When it rains

When it rains I tend to do my indoor chores. Several of them involved new recipe for my garden fruits and veggies.

The first was strawberry chutney. It was pretty good, but I didn't like the amount of cumin in it. Too much. Next time I'm going to cut it down by a quarter or maybe just get rid of it all together. This wasn't a recipe to can, but just one for the fridge so I could play with it and not worry if it was acidic enough. Which is nice as I like to play around with recipes. I rarely take a recipe and follow it. I'm more likely to read 10 recipes and take what I like from each one. Or add something else.

The second was some kohlrabi fermented pickles. Katz suggests a 5% brine for your first try. So that is what I did. For me that was 1.5 tablespoons of sea salt to two cups of water. I put some herbs and spices on the bottom. Some dill, garlic, mustard seed, and dill seed. I packed the jar as tightly as I could with kohlrabi spears about a quarter of an inch thick. Then poured over my brine. I capped the top with part of a kohlrabi leaf and put on my weight. I used an airlock. I'll taste them in about three days to see how they are.

Brining the cabbage

The kohlrabi was easy, but I wanted to try making kimchi. It is a bit more daunting. I read up on it a bit to try to get an idea of what I wanted. Kimchi involves brining vegetables for 3 hours to a couple days depending on the salt content of the brine. Then you rinse it off once the vegetables are salty enough. You make a paste with rice flour cooked in water. You add seasonings to the paste. You massage the paste into the vegetables. Then you ferment it for a few days. That is so much more involved than something like a pickle or sauerkraut.

The recipe I'm giving is the one I used, though it is my own mix of things that I thought sounded good. I have no clue how it will turn out. But my hands smell really good right now, so I'm hoping it turns out well. I didn't use a whole cabbage. I didn't want to do that for my first try. So I used two pounds, which is about half a cabbage. I don't have diakon radishes, much less the Korean radishes, so I used my turnips instead. Also I can't eat peppers, so mine is not spicy and it won't have that pretty red color. I thought about using some of the last of my other radishes up to give it a pink color instead, but opted not to.

My weirdness in this recipe is dried cherries. I've never seen a kimchi with them. I have seen one with raisins so I figured it can't be too crazy. I would have loved to put an Asian pear into it instead of honey, but I didn't have one. I did have an apple but it has been sitting around my fridge for a while. I figured fruit that has seen better days is better for cooking than for fermenting.

Daphne's First Try Kimchee

• 2 lbs Chinese cabbage sliced in 1/2" strips
• 4 oz Japanese turnips julienned
• 1 carrot julienned
• 3 T salt

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• 1 T sweet rice flour
• 1/2 c water
• 1/4 c white parts of green onions
• 1" length of ginger grated
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 c cilantro
• 1/2 T fish sauce
• 2 t salt
• 2 T honey

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• 1/2 c green onions (green part) cut into 1 1/2" length then quartered the other direction
• 1/4 c dried cherries, chopped

Mix the first four ingredients together. I put it in a 2 quart mason jar but any non reactive container is fine. Cover with water and weight it down. Let it sit for six hours.

To make the paste dissolve the rice flour in the water and cook until it becomes gelatinous. Let it cool. Mix all the rest of the ingredients in that group (through the honey) and put it in a small food processor and process until smooth.

Mix everything together in a bowl. Then tamp down into a quart jar until the liquid comes to the top and over the vegetables (if it doesn't let it sit a couple hours and try again). Put a cabbage (or in my case a kohlrabi) leaf over the top to hold things down and weight. Cap the jar with an airlock. Let sit for three days then move to the fridge and enjoy.

I had about a cup leftover from this. The recipe would probably be more accurate for a quart jar with about 1 1/2 lbs of cabbage. But the extra cup won't go to waste. I put that in a half pint jar and put a lid on it. It wasn't an airlock. Currently I only have wide mouth lids with holes for airlocks. I might have to get a few for smaller jars. I could see doing a pint of turnips some day. Or maybe carrots.

