Category Archives: Gardening

Tuesday Tip Day: When Life Gives You Plums…

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…start getting creative.  Especially if life is giving you all the plums.

One day’s harvest. And by harvest, I mean rescuing the fallen plums. I’ve done my fair share of squeezing the ones still on the branches and they’re just not ready until they’re rolling around on the sheet we put beneath the tree.

If I put “plum” into Foodgawker’s search box, it gives me 869 results.  I think that maybe, just maybe, that might be enough recipes to use up the plums that are rapidly filling our yard.  It’s the fruit-version of zucchini and, at this point, it’s eat or be eaten.

So, two weekends ago, I gathered a thousand baskets of plums and decided it was time to make jam.  Or jelly.  Or preserves.  Honestly, I didn’t know what to call what we were making because I always get the three terms confused.  One has seeds, one doesn’t, and the third.. has more letters in its name?

For quick reference, from this post on Cooking Light:

  • Jam is made from crushed or chopped fruit cooked with sugar, and often pectin and lemon juice. Jam can be a puree of fruit or have a soft pulp, but it does not contain chunks of fruit.
  • Jelly is a clear, bright product. It is generally made by cooking fruit juice and sugar with pectin as a jelling agent and lemon juice as an acid to maintain a consistent texture. Jelly is firm and will hold its shape (it “shakes”). Generally, jelly contains no pieces of fruit, although specialty jellies, like pepper jelly, may include pieces of jalapeno or other pepper.
  • Preserves are fruit cooked with sugar to the point where large chunks of fruit or whole fruit, such as berries, are suspended in a syrup base. The texture of preserves is not smooth like jelly or jam.

So, I think, based on that list, I stumbled my way into making jam.

Jam making, like home birthing a baby, has two very important first steps: boil some water and get some towels. If you’re a mess like me, you’re going to need a lot of both.

Before we can do anything, we have to peel and pit the plums.  This is not a clean activity.  In fact, it’s akin to the hallway scene in The Shining.  (No, not the one with the twin girls.  The other one.)  A short plea to the Internet Gods told me that a boiling pot of water would help with peeling the plums, much in the way it helps with tomatoes.  Or even potatoes, I’m told.

Get the water really boiling, then ease these babies in (I say ease, because if you drop them you will get nineteenth-degree burns–trust me). Let them hang out in there for a minute or two. You’ll notice the skins start to bubble and split on the ones that are less ripe, and full-on peel back on the others. Both of these are okay, since all you’re looking for is a little help defrocking these monsters.

Side note: Boiling a large pot of water is the most time consuming activity on the planet.  I may be one with the hyperbole today, or maybe I’ve just had to boil a lot of pots of water lately, but geez.

The good news is, during the one-to-two minutes you’re standing there, watching plum skins, you can get your ice bath ready.  I used the sink instead of a bowl, but whatever floats your boat!  Dump a tray or two of ice cubes in there, cover with cold water, and begin the second round of plum water-torture.  If I were you, I’d start from the bottom of the pot because those guys have had a little more time than the ones on the top.  Also?  For some reason that neither my mother or I actually know, when she did this on her own she said she had four plums float, while the rest sank to the bottom.  Applying egg-logic to the plums, she decided the floaters were poison and should be destroyed immediately.  Fair enough.  You may come to your own conclusion on that one.

I’m sorry, this picture of cold plums is grossing me out. It’s probably grossing you out, too. Let’s keep going.

So, from here you’ll have to Tom Sawyer your way into getting someone else to paint your fence peel and pit your plums, unless you actually like sitting in red juice, up to your elbows, and developing prune fingers.  Luckily for me, my mother adores both of those things, and though I put up an act of helping, I’m pretty sure I only got through three plums of my own.  She’s just so fast!  And so good at it!  In fact, she may be the best plum-peeler I’ve ever seen!  (Thanks for the idea, Tom.)

Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a girl get a chance to peel a billion plums every day?

