Pandemic Garden Club
Sep. 10th, 2022 06:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksWelcome to the September edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
It is harvest-palooza over here! Bounty of summer and all that. You might even be able to pick some of the produce, if you get out to the garden before the 116-degree temperatures attempt to kill you...
Behold, a bucket of garlic! Minus the cloves saved for replanting. Garlic ended up being an excellent investment for us. Well, for me. I'm the only one who usually shows willing to chop or grate it, instead of using the granulated garlic from Penzey's. Last year's harvest lasted me nicely through the year; this year's is a little bigger. I'd like to try making garlic confit sometime.
Mum planted a few vines of table grapes. This is wine country, only none of us drink (and some of us have a hate-on for the water table-ravaging vineyards), so table grapes it is. This is the first time they've produced enough grapes to be worth harvesting, rather than just picking off the vine and eating in the yard then and there.
We've frozen most of them. Not only because frozen grapes are delicious, but because making them crunchy masks their, uh, minor flaw: they have seeds. Small ones! Small enough that you can just crunch them up instead of spitting them out, if you like. But, uh, they're supposed to be seedless varieties...
Glass Gem popping corn. It's not ready to fully harvest, actually--test kernels aren't popping yet, which means it's not dry enough. (Reaaaally hoping I'm testing it correctly. But it's popcorn--what's it going to do, dry too much?) It is, however, wildly pretty for decorative purposes at this stage. The random grab bag of colors, which are arranged differently on every ear, makes pulling them open a lot of fun.
Not pictured is the refrigerator full of sweet corn ears we harvested as well. Somehow, we ended up being a bit late with a lot of them, and they've ended up being tough. I, who enjoy food with odd textures that make me work for my meal, still enjoy it pretty well. It's not exactly the sweet corn experience, though.
I've been picking out sunflower seeds here and there to save. And I tried my ill-fated attempt at roasting young flower heads. But it was finally time to harvest a couple of the big heads for seeds to roast. Some of the ripe heads will get left of the birds (which have been eerily absent this summer, but that's a topic for another day). And of course, I'll save enough to give me my full crop for next year unless I want to introduce new varieties. But first, snack time!
I've never roasted sunflower seeds before. I would very much like to never prep the heads again, as it took gloves and a lot of scrubbing and some bleeding fingers and a big mess in the floor even though I was doing it in a paper bag. But the roasting itself was easy enough. Consensus across several websites led to the following method:
Rinse seeds and add to a pot of salted water. For two cups of seeds, they recommended 1/4 to 1/2 cup salt to 2 quarts water. I...forgot I had a lot more seeds than that (like about six cups at least), so I guess they're just lightly salted at this point, which ended up fine.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.
Drain seeds well, as soggy seeds will steam instead of roasting.
Roast in oven at 400 degrees on top rack until dry, about fifteen minutes.
I did not move them to the top rack, so mine took much longer to be dry and nicely roasted. But since these will go from "almost right" to "burnt and ruined" very quickly and I have attention issues, the wider margin of error provided by a lower rack served me well. It also took two batches, because I had so many, to avoid overcrowding.
Now I have a big jar (and a tiny overflow jar) of lovely roasted seeds to gnaw at. Inconvenience food!
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
It is harvest-palooza over here! Bounty of summer and all that. You might even be able to pick some of the produce, if you get out to the garden before the 116-degree temperatures attempt to kill you...
Behold, a bucket of garlic! Minus the cloves saved for replanting. Garlic ended up being an excellent investment for us. Well, for me. I'm the only one who usually shows willing to chop or grate it, instead of using the granulated garlic from Penzey's. Last year's harvest lasted me nicely through the year; this year's is a little bigger. I'd like to try making garlic confit sometime.
Mum planted a few vines of table grapes. This is wine country, only none of us drink (and some of us have a hate-on for the water table-ravaging vineyards), so table grapes it is. This is the first time they've produced enough grapes to be worth harvesting, rather than just picking off the vine and eating in the yard then and there.
We've frozen most of them. Not only because frozen grapes are delicious, but because making them crunchy masks their, uh, minor flaw: they have seeds. Small ones! Small enough that you can just crunch them up instead of spitting them out, if you like. But, uh, they're supposed to be seedless varieties...
Glass Gem popping corn. It's not ready to fully harvest, actually--test kernels aren't popping yet, which means it's not dry enough. (Reaaaally hoping I'm testing it correctly. But it's popcorn--what's it going to do, dry too much?) It is, however, wildly pretty for decorative purposes at this stage. The random grab bag of colors, which are arranged differently on every ear, makes pulling them open a lot of fun.
Not pictured is the refrigerator full of sweet corn ears we harvested as well. Somehow, we ended up being a bit late with a lot of them, and they've ended up being tough. I, who enjoy food with odd textures that make me work for my meal, still enjoy it pretty well. It's not exactly the sweet corn experience, though.
I've been picking out sunflower seeds here and there to save. And I tried my ill-fated attempt at roasting young flower heads. But it was finally time to harvest a couple of the big heads for seeds to roast. Some of the ripe heads will get left of the birds (which have been eerily absent this summer, but that's a topic for another day). And of course, I'll save enough to give me my full crop for next year unless I want to introduce new varieties. But first, snack time!
I've never roasted sunflower seeds before. I would very much like to never prep the heads again, as it took gloves and a lot of scrubbing and some bleeding fingers and a big mess in the floor even though I was doing it in a paper bag. But the roasting itself was easy enough. Consensus across several websites led to the following method:
Rinse seeds and add to a pot of salted water. For two cups of seeds, they recommended 1/4 to 1/2 cup salt to 2 quarts water. I...forgot I had a lot more seeds than that (like about six cups at least), so I guess they're just lightly salted at this point, which ended up fine.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.
Drain seeds well, as soggy seeds will steam instead of roasting.
Roast in oven at 400 degrees on top rack until dry, about fifteen minutes.
I did not move them to the top rack, so mine took much longer to be dry and nicely roasted. But since these will go from "almost right" to "burnt and ruined" very quickly and I have attention issues, the wider margin of error provided by a lower rack served me well. It also took two batches, because I had so many, to avoid overcrowding.
Now I have a big jar (and a tiny overflow jar) of lovely roasted seeds to gnaw at. Inconvenience food!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-11 12:09 am (UTC)I have various herbs still doing okay. One of the mints died from the last few weeks of alternating heavy rains and ridiculously high temperatures. I'll clear out the obviously dead crispy bits and then see if it comes back.
Planted a pack of various lettuces. I'm hoping enough come up at the same time that we can have a decent salad a time or two.
Still picking baby basils out of all my pots. One snuck into the rose pot and grew to several inches high before I noticed it. I'll pull it next time we need basil to cook with. Stabbing myself on the thorns isn't worth it if I don't get to eat it.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-11 12:38 pm (UTC)Careful--sounds like the basil is calling in a bodyguard!