Pumpkins, not just for Halloween anymore...

This year was my first attempt to grow little pumpkins, the kind for pies. I used Sugar Pie seeds, and I have been very pleased with the result.They were everywhere, in various sizes but very plentiful, so what to do, what to do...I checked my Ball canning book since I am not an expert and it says pumpkin is not recommended for canning by the FDA because you cannot be sure of the internal temps, so I went with my old stand by, and froze them. Not whole but then this is what this is about =)

 

Wash your pumpkins off and remove the stems. Even with organic, it is wise to wash your items.

 Cut them in quarters with a sharp knife. Watch your fingers, these are a bit firm and you don't want to slip and cut your fingers. Not that I ever do that. Take a spoon and scoop out all the seeds inside and any extra fibrous tissue. Set the seeds aside (That will be another blog) and you have a beautiful pile of orange pumpkin!

I then take a large canning pot or one of your bigger kitchen pots. Put a large metal colander in the pot and fill it with water until it just hits the bottom holes of the colander. Mine fit right down in but if your is sitting a bit above the edge that is ok. You just need to be sure the pumpkin is covered to catch the steam. Put the lid on, or cover them with foil, what ever will keep them contained so they get all the steam.Get your water boiling and then turn it down to simmer. You want steam, not to boil everything dry.(check your water level from time to time) Steam anywhere from 30 -6o minutes (maybe a bit more) depending on the size of the pumpkin. Check after the first 30 minutes, a fork should slide easily through the flesh and skin. I know people also bake these in the oven to do this but I live in Arkansas, land of heat and eternal humidity and any day I don't have to turn my oven on is a good day.

Now to clean off the skin. If you are wise you will let them cool until you can handle them so you don't burn or firebrand your hands and fingers. Not that I have ever done that. It makes them much easier to scoop out and you can get it all rather than letting small chunk go because you just burned your finger prints off. Put it all into a large bowl or container until you get it all scooped out.

 

If it is still warm I wait a bit before I run it in the processor. There is nothing like ripping hot pumpkin shooting out of the feeder into your face to make a good day better. I only add a small amount to the processor, put the lid on and then begin to feed it down the feeder tube one or two chunks at a time, blend until it is all smooth and there you have it. Your own pumpkin for pies, bread, and whatever else you can dream up.

I have several recipes I use and so I measure mine out in recipe amounts, mark the amount on the bag, date it and then freeze them flat so they take up less room. They will be lighter in color than the canned store pumpkin but work just as well in any recipe.

Anytime, you can use your own garden product for your cooking is a good day in my books. 

Happy Gardening & eating all!

Netting, bugs and hand pollination

I live in the very hot, very bug populated south and have a LOT of trouble with squash bugs and vine borers. So to try to keep my squash longer and more bug free I keep a lot of netting on my plants.

If they can do their own thing like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage you are good to go. If they need the bees and pollination not so much. So you either need to let the bees in or you can do it your self. I discovered this last year and if you are new to gardening like I am this will be helpful.

Please bear in mind I am no expert,this is just what I have learned from research and experimentation.

 These pictures show you the female plants and flowers. The female will have the fruit at the back of the flowers. On squash they are very easy to see, because in general they are bigger than some like cantaloupes or cucumbers.You can see the center of the flowers has many little pistils as they are called (remember biology class, this is where I should have paid attention =). This is what needs to be pollinated

Here is a male flower, note the inside is a single little stamen and the back of the flower has nothing but the stem. 

I pull the flower part away from the center stamen and then just rub the pollen all over the center of the female flowers. You can usually see the pollen as it brushes off like dust and it helps me understand how it works for those little bees.You can also do this with a small paint brush and just pull the pollen up the sides and paint the inside of the female flower with it. You can usually do about 2 with one male. I prefer to use the flower itself, I have a lot and I can be sure and get lots of pollen where I want it. As a rule, I don't try this with cucumbers, or melons (although I have once or twice) because there are so many and they are so tiny I would be at it all day. 

This has proved to be very successful for me and I can keep a lot of the nasty bugs out of my squash. 

Happy Gardening all!

Oh the lovely tomato

So this year I have upped my tomato growing, lots more. I had enough to make 2 batches of salsa last year and this year I am want more, more ,more! =) So I have started approximately 42 little pods of plants, each has 3 or so plants in them. It gets really warm here in the summer so I started early.My little mini green house recycled provided some of the starters and the little cardboard thingy's from lowes did the rest.

 And they began to sprout. I love watching things grow.

And low and behold they got big, and very pretty looking! But now it was time to transplant! yeahh!!