Now that all the dirty work is done, it’s time to actually start cooking your plums.  You’re going to need lemon juice, pectin, and an entire bag of sugar.  I’m not even kidding.  Now, I’m not going to give you specifics as a recipe, because it all depends on how many cups of fruit you have.  The first time we did this, we had about five.  The batch I did last night had eight cups and therefore called for a lot of sugar, pectin and lemon juice.  Oh, and jars.  You’re going to need jars.

Oh, and most importantly: START BOILING YOUR WATER NOW.  Because, remember, it takes ages and you want to be sterilizing jars and having it ready to boil them again, once they’re filled.

I’m not sure how far Fresh & Easy spreads across the States, but I found jars, pectin and a little kit at my store all in one place.  It cost me about $20 for the supplies, but the good news is the pectin is the only thing that will need replacing.  You can use those jars forever, provided the folks you gift them to aren’t so dazzled by your jam skills they claim the jar as their own, so they may begin preserving fruit, too.  Which would be okay, too, for maybe they fill that jar with their own treats and thus begin a lifetime of jar-passing.  Think of all you could put in those jars!

Anyway.  If you aren’t lucky enough to have a Fresh & Easy, this kit is available on Amazon, too.  I thought it was a little silly, even as I was purchasing it, but as soon as I started using those tongs I was in love.  Oh, and the magnetic lid grabber.  And the funnel.  I suppose the only thing I don’t care one way or another about is the air-bubble-spatula thing.  That’s probably because I haven’t actually used it yet.  Ahem.

Jars and pectin are available on Amazon, as well.

As you can see, I’m multitasking. Boiling jars to keep the creepy crawlies out and cooking my jam.

Basically, you’re going to follow the instructions on whatever container of pectin you get.  Between the pectin wrapper and this lady, I managed to semi-successfully make jam (we’ll discuss the semi part in a moment, here).

1. Get a giant saucepan and pour your fruit in.  Here you’re going to want to add the lemon juice and the pectin at whatever measurements you’re getting from the pectin label.  If you’re not doing plum jam, but any other fruit, I saw there are specifics for those as well.  For example, apples are full of pectin, they don’t need you to add more to them.

2.  You’re going to cook it for a while.  Now, I still don’t have quite a handle on how long I’m cooking anything.  According to ChefInYou, I cooked it until the fruit got really mash-y and then added 1/2 a cup of water.  That’s 1/2 a cup of water for about five cups of plums in her recipe.  Once it’s started to get a weird film on it, and you skim that off, it’s time to add the sugar.  And then you need to cook it forever.  I wish I had a time for you, but it’s all very sensitive to just how much fruit you started with!

See, the first time I did this, I thought I was finished cooking everything, put it all in jars, sealed them, and stashed them in the ‘fridge.  Later on, when I picked up a jar and tilted it to the side, the jam moved like water.  That.. was not right.

This is an example of WRONG WRONG WRONG.

The good news is, even if you’ve done all of this (because it’s very hard to tell when you’re at the canning stage whether or not it’s 100% finished.  It’s still molten and will move around in there until it sets up), you can still open your jars, pour them back into the saucepan, sterilize your jars again, and cook the jam longer.  I know because I’ve now done it.. twice.  Once on each batch, that is.

When I realized my jam was syrup, I turned to the Internet again and found this hint on a message board: Get a small plate, put it in the ‘fridge until it’s nice and cold and then test your jam on the plate’s surface.  If it sets within a few seconds on the plate, you’re good to go.  Also, this is a great opportunity to taste your jam without setting your tongue on fire.  The second time I made jam I used this trick, and while the jam wasn’t nearly as runny as the first time, I think it could have used a teeeeensy little bit longer on the stove.  I think this step will become easier with practice.  And considering the state of the tree, this summer will be The Summer of Jam.

This is what it looks like the next morning, when you realize your jam is not actually jam yet. Sigh, time to pop all the lids and heat it again. Bright side? It’s sort of fun to pop those filled jars in the boiling water again. I feel like a prairie woman every time.

