Yesterday I showed a photo of my music garlic. Today i cut the stalks off my german garlic. Cutting all the stalks off after a long days work gardening is a pain. So i did it a bit staggered. This is 85 heads of german garlic. People ask me why i grow so much garlic. I want to have enough to re-plant in the fall, and to use throughout the year. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but i'm close. Each head of garlic has between 5-6 cloves, so to plant 150 i'll need about 30 heads of this garlic for next years crop. That leaves me 65 to use, not too bad, but not enough to get me through till next summer.

My garlic is cured, which means i can cut off the dried stem and leaves. You want to keep those stems and leaves on while it's curing, because the garlic uses the energy still in the leaves to help it cure. Garlic gets its best flavor, and is much easier to peel, once it's cured.  I'm really glad it's cured, cause once you cut those stems off, all that garlic stores in a much smaller area, which helps in a tiny place. Though i had a staggered harvest, it was over 4 weeks since i harvested the last of it, so i know it's cured. I also know because when i cut the stems off the skin is nice and papery, which is another way you know it's cured. This is my music garlic, though it may not look like it, it's about 70 heads. I'll use 25 - 30 of them to replant this fall, which still leaves me a nice amount to use. I won't be using this garlic first though. I also grew german red garlic, and it doesn't store as long as the music, so i'll use the german red first and leave the music for later. Next year, i'm going to grow 4 kinds of garlic, including one softneck. More about that in mid October.

 So, you might think that at the end of August things in the garden would be slowing down a bit, if you thought that, you'd be wrong! I'm very busy taking care of the garden, harvesting just about everything, and planting crops for the fall. The tomatoes are coming in big time, so it's time to preserve some of them. I like to can tomatoes because i don't have the freezer space for them. Plus once you can them, they can stay on a shelf and still be good 2 years later. Today I'm doing fresh pack tomatoes. Canning isn't rocket science, but it does take time and care. First i blanch and peel my tomatoes, i usually cut them into quarters or chunks. Next i sterilize my canning jars. I use my pressure canner to do this because it comes with a rack that sits on the bottom of the pot and protects the jars from breaking. Sterilizing your jars and lids is easy. Boil enough water so the jars (i lay mine down) are covered by the water. Once the water is boiling, put your jars and/or lids and rings in for 5 minutes. Take them out and they're ready to be filled and put in the canner. I added fresh basil to the jars before i put in the tomatoes. Pack the tomatoes into the jar, and smush them down with your fist. Drain off excess liquid as you go. Leave 1/2 an inch of head space in the jar and for quarts, add 2 tablespoons of concentrated lemon juice to each quart. This will help with keeping the tomatoes nice and red, and for acidity. Most tomatoes we grow today are fairly low in acidity. Which is why you need to pressure can them, not do them in a boiling water bath, the water just doesn't get hot enough so it's not as safe a method. The only things you really can using a hot boiling water bath are fruits, and jam, but only jam you don't use pectin in. I put on the lids and screw the rings down finger tight. Then it's into the pressure canner. When the water gets hot enough in the canner, it will start to vent steam. You adjust the heat so there's a steady stream for 10 minutes. Then you crank the heat up again and put on the pressure gauge (if you're using a weighted gauge canner) if not, you wouldn't have to do that step. Always follow the directions that come with whatever type of pressure canner you buy. Once the pressure gauge starts to rock, that's when you're canning time starts. Fresh pack tomatoes take 25 minutes, but add 10 to vent, 15 to get it up to temperature and 20 to cool down and you're over an hour. Keep that in mind when you start. While it is time consuming, the benefits of keeping these 4 quarts on a shelf for whenever i want to use them, is worth it.

Last post i talked about preserving your food by freezing it. This post I'm going to talk about air drying to preserve some of your garden harvest. Unfortunately you can't air dry everything, would make things so much easier if you could. Some of the crops you can air dry are herbs, some hot peppers, and of course you cure garlic and onions and store them without refrigeration. This photo shows some of my hot peppers, at the top are long cayennes, below them are green and 1 red jalapeno, and the brown ones are chocolate habeneros. The jalapenos and habeneros are thick walled peppers and cannot be air dried. You can saute them and put them in olive oil, you can freeze them whole as well. The long cayennes you can air dry. As you can see in this photo, i take a long piece of doubled sewing thread, i knot it and string my cayennes on it. I leave the needle on until the thread is almost full of peppers. So as i harvest the peppers, i can just string them up. I leave them in an airy window. With peppers you don't have to worry about putting them out of direct sunlight. The peppers will dry naturally. I leave them strung up in the kitchen where i can take a few off whenever i need them.

When air drying herbs, make small bundles of them. Don't make too large a bundle as they won't dry properly, the ones in the middle of the bundles won't get the air flow they need and might start to mold, so keep each bunch of herbs small. You want to dry the herbs out of direct sunlight, in an airy place. Once the herbs are dry, store the leaves whole. Herbs keep their best flavor (the oil in the leaf) by having the leaf whole. Crush the leaf only when you are ready to use it. The herbs will keep their flavor better and longer this way.

 The above photo is from one of my 3 gardens. It's my kale and collards. I've been harvesting my kale for awhile, and preserving a lot of it for winter. I preserve my garden harvests in several ways. I dehydrate, can, air dry, ferment and freeze. This post I'm going to talk about freezing. I find the best way to preserve some crops is by freezing them.

