February 2024 – Fruition

One of the great things about food preservation is the freedom to choose both foods and methods that suit our lifestyle. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed pickling vegetables, especially cucumbers, but then they sit on the shelf because I’m not excited about eating them. Nor do I usually eat the jams, jellies, or relishes I make and can. This year, I am focusing on choosing vegetables that I am confident I can preserve in ways that will appeal to me during the winter months. In this post, I’ll share some tricks I’ve learned over the years to grow and preserve foods I like. The Resources section at the end of this post includes links to get thinking about your garden.

Some preserving methods I’ve used in the past include both boiling water bath and pressure canning, pickling, dehydrating, freezing, and fermenting. I know right away that I’ll skip fermenting this year. I know, I know—probiotics, gut health, etc. I’ll get with the program someday, but not someday this year. Pickling is a tad up in the air, too, but I know for sure I will freeze many vegetables, with some canning and dehydrating thrown in the mix.

Last year I planted herbs for the first time in many years, and I was glad to freeze them to spice up winter meals. I prefer freezing herbs because they taste fresher than dried herbs, although I do have some dill and sage hanging around in the kitchen. I tried freezing herbs in a silicon mold and then storing them in baggies. I found I preferred these because they were not as messy as the loose herbs, which stick to my fingers when I use them. Plus, herbs frozen in molds [or ice cube trays] can be pre-measured.

silicon mold — These herb flowers are very convenient to drop into soups and sauces. And they’re cute.

Although technically not a “preservation” method, I dug up and repotted basil and parsley plants, both of which did well in my kitchen window. Snipping fresh herbs for recipes and garnish feels very Martha-like. This year, I will plant basil, parsley, and probably oregano with the intention of repotting them to my windowsill.

potted parsley — This parsley plant has provided fresh flavor to many recipes over the winter.

I also like to freeze what I call “flavor packs”, usually for use in soups. I prepare one-pint portions of recipe ingredients, including the vegetables, and leave out anything that does not freeze well, such as potatoes, pasta, and beans. I add those along with any thickening sauce, roux, milk, or cream when making the actual soup. I grow vegetables to make flavor packs for soups such as:

Read more The Food Preserver’s Garden

The start of the growing season looms near and with a shudder I imagine the vicissitudes that our farm’s early season plants will face. In the third week of April we will have onions ready to transplant in the field, as well as the first succession of broccoli and kale. April through May in the North Country is pretty consistently a miserable time for vegetable plants. Transplants that began their life in our warm greenhouse, even after judicious hardening, go on strike when set in wind strafed fields of cold soil. Early direct seeded crops are slow to germinate and once sprouted grow reluctantly. Cold soil means low nutrient availability so organic growers often struggle to feed spring crops sufficiently. Spring here is also marked by frosts, violent winds, wild swings in temperature, cutworms, flea beetles, ravenous post-hibernation woodchucks and in several recent spring seasons, long periods with little to no rainfall.

What does a gardener do? Occlude. This is the fancy term for covering or otherwise keeping your plants from direct contact with the savage realities of life outdoors. We cover acres of our early crops with row cover, a lightweight fabric that allows air, light and water to pass but not insects. Row cover warms the soil beneath and so encourages growth of your crop – as well as weeds. Even old, torn stuff works well to keep out dumb insects like cucumber beetles, but if you are trying to keep out clever pests like Leek Moth, Colorado Potato Beetle and Flea Beetle you will need undamaged covers and then carefully and completely seal the edges with soil. In my experience, woodchucks tend to leave covered crops alone.

The Farm crew at Kent Family Growers lays a wide row cover over allia. — The farm crew at Kent Family Growers lays a wide row cover over allia (onion relatives). Credit: Dan Kent

Row cover is not always helpful with wind. When laid over wire or PVC hoops it can protect your plants from moderate winds but when a serious blow arrives, the whipping and tossing covers can thrash your plants. The expensive row cover itself is at risk in high winds. More than once, we have laid out several thousands of dollars worth of row cover and within days had to haul it to the dump after being shredded in a tempest. It is always true, but especially in the spring, that a gardener should keep an eye on the weather. Another challenge of row cover is the way it hides the plants from sight. To investigate what is going on underneath you have to unfasten and lift an edge of the cover, stoop and peer in, making it harder to casually and regularly keep an eye on the crop. Read more Spring Moon Colony at Kent Family Growers