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  We’re assuming your jam won’t set.  Of course it will set!  You do everything perfectly, every time!  (It’s a good mantra for yourself, even if it isn’t necessarily true.)  When your jam is sticking to the plate and both looking and tasting delicious, it’s time to throw it in the jars.  Now, since you’ve been boiling your jars this entire time, they’re mega-sterile.  But, if something happened and you forgot to start that part, plop however many jars, lids and.. outside lid-part things.. into the boiling water for about ten minutes.  Use your special tongs to fish them out!  You can let them air dry on the counter until you’re ready, since they’ll stay warm a while.  But, making sure your jars haven’t cooled, use your funnel and start spooning your hot jam into your jars.  Having the jars warm when you put hot liquid in them prevents cracking.

Pop the lids on, twist the outer-lid on, and then.. for reasons I don’t understand, turn them upside down for about five minutes to “set.”  Honestly, I don’t get this part, but the Internet told me to do it and who am I to not listen?  At least by turning them upside-down, I know which ones haven’t taken their final bath and which ones are finished.

Now that all your jars are full, it’s time to immerse them back into that boiling water.  You want about an inch of space from the jar to the top of the water.  Leave them in there about eight minutes.  Leaving the jam jars in there for too long results in runny, gross stuff.  You don’t want that.

Here we are setting some and boiling some.

Take them out, set them on the counter, and stare at them in wonder as they self-seal and that little lid-button pushes up to prove that it’s all finished.

I did not take this photograph in a fun house.

Because I’ve been burned before, I leave my pot of water on the stove, covered, overnight just in case my jam has not magically turned into jam.  This way, I can save a little water and start boiling right away if re-cooking is in my plans that day.  It won’t be in yours, I promise.  But.. if it is, it’s not the end of the world.  All that hard work can be saved.  I suppose that’s why I find jam making sort of soothing.  It’s nice to know that, unlike a cake, if it doesn’t work out in the end I can just spend a little more time on it.  Cakes burn, jam just patiently waits for me to get it right.

Thanks, jam.  You really get me.

Saturday Night Hooking: Makeshift Pea Ladders

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The first time I met my yoga teacher, Christina, she referred to herself as a “joyful gardener.”  It was an offhanded comment–something to do with the reason why she liked my green yoga mat with the tree on it–but I find myself thinking about those paired words often, especially now that my seedlings are growing up, preening with their flowers, and showing the beginnings of fall and winter produce.

For me, part of adopting that description is about feeling resourceful.  My joy comes from reusing what we have on hand.  If an item has outlasted it’s purpose inside the house, I’m always hoping there’s a suitable task waiting for it outside: feeding the worms, adding to the compost pile, or perhaps becoming a makeshift stake for a plant that’s become too top-heavy.  So, when the row of peas started to grow curled tendrils and were looking around for something to climb on, I knew I had to rig something.

But, rigging a ladder for the peas requires construction and power tools and men (or, so I assumed), so this wouldn’t be a solo project.

Enter: Bob.

This is my husband, Bob. This is the “What?” face Bob makes when I’ve asked him to do something a little strange. “Yes, honey, I need these pieces of wood turned into spikes for the peas.”

Bob is not a joyful gardener, but he caters to my whimsy without complaint.  I count this as a win.

When I ask for a favor, like pea ladder construction, I always come with complete instructions, down to things like: Don’t we need saw horses? This is Bob setting up a table and suggesting that I let him handle the How and I just worry about the What. Heeee.

So, after scouting around on the Internet and seeing some pretty well made pea ladders I thought, hey, I don’t need to run out and buy a trellis for these plants.  We can just make something, even if it doesn’t fall into the realm of “well made.”  See, peas aren’t very picky.  They don’t care if you sand anything or use brand new wood.  In fact, they’d crawl all over you if you’d just stand there long enough.

When my parents had their backyard trees put in, years ago, they came with large stakes that have sat on their side yard ever since.  I gleefully stole those for our project.

Me: “Safety first! I’m taking photos for the blog. Do you want to influence young children to not wear safety gear while using circular saws?” Bob: “I don’t think young children are your demographic, dear.” He put them on anyway.

