With a hard freeze on the horizon, I spent much of the weekend preparing the garden for the cold and harvesting vegetables for the root cellar. Although my beets may have survived the freeze, I opted to lift them out of the ground - after all, the sooner I prepare my garden for winter, the sooner I can move on to my favorite winter activity: knitting. When you pull 70 or so beets out of the ground, you end up with a LOT of beet greens. I have written previously about vegetable storage in a root cellar, and intend to store my beets with these methods. This blog post will show you how to preserve beet greens for winter eating. How to Preserve Beet Greens The first step in preserving beet … [Read more...]
How to Grow, Harvest, Cure, and Store Sweet Potatoes
Over the past few years, my gardening efforts have shifted from growing a bit of everything to growing what does best in my climate and what actually fills the bellies of my family. That has meant fewer melons and more potatoes; only one trellis of cucumbers and three beds of winter squash. And because they are incredibly easy to grow in our zone 5b garden, lots and lots of sweet potatoes. In this post I'll share how to grow, harvest, cure and store sweet potatoes to enjoy all winter long! How to Grow Sweet Potatoes Sweet potatoes mature in 90-170 days, so a long growing season is essential to your crop's success. Sweet potatoes are planted using sprouts called "slips" which you can … [Read more...]
Four Ways to Preserve Green Beans
Even as summer draws to a close, our late season crops continue to produce amazing harvests. After a few soaking rains, I simply can't keep up with my pole beans! We plant the variety Blue Lake Pole Bean and use a cattle panel trellis to support the growth. Because we love fresh green beans (our favorite recipe is a simple sauté with sesame oil, soy sauce, and sesame seeds) we eat most of our harvest fresh from the garden. However, we try to preserve green beans for winter enjoyment with at least one of the following methods: canning, freezing, dehydrating, or fermenting. Four Ways to Preserve Green Beans Harvest Festival: Preserving Tomatoes, Green Beans, & Peppers Preserving … [Read more...]
How to Hang Onions for Storage
Many years ago, a friend taught me her method of hanging onions for storage. I tried it right away, and was hooked! This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to hang onions, because it only uses a rope, and the onions themselves. What I love most about this method is that you can easily see each and every onion, so you can keep track of any that are rotting. That is much more difficult when your onions are stored several layers deep in a basket! Before hanging, you'll want to make sure your onions are fully cured - I like to lay mine out in a shaded, covered, but well-ventilated location for two weeks or so, until the outer skins are papery and the stalks are fully dry. When you're … [Read more...]
How to Make Sauerkraut
One of the easiest fermented foods to make at home is sauerkraut. With only two ingredients - salt and cabbage - it's hard to get wrong, and the results are so delicious that you'll want to make it again and again. Check out this tutorial on how to make sauerkraut, and once you've mastered the basic recipe, try adding new vegetables, spices or herbs to make a more sassy flavored kraut. How to Make Lacto-Fermented Sauerkraut 1) Start with the freshest cabbage you can find. Green or red head cabbage is perfect, but you can also use Napa cabbage. 2) Slice, grate, or food process your cabbage of choice. I like my sauerkraut on the chunkier side, so I use a knife to coarsely chop the … [Read more...]
Homestead Meat Curing
This summer we raised a pig for meat. Actually, we co-raised three pigs with our neighbors, housing the pigs at their farm, and sharing in the cost and labor. Raised on pasture in the sunshine and fed with 100% non-GMO feed and lots of organic food scraps and whey from Creme Brulee, they became the most amazingly delicious pork chops and sausages. But the real excitement of raising pigs has been curing our own bacon, jowls, salami, lardo, and prosciutto. When we lived in Oregon we raised pigs two years in a row, keeping one pig for ourselves, and selling the others to friends. With our share of the meat, we enjoyed sausage links, roasts, bacon, and even some outstanding salami, which, … [Read more...]
Five Foods to Store for Winter
Stocking up on storage crops in the late summer and early fall, and storing them for winter eating is a great way to get local, organic food at a lower cost and higher quality than what you might find in supermarkets. In addition to growing many storage crops in our garden, we like to visit our CSA farmer and local orchards in October or November and come home with enough vegetables and fruit to last us through much of the early winter. In the Autumn months, food becomes our primary home interior decoration! Squash sits on top of any available surface, garlic and onions hang from the wall in long chains or braids, and sweet potatoes are piled in boxes under our bed (the coolest spot in … [Read more...]
Preserving Eggplants for Winter Eating
Do you love eggplants as much as I do? They are such a seasonal food, only available in the hottest of summer months, and taste delicious in so many ways - in curries, roasted, grilled, and mixed up in dips and spreads. They are also a crop that does very well here in NE Missouri. They thrive in the hot, humid summers, and even better, our local CSA farmer has a HUGE crop each summer. I grow them in our garden, and also buy dozens of large eggplants to preserve for winter. Here's how: Grill them up! Simply light your grill as usual and place the eggplant, skin on, on the grill. Check on them frequently, and turn as needed. The goal is to actually blacken the eggplant skin and turn the … [Read more...]
How to Harvest and Preserve Persimmons
Persimmons are one of my favorite fall fruits, perhaps because they as such a special, seasonal treat. I know many people are put off by the astringency or chalkiness of persimmons, but here's the deal: a truly ripe persimmon is neither astringent nor chalky, just sweet, smooth, mellow, and delicious. The key is to eating them when they are really, really ripe! In this post, I'll share how to harvest and preserve persimmons for winter eating. The Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and lower Midwest states are blessed with the native American Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, whose genus means "fruit of the gods". They are smaller than the Asian persimmons that you often see sold at natural food … [Read more...]