All plants have enzyme action going on in their leaves and/or fruits. This enzyme action continues even after you harvest. That's why a 1/2 ripe tomato will ripen up for you, or why corn gets less sweet as the days go by after harvest. If you pack your kale, for example, in a plastic bag and throw it in the freezer, the enzyme action continues even when in the freezer. To stop this action you need to blanch your vegetables before freezing.

Blanching is easy. All it means is putting your vegetables in boiling water for a set amount of time, this stops that enzyme action. Wash and either cut up or tear up your kale, collards, chard etc. and put into boiling water. For kale and chard it takes 3 minutes, collards take 4. After that you want to drain it, then either put it into a bowl of ice water, or run cold water over it for the same amount of time you blanch it. Then drain it again, squeeze out as much water as you can and vacuum seal it.

I have a vacuum sealer and it works well on most things, however, it doesn't work well with my greens. I think the reason is even after i squeeze it out, let it air dry a bit, there's still a lot of moisture in it. The vacuum sealer keeps sucking out the moisture but never enough to get a good seal. So, for those of you who don't have a vacuum sealer, or want another way to get a good seal for your greens, I have an alternative method.

What you'll need are freezer bags, a straw, and a pot of cold water. First, pack your greens is a freezer bag. Try to get it into the corners so there's less air space. 

 Next, lay the bag down, put the straw in, and seal up the bag to the straw, getting out as much air as you can.

 Put your sealed bag into the pot of water, so that only the very top bit of the bag and the straw are above the water line.
The water creates pressure and forces most of the air in the bag out. With the bag still in the water, use the straw and start drawing any excess air out, pulling the straw up as you do that. Once the straw is out, seal that last bit of the bag quickly.

Dry off the bag and mark it (or mark it before) with the variety and the date. This method gives a remarkable good vacuum seal. Freezing any vegetable with as little air in the bag as possible will help it keep longer and taste fresher.

Was raining most of today, still, had to get to the gardens. In between dodging the heavy rain, i got this photo of my grafted brandywine tomato plant. Usually at this time of year, people post photos of their ripe tomatoes. I've been enjoying my cherokee purple, sun sugar cherry and san marzano tomatoes for awhile now. With most heirloom varieties, you don't get many fruits per plant. If you're lucky, you might get 12 tomatoes on one plant. Which is why i grafted plants this year. Brandywines are some of the longest maturing tomatoes, and the ones on the grafted plant still take the same amount of time to ripen. However, I have over 20 tomatoes on this one plant, with more coming out. The same is true of the caspian pink grafted tomato and the san marzano paste tomato plant. I'm going to get a bumper crop of these tomatoes. Course once that bumper crop comes in, i'll be very busy preserving the crop. Next post i'll talk about ways i preserve the food i grow. Today while in the garden, i harvest parsley and basil that i made into pesto, and kale that i blanched and froze. More next post.

Can't believe it's August already. The garden is producing a lot now, and i'm busy not only weeding and tending the garden, but also harvesting and preserving food for the winter. Now is also the time to start thinking about fall crops. This photo shows a fall crop of swiss chard i started a couple of weeks ago. You have to take into consideration how long a particular crop takes to grow. So, for instance, you wouldn't want to start parsnips now as they take 100 days or more to mature. At least here in CT, we don't have enough good weather for the parsnips to mature well at this point in the season. There are lots of crops you can grow now, but always look at your seed packets and see how long it says the particular crop takes to mature. There can be differences even between varieties of broccoli, with some maturing earlier than others. Beets, turnips and carrots are good choices as they mature fairly quickly. In a week or so i'll be planting a fall crop of lettuce, bok choy, among others. You also have to think about soil temperature, some vegetable seeds will not germinate in soil that's too warm. Way back in spring i talked about the benefits of a soil thermometer, and one would come in handy now as well. Pelleted lettuce seed will germinate in higher soil temperatures than untreated seed. It's a bit more expensive but worth it if you want to plant sooner. A shade cover is also useful. You can put it over a part of your garden for about a week before you plant. It will shade the soil and bring the temp of the soil down, so that cold weather crops will germinate for you. I put one over a part of my garden and planted pelleted lettuce seed 10 days ago or so, the lettuce is up and looking good, because the soil was cool enough for the seed to germinate. Broccoli, cabbage, kale are good fall crops if the soil temp is low enough for them to germinate. So, think of what you want to eat this fall, and don't let that empty space where you harvested garlic, or onions, go to waste, plant more food!

 My tomatoes are finally coming in, my long cayenne hot peppers are finally turning red, and the basil is huge. When basil is still small, i pinch it back and encourage it to branch out. Now the basil plants are 4 -5 feet high and i've been harvesting it for a few weeks. Instead of pinching back the flower head (which with all my large plants would take hours), i trim off a nice bit of the stem. This way i can make pesto throughout the summer, or keep some in a glass of water for fresh use,  and still keep my plants from flowering. The reason you want to keep your basil from flowering, is that plants use a lot of energy to flower and produce seed. Unless you're saving seed, you don't want your basil to flower, it takes too much energy away from making those wonderful fragrant leaves. I've found the best way is to continually harvest some while the plant is still growing.

I go down the stem a bit till i find the next 2 sets of leaves. These will branch out and grow again. I've taken off the top part, which is where the plant will flower from and gotten basil to use fresh and make pesto with. I've illustrated where to cut the basil in the photo above.

In the next few posts i'll start talking about fall crops and what to plant now, as well has some preserving methods I use to save my harvest for use in the winter. I freeze, can, dehydrate, air dry, among others. Now is a good time to think about what you want to save for winter use as the garden is in full flow and producing a lot.