Now they sit decorating my dining room. They are right next to my jars of seeds. Mustard seed, fennel, and dill. I'm going to test the sauerkraut again on Thursday I think. I just hope I like it. It was kind of salty the first time I tried and not nearly sour enough for my tastes. Oh I hope I like these. It is an easy way to preserve a lot of cabbage.

Problems and Failures

You have to be a pretty optimistic person to garden. Taking a tiny seed and expecting it to become a four pound cabbage takes a lot of faith in mother nature. Every time I plant, I believe in that miracle. I never lose the wonder when it does grow, but sometimes we have failures. They aren't uncommon. Either our own mistakes get us or nature deals the blow. This week I had a some of both. Nothing devastating like the year the earwigs ate all the silks off my corn (only once, and never before or since thank goodness). Or the year the groundhog ate all my winter squash. Ouch. But this week had quite a list of little problems.

Turnips under a good row cover

Turnips seem to be getting the brunt of it right now. You know how I was doing such a good job with my succession sowing? Well this week I totally forgot until Sunday. I'm supposed to plant every Monday. Whoops! Well one week missed is not the end of the world. But for the poor turnips that wasn't all.

Turnips elsewhere struggling

At my last house I had a lot of issues with flea beetles, but they have been pretty mild here. They exist but don't do a lot of damage. Until now. They are doing enough damage to kill some of my newly sprouted turnips.

I don't spray here (except soap when the aphids get bad on the kale and broccoli), so my only recourse is to try to catch them. I won't catch them all, but the hope is to get enough that the damage won't hurt the plants too much. I brush the plants trying to get them to hop in the soapy water. I'll leave some of these bowls near the damaged plants. Over time some will die. Every day I'll chase more in. Hopefully it will be good enough.

In the other half of the bed with the turnips are my parsnips. Not many parsnips. Half the bed barely germinated and the half that was better is by no means full. I no longer have time to resow parsnips. They just take too long. If I had seed I'd use half that section to sow in amaranth. I've never grown that before. I think next year I'll try it. I could do mizuna but those flea beetles would probably take them down too. Maybe I should inter sow carrots. They have plenty of time. I will have two other carrot beds in the fall though. Will that be too many carrots? Is there such a thing as too many carrots? The issue with carrots is their germination is just as problematic as parsnips. I usually use a doubled over row cover on the soil to keep it moist. I can't do that with the parsnips growing. I could use one layer, or maybe just try without and hope. I'd have to water a lot.

Basil was one of the worst failures. I planted in three spots to try to avoid the basil downy mildew. That worked last year. One section went down fast, but the other was mildew free for most of the year. All three spots got hit already. So they all got taken out. Sigh. I did get a small harvest from the last one out. It was enough to dry so I can make Italian seasonings for this coming year, but not enough for much else. I do still have time to start again. Do I want to?

Chard bed

I love chard. It is such a good grower. I'm always amazed at the harvests I get from a small patch every year. One plant got pulled as it looked like it was starting to get diseased. I grow Argentata and it seems to handle the diseases we have around here. But safer to pull the bad one that isn't resisting so it won't spread. Also one end was getting holes in the leaves. I have this trouble every year. The earwigs take up residence in the centers and eat holes out of the youngest leaves. They can take a plant down if they get too numerous, though they usually don't.

Earwigs freak me out a little, but in the garden they can be a help and an hindrance depending on the crop. They are omnivores so eat other insects but if they like the crop they also eat that. I just don't grow Napa cabbage anymore because of the damage they do to that. Michihili cabbage works better. Sometimes they get in, but not as much. For chard I go on a search and destroy mission with my knife. They hide where the leaf meets the stem. I poke the tip of the knife down in there to get them. I won't get them all the first time. I'll go out for the next few days to get the rest. Then keep vigilant for the rest of the season. I used to mulch the chard to keep the leaves clean, but I found the earwigs had too many places to hide then.

