Butternut Beauties!

We have the pleasure of enjoying lots of butternut squash these days. As my boyfriend always says "Better than mashed potatoes" Usually I cut them down the middle and roast the two halves in the oven. While they're still nice and hot, I peel them quickly and puree with butter and a tsp. of maple syrup. The maple syrup is not necessary, it's more so something I'm used to. So yummy and good for you, butternut squash are an excellent source of beta-carotene and other antioxidants as well as vitamin c. It is showing promise as an anti-inflammatory food,  shows potential blood sugar regulation benefits and contains pectin. Pectin from fruits and vegetables in the diet may help to reduce cholesterol in the body. It is also a very good source of manganese and dietary fiber. All winter squash is a good source of folate, omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin B2, B6, magnesium, potassium and vitamin k and copper. It's no wonder butternut squash is emerging as a newly named superfood.  

Although we've eaten a few already, this is the majority of our squash haul. We yielded twelve butternut squash off of four vines! I'm curing them on the kitchen/project table here in the sun. Once cured, they will last a really long time in proper storage! One of my favorite, easiest and prolific crops to grow. I'm making even more room for squash next year. I'll try a couple different varieties too although butternut is easily my favorite. 

I always tell my clients to eat at their kitchen table so they can really pay attention to their food. I really need to stop covering mine with gardening projects so I can follow my own advice! 

From the Fall Garden

Fall slaw from the garden. Kohlrabi and carrots. I could probably eat this everyday and not get sick of it. I change the dressings often to mix things up. For this one I used apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon and sea salt. 

We ate our last crooked zuke. My favorite way to eat my zukes is super simple. Melt some butter in a pan and add a clove or two of minced garlic. Saute for one minute and then add the zucchini in either chunks or julienned and saute until just tender. The zuke pieces really take on the garlicky flavor.   

Cleaning up the yard and garden with lots of the garden still going strong! I will have to do an update to showcase everything we have that is still growing into the fall and winter. 

Holly Jolly Holidays

We usually make hard cider this time of year. We press bags and bags of wild apples save some of the cider for drinking and using fresh and ferment the rest. No added preservatives, sugars or yeasts...just pressed apple pulp juice fermented. If you're going to drink alcohol, this is the ideal. We decided to give wine making the old fashioned treatment too. We were given some grapes from someone overrun with them. We removed them from the stems and put them, unwashed, into a bucket where we mashed them up and let them sit for 6 days fermenting. We then siphoned out the loose juice and pressed the rest out of the grapes and put that in a clean, sterilized carboy to ferment further. Right now, it smells divine. It's to the point where I can't pass by without taking a quick smell. These days, the grapes would be washed and sterilized, yes the grapes themselves are sterilized to kill any wild yeasts and bacteria,  and then wine making yeast would be added back into the grape juice. We are simply allowing nature to do it's thing, the yeasts and sugars in the grape skins, and apples, are what makes them ferment, naturally. 

Mashed up grapes, seeds and all. 

The almost full carboy is hard apple cider and the 1/4 filled carboy is the grape wine. 

Fall bouquet of frost kissed kale and swiss chard.

Seed Saving.

Most of my spring planted greens are going to seed now. Various lettuces, bok choy, rapini, mustard greens, arugula and kale. Pictured above is bok choy dried seed pods. Seeds couldn't be easier to save. Either shake the seed pods into a container or bag or take the seed pods or entire plant indoors to separate the seeds from the pods. 

Hot Tip: Seeds are almost always heavier than their dried seed pods and will naturally accumulate in the bottom of a container. If you're dealing with any amount of seeds you can even use the method people use for separating dried beans from their pods. The seeds are poured from one container to another in front of a fan, the seeds fall into the waiting container and the pods and other debris gets blown away. 

I have saved way more seeds than I could ever use in a season myself, therefore some people on my Christmas list are getting seeds this year.  My thoughtful boyfriend picked up some cool colorful seed packets for me to gift the seeds in.  

Dandelion Tea.

I killed two birds with one stone the other day by weeding my gardens of dandelions and then roasting them. This picture was taken during the washing stage. You simply thoroughly wash the roots, swishing them around in water works best, chop them up and roast them in a single layer. I set my oven to 200 degrees. After they have been thoroughly roasted and dried you can then grind them up for storage and use. I drink a pot of dandelion tea every morning before breakfast. 

This article came out last year and is highly interesting to say the very least.

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/cancer-killing-dandelion-tea-gets-157k-research-grant-1.1248382

ETA: Like any other herb or supplement you should check with your Medical Doctor or other health professional before consuming dandelion or dandelion root. Dandelion root is a diuretic and can interfere with certain conditions and medications. I know that it can interfere with diuretic medications and should be avoided if you are taking any.  

First harvest from my kale planted in late July for a fall crop.  It grew under a row cover to keep all the cabbage loopers away, as they were intense at that time.  

The wild cranberries are ready! Just in time for Thanksgiving like every other year. These are completely different than the commercial cranberries in bags at the grocery store. I like eating the odd one raw, using them in smoothies, and of course, stewing them. 

Sunny Days

Lovely weather here following too much rain. My poor sunflowers were bashed around in wind and rain and as a result are slightly sleepy.  

Just a little tired. 

I love sunflowers and make a point to grow them every year. They add much needed color and warmth to these fall days and the bees adore them.  It was hard to get a decent picture but these guys were covered in activity between bees and hornets. 

Monster sunflower. 

Spinach started from seed I saved from the spring. This is in one of my two cold frame beds that will be covered shortly. 

This is the cold frame bed that contains the spinach.  Left to right; spinach, mixed lettuces, radishes, tatsoi, mizuna, baby bok choy, big bok choy and kale.  