He’s just going to make two diagonal cuts–one on each piece of wood.  This way they’re easier to pound into the ground.

Added bonus: the leftover scraps double as two Buffy-style stakes for any future vampire fights.

And here comes the pounding!

Now, this will seem completely obvious to you, but I didn’t realize it until after he’d pounded both of them into the dirt: line up your poles.  I placed them slightly to the right of the row and now the plants have to lean a little just to reach the strings we tied between the poles.  If you put them inline with the row of climbers, they can just go straight up without having to blindly seek out their ladders.

Now, get some twine or string and start making rows!

Make sure you’re keeping the string tight as you tie it around the poles.  The peas aren’t terribly heavy, but if you’re in a windy area a few loose strings can cause them to swing around.  We’re not entirely sure how high the peas are going to get, so every few days I wander out with my ball of orange twine and assess whether or not I need to make more rows.

This is taken a few weeks after we built the ladder for the peas. Now the beans needed something to climb! Luckily, we had some rebar in the garage.

I don’t know how many garages have stray pieces of rebar hanging around or if I’m just particularly lucky because my father is an engineer and therefore has… engineer-y things in his garage.  But!  Rebar is a good substitute for wooden stakes because it won’t rot as quickly and you don’t have to cut it before you hammer it into the ground.  And then, once you realize you’re able to use rebar for things, you’ll want to use it everywhere!  Case in point:

Need to make sure your dogs don’t trample your garden? Perhaps you have some rebar and some old chicken wire hanging around!

I’m a big fan of getting things for free (who isn’t?!), but I think I get even more excited when I’m able to recycle items that would otherwise just lay around and collect dust.  It’s the same feeling I get when I realize I have all the ingredients for tonight’s dinner in the house already.  I don’t even have to climb out of my pajamas and go to the market!

And if that isn’t the definition of joy, I don’t know what is.

Tuesday Tip Day: Hey Spinach! Where are you going?

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“I don’t understand why we continue to order lettuce,” remarked a silver-haired clerk as she stocked the seeds beside where I stood in our local nursery.  I glanced cautiously at her, unsure if she was actually speaking to me or if I was witnessing the senseless mutterings of a stock-clerk-by-day-and-gardener-by-night.

Don’t get me wrong:  I understand the muttering!  I spend most mornings clomping through my backyard garden in work-heels, watering and tending to plants, all the while trying not to dirty my clothes.  And where there is clomping, often there is muttering.  Sometimes it’s pleased Hmmm’s and approving Oooh’s when the pumpkin leaves have doubled in size over night or when the potatoes I really thought were going to die seem to have found their second wind.  Other times it’s under-the-breath reminders that I need to make a trellis for the peas (Note: Katie, you do need to make a trellis for the peas!) or that the compost container needs turning (a job I tend to skip in the mornings, as I’d rather not come to work smelling of fertilizer).  And, once in a while, it’s utter despair to find the artichoke plant that was coming back so nicely has been slaughtered in the moonlight by vicious, disgusting, slimy, hateful snails.

(I’m coming for you, snails.)

That's right. "Bougainvillea" is just another term for "snail torture chamber."

So, believe me.  Muttering I get.  I just didn’t know how to reply!  So, I did what I often do in social situations and immediately regret seconds later: I pretend I know exactly what she’s talking about.

“I was just thinking that!” I blurted.

I held my breath, hoping that my words sounded more like a sneeze or a weird cough.  You know, the type you want to pretend you didn’t hear because how embarrassing for that person.  But, I’d engaged and the woman quickly abandoned her seed packets to give me a big ol’ smile.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” she continued.  I was on the edge of my seat at this point, because why did lettuce not make sense?  Was there a lettuce plague I’d missed in the news?  Were “bath salt” abusers using lettuce patches to find tasty neighborhood vegetarians for their zombie attacks?  Were–(sometimes it’s good, really good, if my train of thought is derailed).

