What are You Eating from the Garden?

[Niele da Kine]

We're down to basically just lettuce from the gardens since they've been cleared out and replanted. Although, the kale should be big enough to start noshing on soon. Not quite sure what kind it is, a friend gave me the plant.

At the time, it had a label on it of 'Butternut Squash'. Obviously, NOT! But that's okay, I like kale.

Is it Red Russian? It looks very similar to the one you have, RidgeRunner.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The shape is right. Red Russian gets it's name because the stems are red. You can see the stems here. Don't pay any attention to leaf color, it's the stems.

 

[digitS']

Siberian kale is also Brassica napus, same as Russian Red. They are in the rutabaga/canola family.

That makes them different genetically from Scotch, Portuguese and Italian kale. Those are in the Brassica oleracea, cabbage family.

The difference in flavor is not pronounced. Subtle .

Steve

 

[digitS']

wow, I can't believe how long your cabbage is lasting!

That's it. No longer bothering with the coolers in and out from deck to utility room, back to deck. Tossed the last of them and brought in a zip-lock bag of the "freezer sauerkraut"

When I began burying garden plants in the beds at the end of the season, I learned something about cabbage. I could pull a plant and drop it in a trench with a pile of other garden plants and cover this with 8" of soil. If I dug into the bed the first of April, cabbage leaves would still be green! Warmer weather brought quick decomposition but, wow, the plants are sure geared to survive winter.

Squash lasts forever!

Awhile, anyway . I brought up another Buttercup from the basement, yesterday.

Conditions down there aren't quite right but in recent years, I've learned that "curing" may be every bit as important as storage. Of course, that process requires its own set of proper conditions. Since warm and dry followed by cold and dry are the simplest part of it, I am dependent on the outdoors in the fall. Other than shelter under the carport roof and protection from freezing, I haven't done much to promote squash curing so far.

Once down in the basement storage room, things are fairly static and late February is about as late as they can last in those conditions. There are still several looking okay.

A big problem was the basement shelves themselves. I had never used those unpainted board shelves for anything. Never had such a large harvest of winter squash so they fit on the painted shelves along with a basket or two of onions. Those other shelves look like they proved themselves a problem.

Shelves characterize the basement and garage at this address. The previous, 40 year resident was a radio buff and once owned a radio shop. I don't know that he used that storage room for radio parts but I now have unused shelving and peg boards on all walls in basement and garage! Too much for ...

Steve

 

[Artichoke Lover]

That's it. No longer bothering with the coolers in and out from deck to utility room, back to deck. Tossed the last of them and brought in a zip-lock bag of the "freezer sauerkraut"

When I began burying garden plants in the beds at the end of the season, I learned something about cabbage. I could pull a plant and drop it in a trench with a pile of other garden plants and cover this with 8" of soil. If I dug into the bed the first of April, cabbage leaves would still be green! Warmer weather brought quick decomposition but, wow, the plants are sure geared to survive winter.


Awhile, anyway . I brought up another Buttercup from the basement, yesterday.

Conditions down there aren't quite right but in recent years, I've learned that "curing" may be every bit as important as storage. Of course, that process requires its own set of proper conditions. Since warm and dry followed by cold and dry are the simplest part of it, I am dependent on the outdoors in the fall. Other than shelter under the carport roof and protection from freezing, I haven't done much to promote squash curing so far.

Once down in the basement storage room, things are fairly static and late February is about as late as they can last in those conditions. There are still several looking okay.

A big problem was the basement shelves themselves. I had never used those unpainted board shelves for anything. Never had such a large harvest of winter squash so they fit on the painted shelves along with a basket or two of onions. Those other shelves look like they proved themselves a problem.

Shelves characterize the basement and garage at this address. The previous, 40 year resident was a radio buff and once owned a radio shop. I don't know that he used that storage room for radio parts but I now have unused shelving and peg boards on all walls in basement and garage! Too much for ...

Steve

I agree my butternut squash was cured and left on the back porch in horrible storage conditions. It still lasted 4 or 5 months without rotting.

 

[digitS']

@Artichoke Lover , I once had a couple Butternut squash rolling around on my kitchen floor for several months . They had a shape that allowed me to push them under a kitchen cart so that they weren't really in the way.

With the Waltham variety, my problem was growing them to a good state of maturity. Early Butternut did okay but wasn't very productive in my garden.

Cha Cha was the earliest and most successful Kabocha that I have found. I have grown Burgess Buttercup just about forever. It's days-to-maturity that the seed companies think to list don't seem to suggest that I will have much success with them in this winter squash-challenged location. What I think it shows is that you can't always go by those ratings. The climate problem here isn't that we don't have 100 days of growing season, frost - free. It's that we have so much difference between day and night temperatures in a semi-arid, somewhat high elevation. Right through our hot, dry summers.

Steve
Edit: you might be suggesting that your curing conditions were better than the storage conditions. Did you do anything special for curing?

 

[Artichoke Lover]

Pulled out a can of green beans tonight. We’re trying to use up our stores since we haven’t made much of a dent in them this year.

 

[flowerbug]

we're just thawing out some of the strawberries i put up last summer for shortcakes this evening, but instead of cakes we're going to be using cookies.

this afternoon i took the garlic in from storage in the garage and opened it up to see how it was doing so i could pull a bulb out of there to use for cooking. i wrapped the bulbs of garlic in two thick bath towels to keep the light off it but otherwise to let it breathe and not rot. near perfect condition on that bulb i used for cooking. so in the future i'm going to put even more garlic in storage like this.

the garlic that i had previously peeled and put in a jar in the fridge started fermenting and i had the lid on tight. about a week ago i went to take something out of the fridge and noticed the peeled garlic was more pink/brown/tan than white so i took it out of the fridge and since it was so off-color i went out in the garage before opening the jar. it was like opening a bottle of seltzer and certainly had the stench of fermenting garlic to go along with all that pressure. hahaha! so i took it out and dumped it around the end of the driveway to see if that might discourage the vampire deer from visiting. i was going to feed it to the worms instead, but i think Mom would surely have given me the stink-eye for that - even if the worms would have really loved eating them up.

 

[Trish Stretton]

Yesterdays lunch was sweet corn from the self sown lot-ate it fresh in the garden. Surprisingly, all the cobs were fully filled out. I'm rethinking my planting strategy now after seeing how well they grew! Only one plant was under developed out of the 7.
To top lunch off....rock melon.... and an apple off the front yard tree.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I made raspberry coffee cake with some frozen raspberries and I also made elderberry syrup a couple of weeks ago with frozen raspberries when I was sick. I dug around in the freezer looking for all the greens to put on top where I can get to them easier and found some forgotten sacks of green beans. I roasted some yellow squash and had bok choy with balsamic vinegar for lunch.