So It was time to get everything ready. My mixture of magic to the left. 10-10-10 fertilizer, organic blood meal and bone meal and some Epsom salts. Which isn't really salt but magnesium sulphate, and you can garden OR bath with it. Awesome, a two for one.

So I throw handfuls of each item on the soil all over until it looks like a goodly amount. I don't measure just eye ball it. Then I take my trusty little 3 pronged hook, rake thing a ma jig and really mix it in and get the soil soft and loose at the same time.

This soil was a sandy top soil, 2 bags of garden soil and 2 bags of peet moss with some of our compost mixed in.

I put some of the cages in first. It helps me space them a a bit better, as I am a stuff it until can't take anymore kind of gal, and tomatoes need air and room as they are a bit of a diva and will get diseases if you are not a bit careful.This is the farthest apart I have ever planted my tomatoes and it goes against my stuff em in there grain, but it will be better for them!

 

Then I planted the tomatoes inside each little cage. Until I ran out of cages. Then I eyeballed it with the rest of them and will add new cages as soon as I get some more. There are better support systems out there but for now this will have to do.

 

 And then we water them. From underneath. Very important for tomatoes, as I said, they are a bit of a diva but don't tell them I said that. I want mine to give me lots of food =) You don't want dirt splashing on them, and unless you have sterilized soil, there will be some germs there. They take a while to grow and bring you fruit but when they do it will be worth it. keep them fed, water from time to time, they don't need a lot. I will keep you posted as they grow and what else you can do as they get bigger.

I will start more again in May for my fall planting. Like I said it is warm here and we have on average 240 growing days a year.It makes my gardener heart sing!

Happy gardening all.

Reduce, Reuse Recyle, how many times have we all heard that...

BUT it can be a great way to do things.

 Things can get very costly out there if you have to buy everything new so I asked 

a few friends and had a few ideas of my own I thought I would share with you.

Be a scrounger! Containers and plant starting trays can cost a bundle. I found 4 huge plant containers in someones big trash! They now house many of my herbs. Need to start seedlings? Save your egg containers. The cardboard ones are great and will decompose.All those plastic tubs your strawberries and cherry tomatoes come in, perfect mini greenhouses! (wash well first)

We had a lovely gazebo, then we had a snow storm, we no longer have a gazebo. We collected the poles and they will now become extra poles for my pole beans. The netting? It will be used to cover my plants like broccoli and cabbage to keep the moths out of them. Awesome!

What about an old pool that has been well used but no longer any good. We cut it up into flat pieces and used it to cover our wood pile and the raised boxes to keep weeds down between seasons.

Have an old wheelbarrow and fireplace liner? We did so it now keeps our wood stove ash nicely housed and covered through the winter until they can be used!

I also got some great ideas from my gardening group friends!

Gardening Jones offered these suggestions! Reuse cardboard boxes and corn stalks to cut down on weeds, use an old garden shovel for your house numbers, glass bottles work as mini cloches to get a jump in the season, her garden gate is the foot board from an old metal bed, a broken windmill lawn ornament supports vining crops, plastic milk jugs painted black help hold the heat in the mini greenhouse.

You can check out her blog here, It's great! Gardening Jones Blog

And my friend Jack Sisler offered these,

Use three or four layers of old newspapers with straw on top between their rows of sweetcorn and other vegetables to keep the weeds down. Can be tilled in prior to the next growing season. Toilet paper and paper roll tubes are used by many for seed starting. 

I hope these suggestions help or inspire you to try some of your own. Happy Gardening!!

Of seeds,soil and containers

I don't know about everyone else, but my goal with gardening is to not only grow my own food but to reduce, reuse and recycle. Since my husband has been out of work for several years and we live on a fixed income I do what I can to save a bit here and there.I do usually end up buying a few seed starter boxes but came across this idea from a friend of mine. I use old egg cartons as well and cover with saran wrap, but this is even better .

Our city does recycling but will not take the plastic strawberry container, tomatoes etc (even though they are marked 1) and so I have been saving them for years. I give goodies in them and gifts but still have alot! And guess what, they are perfect mini green houses. They have holes for drainage and lids to keep them warm until they sprout! I make sure they are clean. We don't want any germs in the soil. Fill them with a seed started soil, put in the seeds, (here it was sugar pumpkins and Marglobe tomatoes) spaced appropriately and cover with soil according to seed size, bigger seeds, more soil.Then water well.

 

I poked holes in the small black ones because they didn't have any for drainage. Put the covers on and label them. No matter how bright you think you are you will forget what is in each one (ask me how I know =) I used that tape with string in it borrowed from hubby, and a black marker, it dries and doesn't rub off and just stuck it on the side. Then I wrote everything down in my journal.