“They’re going to bolt.  We’re a month past our growing period and yet, we keep ordering seeds and plants and they’re flying off the shelves!”

Hmm.  At this point, I’d abandoned the zombie theory and started to ponder her colorful choice of words.  “Bolt.”  To me, it sounded as though she was personifying leafy greens and insinuating that they would lift their skirts, knock the dirt off their roots and head for better weather before sundown.  But instead of asking questions, I let myself continue to be mystified by this silver-haired gardening genius as she warned me off purchasing any lettuces, suggested chard, and told me Brussels sprouts were an absolute no-no for the moment.

And why is that?  They’d ‘bolt,’ naturally.

Well, I hadn’t consulted this Armstrong Nursery Seer before planting my spinach and lettuce a few weeks prior, so it was already too late.  Plus, things seemed to be moving along swimmingly.  Every morning I’d go through my morning routine and then leave the house with a bag so I could collect salad greens on my way to the car.  Is there anything more lovely than that?  (Please don’t burst my bubble.)

But then.. then I started noticing a change.  The spinach plants seemed to sprout these stalks of flower buds over night and the leaves were not only changing shape, but weren’t getting as large.  To combat this (or so I thought), I trimmed the buds and said confidently to my family: “Oh, don’t worry.  They’re trying to bolt.”  A sudden authority on the subject, I spent a lot of time trimming those flowers, continuing to collect leaves, and beating the odds, I thought.

See all the tiny leaves and the flower stalks? It's the spinach plant's version of waving a white flag.

Last night, though, my husband made the mistake of asking me what it meant when plants bolted, and since I didn’t have a clear picture I had to resort to pulling up gardening message boards and reading passages to him while he tried to fall asleep.  But!  I learned a lot, especially considering spinach.  For those of you planning on growing leafy greens, here’s a little beginner’s info!

  • Bolting is also known as “going to seed.”  The plant’s natural cycle knows that, at a certain temperature, it’s time to start reproducing that way it’ll be able to come back in another form, eventually.  In the case of spinach, it seems like the temperature triggers this event.
  • The leaves on spinach can be eaten once it’s bolted for sure (heck, I’m still doing it!), but according to a lot of avid gardeners the leaves aren’t nearly as tasty.  The spinach plant is no longer putting it’s effort in producing delicious, beautiful leaves but is completely focused on propagating it’s species.  That’s also why the leaves are smaller and shaped differently.
  • Cutting off these flower buds doesn’t do anything!  I thought I was saving my spinach from a teenage pregnancy, but in reality I was giving it four sets of triplets.  The more buds you cut, the more the plant grows.

I thought this was particularly interesting. Spinach stems are usually so small and snappy, but once it starts changing it makes wide, hollow stems.

So, while the spinach is singing it’s swan song, I’m trying to figure out what to plant in its wake.  Chard, I suppose.  That seems to be a popular leafy-green for warmer months.  The romaine-esque lettuce we have growing is still going pretty strong, so I should have another couple weeks of breakfast lettuce picking.

Garden Cat's Advice: "Learn to let go. It's just spinach."

Saturday Night Hooking: Trading Needles For Spades

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I’m ashamed to say that there haven’t been a thousand projects flying off my knitting needles since I last posted.  In fact, I don’t even have a real project in the works!  At least, not one I have the yarn for.  I need to get organized and stop buying yarn with no project in mind or choosing projects for which I have no yarn.  Something just isn’t meshing here.

(That said, I totally bought Hunger Games yarn today!  I still have “The Boy Who Lived” waiting in the wings with no project chosen, but never you mind!)

But thanks to an enthusiastic friend who had a birthday in March (but we didn’t celebrate until late April), I got to knit up a second iPad monster!  I let her choose the colors from Jimmy Beans Wool, making sure to point out that I was a particular fan of Lorna’s Laces.  She chose Peppermint Mocha, in the worsted variety (they didn’t have that colorway in ‘Honor’ anymore) and I discovered that, while it’s still my current favorite brand of yarn, it’s ‘Honor’ that I’m wild about.  Something about baby alpaca mixed with silk feels amazing against my fingers as I knitknitknit.

