More pickling: Sweet pickled beets and onions

We haven't tasted the first batch, but screw it. I'm sure it will be decent, right? But we had some beets and a waaay too many onions, so why not go for more? The onion stalks got blown over in a storm so we had quite a few that didn't develop much past mini's.

The onions went the way of the gherkins last week. Vinegar brine with herbs.

If you can read dutch please ignore the message on the lid. Then again, they might taste good on toast. Why not.


We found a recipe for sweet pickled beet with apple and changed it up a bit. Instead of red wine vinegar (which we didn't have) we used quite a bit of balsamic vinegar. The same herbs from the last time: bay leaves, cloves, etc (you can also buy ready made pickling-herb packets), plus a teaspoon of cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of sugar.

The process was more or less the same as the last time. Only difference is that we boiled the beets and cooked the apple in the vinegar mix before proceeding with the rest of the process.

Beet, apple and vinegar mix into the jar and boil the thing for 20 minutes. Klaar is kees.

Leonie got creative and made some labels.

August update: Phytopthora in the tomatoes, but the rest is fine

Potato Blight on the tomatoes. Dammit.  Its been raining for all of July in Holland and the plants we had outside have all succumbed to phytopthora. Most of the other gardeners at the complex also have the same problem. Our neighbour also had his potatoes taken out.

But I'll give a run-through about whats happening garden wise.

Tomatoes

We planted a whole range of tomatoes in the spring. On a previous post I mentioned having 32 seedlings in house at one point. Well, they didn't all survive, but most of them made it alright. The weather has been pretty unseasonable this year. April and May were so hot and dry that a bunch of plants died when we planted them out. It wasn't possible to water them every day.

Outside we ended up with 2 Tigerellas, a Black Krim, Brandywine Red, Green Zebra and some Beefsteaks. They were doing well before the vacation.

But all the rain and cold conditions during the last few weeks have taken their toll. All the plants outside have large brown/black spots on the stalks and leaves. Some tomatoes are already turning brown and rotting away on the vine. Definitely a shame. I removed the worst of the plants and threw away outside of the garden complex, and tried pruning all the leaves off and removing any infected branches and tomatoes from the remaining plants. The weather has been a bit warmer the last few days, so I was hoping something would survive. But pretty much everything is worthless so I'll be removing all the plants. Shame.

But on a positive note, we've got the greenhouse tomaters. A tigerella, black krim, red and yellow brandywine and 4 cherry tomato plants. They're doing well and I haven't seen any blight.

Tigerella

The first ripe cherry's.

Pumpkins

The pumpkins have finally settled in and are now creeping across half the garden. There are quite a few small pumpkins on the vines. I'm really hoping that they all do well and we get some decent gourds.

Uchiki Kuri

Butternut Squash

Delicata

Cabbage

We hebben lekker veel koolsorten. En die groeien als kool. Or in other words, we got lots of broccoli, koolrabi, sweetheart cabbage, and red cabbage.  And one cauliflower. But we're very pleased with our one cauliflower, since they had a hell of a time in the spring when everything was constantly being eaten by everything. Our brussel-sprouts plants have also survived the rabbit-onslaught and are progressing. Soon we'll be getting the first sprouts off of them.

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Koolrabi

Sweetheart cabbage

Also the kale (boerenkool: 'farmer cabbage' in Dutch) is ready to be planted. 



Squash and Courgette

Well that's obviously doing perfectly. Rain and more rain with some sun every now and then equals loads and loads of squash and courgette.


Carrots

The carrots have come up nicely. We'll leave them in for a little while longer, but they're more or less harvestable. I think that this one has turned out quite well. It took us two tries to get the seeds going because of the dry conditions in spring.

Aubergines

The eggplants are alright. We don't have as much fruit as I was hoping. But the ones that are coming out look good. Here's a snowy. We topped the plants to try and promote growth of the aub's.

Beans

Purple Queens! Our queen beans are looking good.

The fava beans are more or less done. They were a favorite side-dish this summer.  Fava-bean mash.

Cucumbers

The first few cucumber plants seem to be winding down now. So far we've had about 45 cukes from 4 plants. The 2 extra plants that we planted a month later are now starting to produce on a consistent basis, so we still have a few more cucumbers on the way.