The last one is in the Michihili/kohlrabi bed. Luckily it wasn't earwigs this time. Nope they started to bolt on me. I picked one earlier in the week that had started to bolt. Well I didn't check them for a couple of days and the next one did. So I picked them all. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to until next week. I'd probably be able to tell if my sauerkraut was working for me by then.

Chinese cabbage ready for the fridge

I stored most of them in the fridge. I wrap them in a damp flour cloth towel and just leave them in the main part. They are way too big to fit into anything. They are 20" long and have to go sideways in the fridge. They store pretty well. I can keep them fresh for about a month and a half to two months, but the problem is they take up so much space. And the other side of the bed is the kohlrabi. I think I have 15 or 16 of them in there. Some of them have sized up already and need to be picked soon. Winner doesn't get woody fast, but they are hard to cut when they get really large just because of their size.

And remember at the beginning of the month when I had the groundhog incursion? Well I shored up the defenses and it seems to be working. He hasn't come back. Most of the beans that he lopped off died, but four of them might make it. They have some tiny little green growth were the cotyledon leaves used to be. And the four seeds that I had left and replanted have come up and are growing pretty well. So I put up the strings to the trellis. The two plants that he didn't touch are growing strong and climbing the trellis supports. I think it was the trellis itself that saved them as they were behind the metal and harder to get to. So at least there is some good news there. My beans are recovering to an extent.

This and That

We have had some really nice fall days recently. Perfect for being in the garden. Not that there is a lot to do there. I'm half done with screening my compost and am now bored with it so I'm avoiding the rest. I should finish, but instead I took a bike ride. This morning though I did get a few things done in the garden.

When I planted up my front planter, I didn't use an ornamental sweet potato. I used a real one - Garnet. I had bought a chrysanthemum to replace it, so it was time for the potatoes to come out. One pretty Garnet plant gave me 3lbs 14oz. Not bad for an ornamental plant. It makes me think I should put sweet potatoes in more spots that need a trailing plant. Like the rock wall garden in front of the zinnias. Decorate and eat at the same time. Sadly the chrysanthemum is a bit small for that pot. And I knocked off a huge branch. Oh well.

The spinach germinated a bit patchily. Usually I just don't worry about it. But since I had some that were too thick I decided to transplant. Usually I won't do this as transplanted spinach doesn't do as well. But it won't hurt. If they die I didn't lose anything. Just spinach plants I would have thinned out anyway.

I had to take out some plants in the cabbage patch. The Napa cabbage is not doing well. It has NEVER done well here. Well one spring, but that is it. I will not grow it again and just grow the Michihili cabbage that does do well. This fall it seems infected with something. One seem fine, but the other two were pretty bad off so I had to take most of the leaves off. I decided I'd take what I could and blanch and freeze it. I'm not sure it would last in the fridge. The one good one I'll use fresh over the next week. I also had to take out two kohlrabi that were getting too big. I'm hoping they aren't woody. I'll find out when I eat them. They at least will last. I've weighed them and put them in the tally, but I may have to remove them later if they aren't edible, or only party edible.

One of my doctors thinks all my health issues (of which I have a ton) are because of a leaky gut. I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm not just nightshade, legume, and mushroom free. I also am not eating gluten and casein (though the trace amounts in butter I'm deeming acceptable however mostly I'll use ghee). And no sugar, just small bits of honey or maple syrup for things like salad dressings. Sigh. The quiche above is a gluten free, milk free, cheese free quiche. I made it with some homemade turkey sausage, kale, green onions, and zucchini. I thought I'd miss the cheese a lot, but I didn't. It was very tasty. But it was way too rich. I used coconut milk instead of regular milk and the fat content of even low fat coconut milk is too much for me - well at least with pie crust. Next time I'm going to use part coconut milk and part almond milk and see how that works.