There he is! Goofy teeth and all!

I told myself I was going to write down my steps this time, so I’d have an actual pattern… but here’s what happened.  Worsted yarn and Honor (whatever weight Lorna’s Laces considers that — a little finer than worsted,  but not as fine as sock) do not knit up the same way, so this fella (Darryl, we named him) has considerably more stretch than my iPad monster.  These are things that I tend not to discover until after he’s half-way finished and then I do the traditional hand wave and the, “Oh, it’ll be fine.”  Well, yes, it will be fine.. but it won’t be perfect enough to count for a pattern.  I’d like to knit a third one and take notes this time, but I’m rather worn out on the iPad monster front.  Another project, please!

Another project, you say? What's that in the background?

Do you know how I know Spring is officially here?

I’m covered in dirt.  All the time. 

Sometime around February I think, “This is the year where I might just skip planting.  It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just not really feeling it this year..”  And then March ends and I start to twitch.  Maybe it’s the gardening flyers that start circling, or the fact that I know how delicious food is coming from a backyard harvest.  Or perhaps it’s the sheer terror at the thought of grocery store, pesticide-flavored vegetables.

Either way, we took our annual trip to the nursery to pick up Heritage seed packets and organic starter plants for the new garden.  At our old home, we had half our yard fenced and devoted to gardening, but now that we’re living with my parents it gets a little trickier.   They have a well established front and back yard, with beautiful grass and trees.. and well, I can’t just go around yanking things out as I wish.  So, it comes down to finding pieces of land that haven’t been planted (or where the plants aren’t doing well and I could argue that they didn’t have long for this world — yank!).

And honestly?  Planting in tiny planters or pots is a lot more manageable than handling all that land I had set aside for my previous garden.  Weeding is so much easier because I’m not going to be weeding paths between vegetable beds — those are poured concrete!  It also keeps me growing on a smaller scale.  I mean, did we really need the thirty-something cucumbers we grew that year?  I don’t even like cucumbers!

The only tree I missed when we moved was my pomegranate tree. The first year we go three tiny pomegranates. The next? Nine. And the last year I believe we were in the range of thirty-five. Good thing we moved-- I think they were taking over.

One side of the house. I used cinder blocks I found around the backyard to act as strawberry planters, that way the fruit won't lay in the dirt. The back will be a tiny raised bed, as well. I think I'll plant the other leafy greens there, so they'll get lots of shade. Also making a star appearance is our brand new pomegranate shrub. I planted it Wednesday!

The hay bales mark our potato/onion/artichoke planter.  Potatoes have a tendency to run off underground and I was just broken up over the thought of raking at the end of season and finding old potatoes we may have missed.  So, we decided to make a deep planter that way the potatoes and all the other root vegetables can, hopefully, move around in the soil and not go deeper than the hay bales.  That way I can just stick my arms in to the elbows and root around for those tasty fingerlings when it’s time!

Berry blocks. These are June strawberries. We only got a few just to see how it would go, being late season and all. I always have dreams of how the next year will go and they usually involve my own version of Strawberry Fields Forever.

This is the front planter. I freed it from it's geranium grasp in favor of making a salad planter. You may notice strawberries in their container there, but those are the ones that were planted above. Lettuce, spinach and kale are in the front, along with a raspberry bush.

This is the front planter. I freed it from it's geranium grasp in favor of making a salad planter. You may notice strawberries in their container there, but those are the ones that were planted above. Lettuce, spinach and kale are in the front, along with a raspberry bush.

Speaking of established backyard trees, my mother has figs and plums that are already on their way. This fig has your name on it, Monique.

Not pictured are the empty beds with sewn seeds (spaghetti squash, acorn squash, carnival carrots, purple beans, shelling peas, and zucchini).  Pictures of dirt aren’t very exciting, but tiny shoots are!  So, as soon as we start seeing some of those, I’ll be documenting those like a baby’s first steps.  For sure.

Lovely!