I am going to miss the corn stalks. Time for these to join the compost pile. 

View from the garden gate. 

Sleepy sunnies. 

My morning glories are still going strong. I love the carefree feel of these guys. 

Climbing all over my deck. 

The squash plants pulled down this poor sunflower and trapped it close to the ground with their vines. 

Going Strong.

The garden is still going strong, fall is probably the most prolific time for what I plant.  I'm still harvesting lots of green beans, which is strange. They were planted so late due to late frosts, that we're overrun with beans now. We have tons of greens like the swiss chard pictured above. Today is National Kale Day, which we will celebrate tonight with fresh kale since we have a seemingly endless supply.  

We had lots of wind and these poor sunflowers were a casualty.  They worked well for cut flowers when we had company on the weekend. 

Veggie tray for company, cherry toms, cuke, celery and carrots from the garden with homemade ranch dip made with garlic, dill, parsley and chives from our gardens. 

My quirky kitchen table soon to be covered with curing squash. 

Fermentation.

Although I'm no stranger to fermentation, I'm just getting my hands on this book now. Wild fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz is filled with useful information on how to ferment almost anything you would want to ferment. He uses natural methods like lacto-fermentation and capturing yeasts from the air. It also details how fermented foods came about, their benefits (both taste and health), and offers suggestions for both omnivores and vegans. Sandor may have lived a life of fermentation experimentation and documented the process and results. I always want to ferment more foods than I get around to, leafing through this has inspired me to add to my fermenting repertoire. 

Garden Goods.

It's rather late in the season to be overrun with beans, although I'll take it. We had planted our bean plants so much later than usual due to the late frosts we had in the spring.  My third crop of bush beans is ready now at the same time as our first crop of pole beans, which are slower growing, are really amping up production. Keeping my fingers and tossed crossed that there will NOT be any early frost this year. It was really cool last night.  

The plums are from my boyfriend's parents trees and in front of them we have our constant bowl of tomatoes for fresh eating. 

I had to steal some not-quite-ready, fresh onions for the relish I am canning today. You can use onions fresh, the whole curing process does mellow out the flavor a bit, but is mostly for storage purposes.  Same with shallots and garlic. Fresh garlic is a real treat, quite spicy! 

Heading into Fall.

It really feels like fall is on it's way when these guys bloom. 

So Sunny.

Our largest watermelon. I keep turning it on it's little bed of dry straw to try and keep it nice and uniform. 

We have a lot of butternut squash this year, which is fantastic. They store really well once cured, lasting into the winter months when you really enjoy a rich orangey-yellow bowl of soup. 

This pepper plant is loaded with red and green peppers at different stages of readiness. 

Dinner. Pole beans and corn on the cob. 

I made fish tacos and used this slaw to top them. Kohlrabi, carrot, cilantro, garlic, lime juice and sesame oil. 

Cucumbers for pickling. I'm making relish and other condiments these days. 

Harvesting lots of beauty toms these days. I took a picture of this end for a reason, that's what I want to see no blossom end rot, no blight.  Tomato success, so far! 

Dinner.

We had Halibut en papillotte with zucchini sticks and tiny red pepper slices.  This variety of pepper, which I cannot remember at this time, resulted in plants covered with peppers that are a bit smaller than peppers I've grown in the past, but bursting with flavor. I cut into this one pepper and the kitchen smelled as if I had chopped many more. I'm trying to use most of the zukes while they are still small. It can be hard work staying on top of them, we've had a few here and there the last couple weeks but now, there is about four or five on each plant that will all be ready at the same time. I can see some type of baked zucchini dish or baked good in our future.  

Two different varieties of corn. The two on the left are one variety and the one on the right is another, they all taste amazing! 

Thrashing through more seeds.

Seed Saving.

My seed saving, and crafting, station. AKA the kitchen table. 

I really, really got into seed saving this year. I've dabbled every other year, saving odd seeds from lettuces, greens, flowers, tomatoes, squashes and melons, all the easy things. I grew lots of lettuces, tomatoes, flowers and pumpkins from my saved seeds this year.  I'm not going to get into specific instructions for saving seeds from different crops here as there is a lot of info available online. The instructions vary and can be quite different from plant to plant. If you're saving seed from certain crops, you may only be able to grow one variety to avoid cross pollination. I had to locate the perfect spinach plant to allow to go to seed out of my bed of spinach. I had borrowed a book from the local library at the first of the summer to get all the details for my seed saving project. It was The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds .

  For the most part, seed saving is really straight forward and super simple! Most crops like; kale, lettuces, greens like arugula, radishes,  peas, bok choy and parsnips are simply left to flower and then to seed. The bees love them when they're in flower, more so than my actual flower beds. I had read before that it's best to let the seed completely dry out on the plant in the ground if possible, which seems to work extremely well. Then I harvest the whole plant, making the seed collecting easy-peasy. Most of these dried seed pods need only the slightest coaxing to come out of their papery shells.    

Sugar snap peas, Marigolds, Kale and Spinach seeds. 

More parsnip seed than I will use next year. Parsnip seed is typically only good for one year, so I will share these with other gardeners. 

Radish seed pods. 

Kitty cat amongst all my lettuces flowering and going to seed. 

I love allowing things to complete their life cycle in the garden. It makes me feel even more involved in my food production and saves us big bucks! Seeds are not exactly cheap to buy, although they really are when you look at how much food you can get from one packet, at about $4.00 for a packet of kale containing roughly 40 seeds, I know have about 400 kale seeds, if not more.  Most seeds keep well from year to year, except lettuce and parsnips, but instead of getting carried away and saving all of the seeds I want for 5 years, I'll let my crops next year go to seed too.  The buzzing of bees around these crops going to flower is more than enough reason to let them go.