If you don't have one of these then you should. A page for each veggie will work unless you are very eloquent. I just write the kind of seed, the date I planted and how many and app days until germination.

Then when they pop up I jot it down as well and make of note of how they are growing. I will note once they are transplanted outside and then journal their progress, the weather and when they bear fruit and how much. 

This will help you in the years to follow with your planting, and amounts you may need. I would like to thank my good friend Jack for this idea as it had never occurred to me!

Happy gardening all!

So, I have been getting a lot of green beans since it has cooled off here for what passes as fall. We have had a bit of rain but most days it is still in the high 70's low 80's. It is much easier on the plants now and we have all our fall crops growing like mad!

So with the piles of green beans comes needing to store them so they can be eaten all winter. I know a lot of folks can them but I really prefer freezing them. I think they taste fresher. I may have to can them some day after the zombie apocalypse but for now while we still have power I will freeze them =) It's easy to do and fairly quick as well.

So get those beans in and give them a wash. Even though I grow my own with no pesticides, I wash them, you never know what little critters have been on them.

Trim the ends off where you picked them from the plant. I was trimming both but have decided to leave the free end on, save wasting beans.

 Get a pot of water boiling like crazy!

And drop them in the pot. They need to boil for 3 minutes so start counting from the time they start that boil again, which with my gas stove  only takes it a short time. Be sure and use the cut ends in your compost pile. No waste is the goal.!

3 minutes of boil time!

Take them out strain them and immediately dump them in a big bowl of ice cold water. Then leave them for 3 minutes again or until they are cold. This stops them cooking right away, so you don't have cooked mush when you get them out. I then line a cookie sheet with a bag and layer the beans in one layer on it.

Pop them in the freezer to freeze. I like doing it this way as it prevent them sticking in huge clumps and they break apart easily when you are getting them out to cook.

Mark your freezer bag, because no matter how brilliant your are you are not going to remember the exact date you did these =) I am lucky if I remember the century! Pop them in your deep freeze and enjoy. They taste so good and if you have extra's eat them fresh from the garden for lunch or dinner. They are really great that way!

Happy gardening!

Freezing Beans and not the furry ones either.

I love to garden and one of my newest finds is beans, not liked baked beans but green beans or string beans I guess. I did not have much success last year with them but this year they have come to life. And oneof the things I have discovered is, if it says pole beans, get a pole (the package usually says on the outside). They will produce much better =) Just a lesson learned on my part.

I pick my beans when they are about 5 inches long or longer or they start getting really fat but don't seem to be getting longer. Probably some weirdness to do with water and soil and something I hope to fix someday. I collected these over 2 days and wait until I have a bunch before blanching and freezing since it seems a wasted effort to do it for 4 beans. I don't want to leave them in the fridge for more than 2 days either so they won't get nasty.

 Have a large pot of water on the stove getting ready to boil. It will take a few minutes and you can trim your beans while it heats up.I cut the end off with a small paring knife, feel free to snap them with your fingers or whatever way is easiest for you. I am lazy and don't have a lot of extra time so I line them up evenly and cut several at a time. (read this to mean as many as I can get in my little paws at one time without messing up )

You will end up with a bunch of bitty ends which I throw in my compost bucket. and then you will have another lovely pile of trimmed beans ready for the hot water pot. Once it is boiling throw them in the water and cover them.

Boil for 3 minutes in the lovely hot pot. This helps get rid of bugs and anything else that might be residing in or on them and apparently helps with some enzymes of sort to keep them from getting nasty after freezing. You can look up the science of this if you wish. I just take them at their word. during this time have a large bowl or sink of really cold ice water ready for when your buzzer goes off. Once it does strain your beans and plot them immediately into the cold water. This stops the cooking process, since you don't want cooked beans until later, when you eat them.

Once they have cooled off, and you can feel them in the water to see, strain them again. I then put mine on cookie sheets I have lined with walmart sacks. I have found they stick to the plan sheets and using saran wrap was costing too much for my taste. I turn the walmart sack inside out, wipe it down and put them on in a single layer, like on the two trays above.

I then stick them in the freezer until they mostly frozen , I guess an hour or a bit more. Then take them out. They come off the lining really easily, just pick it up by the edges and they slide right off.

Now to put them in your freezer bags and feel successful one more time =) Be sure and mark your bags because no matter what kind of smarty parts you think you are, you will forget when you did this. Another lesson learned, by me. I have one full bag and another partial bag. I take the full one to the deep freeze and keep the half full one upstairs in the small freezer. The next batch at the end of the week will fill it up and then it too shall have to move.

My goal is to get enough to use through this winter and to also give some to my family and friends. A garden isn't worth much if you cannot share =) Have a great week!!