and several large gourds are ripening. Instructions I found online counsel harvesting the gourds after the stems turn brown, then gently washing and storing the gourds in a cool, dry place to cure. The stems of my gourds are still green, and I'm anxious that the gourds be ready to harvest before the first freeze so that they won't rot.

birdhouse gourds

more gourds

It was a beautiful early morning in the garden.

early morning in the garden at Casa Malpollos

Tomato plants escaping from the greenhouse; shadow of a neighbor's shed

A high wind yesterday blew apples from the apple trees

Not having grown apples before, we're not sure when they're ripe for harvesting. Our neighbor Gloria says after the first frost, but she has made apple butter with the ones that have fallen from our trees and says the apples are tart and a little sweet.

Morning after A Rain

Side yard with Secret Garden room--so green after the rain

According to the U.S. climate data website, the area where we live now gets an annual average of 11.82 inches of precipitation, with the highest monthly averages in July (2.44 inches) and August (3.03 inches), the "monsoon" months. What a difference between here and where we were two years ago, where the annual average of precipitation is 63.58 inches, with the highest monthly averages in January (5.75 inches) and July (6.65 inches). This past week, Louisiana received much more rain at once than usual: thirteen rivers broke flood records and thousands of homes were flooded in areas that had never flooded in human memory. One town received at least 31 inches of rain in 48 hours. That amount of precipitation here would probably cause mudslides on mountains.

Here in northern Arizona yesterday, rain began falling before noon and fell off and on most of the afternoon. I had just enough time to mow the side yard (leaving patches of wildflowers) and then to gather corn between rain showers. Then I spent a couple of hours shucking corn, cutting corn off the cob, and cooking the corn for dinner. 

Cutting corn off the cob--Tom planted an heirloom corn, Golden Bantam. I think we'll try a different one next year.

fresh corn cooking on the stove--I added milk, butter, a couple of serrano peppers from the garden, salt and pepper

Every morning the cats, especially Cassie, pester me to go outside, and this morning after the rain was no exception. The grass was still wet when we ventured out, and everything was clean and bright.

Side yard, with apple trees, Secret Garden room, greenhouse, and patches of wildflowers

apple ripening

morning glories and scarlet runner beans along the garden fence

cowpen daisies along the fence that separates our garden from our neighbors' garden

Peace

In her book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (which I read 20 years ago), Kathleen Norris quotes a saying of desert monks: "If a man settles in a certain place and does not bring forth the fruit of that place, the place itself casts him out."

I don't know what would be the "fruit" of the volcanic fields at the foot of the White Mountains on the Colorado Plateau, but in cultivating wild flowers and providing space for local pollinators, I guess I'm bringing forth the fruit of this place. And I'm adding fruit of my own in the gardens we grow--with what little rain a valley in a rain shadow can provide.

Lagniappe:

tomatoes fresh from our garden--more canning this weekend

Persey walks in the bright, wet grass

I took this photo of Cassie two days ago. The cats and I prowl our yard together.

Tom in the Kitchen

When I met Tom, we were fifteen years old. I had grown up in the country eating garden-fresh vegetables in-season and meat from grass-fed cattle that my father raised. Tom had most recently lived in Houston, and he had grown up eating tinned meat and store-canned vegetables. But he took to country cooking, and after we married, I quickly ceded to him a great deal of that cooking, cooking which has become more and more health-conscious as we've aged. Lately I've been having some fun cooking meals with fresh vegetables from our Arizona garden, my first tomato pie, a Mexican Pepper casserole with bell peppers from our garden, a squash casserole with squash and peppers from the garden. However, Tom does most of the canning, something he really enjoys. It's really ironic that I'm the one who grew up watching my mother and grandmothers can and freeze vegetables, yet Tom, whose mother never canned anything that I know of, is the one who does the canning now. 

Here's Tom in the kitchen, canning tomatoes that we're growing in our garden. Tomatoes don't ripen here as quickly as they do in the sunny South, so he tends to can only 4-5 pints at a time as we gather enough tomatoes to do so.

Tom even canned a pint of sungold tomatoes!

fresh tomatoes cooking on the stove

The results of Tom's latest canning

We live now at 7200 ft. above sea level, and Tom had to consult the Presto Cooker Canner booklet to get instructions on canning at a higher elevation. He became frustrated with the newest booklet which came with the pressure cooker we bought to replace our old one. The booklet was printed in China, and we're sure the pressure cooker was manufactured there, too, even though National Presto Industries, Inc., still has an Eau Claire, Wisconsin address. The instructions were a little confusing. Fortunately, we had kept the old Presto Cooker-Canner booklet, printed in the 1970s in Wisconsin. The instructions in that booklet on canning at high altitudes were very clear. Here is a sample below, with the most recent publication first.

Instructions for canning at elevation, most recent booklet

Presto Cooker instructions, printed in the 1970s

Add this experience to others we've had with crappy manufacturing from overseas. Hand saws Tom bought years ago are now made in China, and they're flimsy and unusable. Compare a hoe head bought 50 years ago to ones hanging on hooks in a Home Depot or Lowes today--a laughable comparison. Fortunately, Tom is a handy man to have around. Not only did he can tomatoes last weekend; he also replaced a hoe handle I had broken. Good man.