End of Garden

This is the end of our spring garden. There are still tomatoes out there, and plenty of onions and carrots, but we are turning off the water. It's time to mulch what's there, let it sit in the sun for a few weeks, and then plant the fall garden in mid-September. A little bit of watering will help break down the mulch faster so we don't turn the drip lines completely off.

Looking forward to fall planting. Need to decide what to put in the ground - probably broccoli, carrots, and peas.

Pizza Sauce

So today is another pizza sauce day. It's a time when the family revels in the smell of freshly picked onions and garlic roasting in olive oil, filling the house with a wonderful smell.

It started later than I had intended, picking 30 pounds of tomatoes in the garden this morning. Then pulling several large purple onions and collecting two bunches of garlic from the shed where they are curing. Finally, I plucked off two handfuls of fresh basil from a couple of plants we have growing in the flower garden.

See the ingredient photo below - tomatoes get washed, cut in half, and placed in a large stockpot. Garlic and onions go into another pot with a bit of olive oil to keep them from sticking. When the garlic starts to stick and the onions are translucent more of the tomatoes go into the pot and then it simmers for a half hour.

Then we press all the hot tomatoes, garlic, and onions through a food mill and return the sauce to both pots to boil down. The basil is finely chopped and added to the pots. Stir them every 20 minutes or so all afternoon while they boil and thicken. When the volume is reduced by half and you have a nice thick sauce it is time to load canning jars and process the mixture in a boiling water bath.

We do this on two Saturday's in June and have fresh pizza sauce for the rest of the year, or dipping sauce for breadsticks. The family loves it and it's one of those things the older children miss because they can't get anything like it at the store. How could they? Fresh from the garden and bottled the same day! It doesn't get better than that.

Bottling

We do a fair amount of bottling... Okay, we actually do what most people would consider A LOT of bottling. When the teenagers were in the house, a typical summer of bottling included 200 quarts of tomatoes, 30 quarts of salsa, and 20 pints of pizza sauce. One of our first home modifications was to build sturdy shelving in the closet under the stairway. You would be amazed at how many quart jars can fit in a small closet like that if there are shelves from floor to ceiling. We also bottle apples, peaches, apricot jam, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, apple sauce, green beans, dry beans, chicken, cubed beef, pickles, and grape juice. Most of the fruits and vegetables are grown in our back yard, although we have to buy some of the fruit when visiting relatives who live in a cooler climate.

The inspiration of this blog entry is to point out there are wonderful resources available for people who haven't bottled at home before. And for those who do have experience, there are new recipes to try. We used an old cookbook to start with, and wanted something more comprehensive that focused on bottling so found the Ball Blue Book. I don't mean to advertise for them, but they sell a very good book and it covers all the basics including dehydrating (make your own apricot fruit leather), pickling, water bath canning (tomatoes and jams), and pressure canning (meats and low acid foods). It also lists the equipment you need and explains how to use it. It is an excellent resource.

It is an investment to get the equipment together so you might want to borrow or work with a friend who bottles to see if  you really want to do it. I recommend starting with water bath canning and something simple like tomatoes or jam. People who lecture on storing food say it actually costs more to bottle your own, so the only reason to do it is because you get superior flavors. I would add that you also have the comfort of knowing how to store and cook foods from basic ingredients. This is becoming a lost art in our age of zipping off to the store for every little thing. I personally find great satisfaction in growing food and preserving it, plus we know exactly what the ingredients are. Now that we have children living in other states, it has been very rewarding to have them call and say they miss home made bread, or salsa, or pizza sauce, or they wish they could find tomatoes in a can that taste as good as the ones we grew at home and bottled. I would rather hear that than have them lament they can't find the same kind of frozen waffle with the freezer burned taste...

Sorry, no offense to those who purchase everything and don't have a garden. I am biased and I admit it. For me there is something magical about planting, growing, and harvesting things in the garden. Learning to preserve those foods is a natural next step and has become part of our family heritage and skillset.

Garlic Harvest

Continuing with the garlic theme, although this will be the last post until it's time to plant again. We'll have grapes to talk about soon. We harvested each of the four types of garlic, pickled some that day, and tied the rest in bundles in the tool shed to cure. This picture was taken the day we harvested.

After hanging like this for two weeks, the tops are mostly brown but still not completely dry. Another week or two should do it. We made pizza sauce with tomatoes and onions from the garden yesterday, along with two bunches of this garlic roasted in olive oil, and a bit of fresh basil. It made the best pizza sauce we have ever bottled! We also bottled a batch of salsa last week using the fresh garlic, onions, and tomatoes. We did have to purchase peppers this year but that was it.

We grew four varieties of garlic. In the background of the picture (click on it for a larger view) is regular garlic we actually purchased at the grocery store last fall and planted. On the left is elephant garlic, which isn't really a garlic at all but more like a leek with a large clove. On the right are two varieties of garlic from Germany and Italy. One is extra hardy and the other is supposed to have a hot flavor (salsa anyone??). These last two did not grow as large as the others so we're saving them and will re-plant early this fall to see if they do better. One last thing - the little tan nodes on the elephant garlic are supposed to grow a single very large clove the first year, and then divide into a bunch the second year. I can't wait to plant these!

History of Garlic

Above are photos of a couple garlic cloves from the grocery store, which we planted in a row next to the roses last fall. First, you break the bunches into individual cloves, then plant these a few inches apart in a shallow trench. No additional care was provided other than watering the roses next to them.

Harvest day. I included two planting day photos in this collage, a couple of them growing, and the newly harvested garlic. When the tops start to brown they are ready. Dig them up, wash them off, and let them dry for a couple of weeks before trimming off the tops and roots and then you have garlic. It's essentially free, easy to do, and if you don't want to wait for mature garlic you can harvest some early and use for cooking even before they start to form cloves. We tried pickling some this year as well (because I planted much more garlic than what is shown in these photo collages) and will report on that later. I will say it was a lot of work peeling individual cloves to make 12 cups of garlic for the recipe.

Perfect morning

I took the day off and went into the garden to pick tomatoes this morning. It was perfectly cool, and I heard the loud buzz of that special bee that pollinates tomato flowers. People who sleep in or don't venture outside until 9-10 in the morning miss a wonderful, inspiring time.

Full Garden

The garden is in full swing, and we are enjoying the flower beds planted last fall. One thing about gardens is they teach the law of the harvest - if you don't invest the time and planning in advance there is no harvest or flowers to enjoy. The trellis is new this year and replaces one that had lost the battle of the Arizona sun. It serves as a gateway into the vegetable garden. We also moved the Tangelo tree seen on the right of the photo. This was a major undertaking and only time will tell if it was worth the effort to move such an old tree.

We are enjoying carrots, beans, zucchini, garlic, onions, and tomatoes from the garden. The peas have come and gone already this year. The garlic is mature and I need to learn how to harvest it properly. It requires a couple of weeks to dry them and the apparent rule of thumb is that when the bottom third of the leaves are dry its harvest time. Pull them, shake of the dirt, let them dry in a cool place for about two weeks, trim off the roots and dried tops and you have your own garlic. We've been eating it fresh now for months. The ones we don't pull will divide and grow again in the fall producing next year's crop. It has been so fun and easy growing garlic and onions this way, and now we are spoiled because they are always available and we never buy any at the store.