Herbs

Basil, coriander, chives, oregano, lavas, and mint have all been successful. Last year we couldn't get the basil going very well, but I think that was due to the soil conditions. We planted it directly into our heavy-clay soil. This year we had it in pure potting soil and we had no problems.

Mint is obviously super easy. It grows like a weed. We have it in a big plastic crate outside so that it can't spread too far. If you plant it without any boundaries, it will run rampant.

The oregano is from last year, and it just does it's own thing. No real maintenance or care needed. It grows and we grab some as needed.

We leave it out to dry and into the kitchen rack it goes.

Oregano, Basil, Chives, Mint

Mint

Coriander

Onions

And we've pulled up all the onions. The stalks had been knocked over in a storm, so we figured we'd get them out of the ground and into the cupboard. There are quite a few. Onion soup tomorrow.

Onwards to September.

Pickling pickles (ofwel: augurken inmaken)

I didn't know that gherkins are hairy. But they are. And they taste terrible. But hey, if life gives you gherkins, make pickles. It took a while to get our augurk-plant going, but during the vacation it sprouted quite a few hearty gherks. We were surprised in the beginning with the plant, because it would start to sprout small fruits but they all began to rot away and nothing materialized. But by June the plant had taken over what seemed like the entire cucumber trellis and was creeping all over the place. It started to produce properly in the last few weeks, and this is the result of 3 weeks untended growth: Vacation gherkins.

We decided to pickle them and see how they turn out. Leonie diced them and we boiled our many left over jars to sanitize them. We bought some herbs (bay leaves, pepper, dill, etc.) and made a brine of vinegar and water and sugar.

After adding the brine to the pickle jars, we boiled the entire jar for about 15 minutes each and let cool. So now we just have to wait six weeks to see if they are any good. Or garbage.

We'll see. But at least we've got pickles. 



To summarize:

-Boil your jars to sanitize them. Ensure that they can be properly sealed to create a vacuum later.
-Create a brine from half vinegar, half water, sugar, and herbs and bring this to a boil.
-Dice, slice, cube your gherkins or leave them whole. Put them in your clean pickling jars.
-Fill the jars with the brine and leave a little head-space. Put the lid on.
-Place the jars fully in a pot with boiling water and let them sit for 15-20 minutes.
-Take 'em out and let them cool.
-Wait 6 weeks.

I found this and was amused.
From: http://koolnews.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/pickles-will-kill-you/

the Huge post-vacation harvest

So. We went on vacation. And while we were enjoying the Croatian sun and warm weather, it rained for 2 weeks in Holland. It feels like autumn already here. Hopefully august will be better, because right now you can't call it much of a summer. But the vacation was great, and our garden definitely enjoyed the continuous water supply.

We have some monster courgettes and cucumbers now. Left untended they just keep growing. The greenhouse is also nicely overgrown.

Greenhouse

A small harvest of large veggies

Great-gettes

Squashling

Big ass cuke and normal cuke

Beets

The first real gherkins, plus the cukes

So now we have to think of some new ways of consuming our veggies..........

Thieves!

We accidentally caught a thief in our garden. Here's the one whose been eating all our broccoli.

Don't worry, we let him go. And now Leonie has built an extra fortified bunker of netting to protect our crops.

Tuinboontje amuse (fava bean appetizer)

We got tuinboontjes. Really big ones. Even after the serious louse infestation, we still ended up with some perfect beans.

Fava bean with Leonie

So we shelled them... Twice (the taste of the innerbean is the best). The easiest way is to boil them and then you can just squeeze out the inner bean.  

 
And cooked them for about 20 minutes. And after that baked them with garlic (from the garden, duh), onion, basil, pepper and salt. Put it in an blender....
And TADAAAA.. a tuinboontje amuse is born! It tasted good. Like an angel pissing on your tongue. (Old dutch proverb. "Alsof een engeltje op je tong piest.")

The red thing is a capsicum/bell pepper/paprika (depending on which continent you live).




Today's blog is brought to you by Leonie.   : )

Growing garlic (5): harvesting

Garlic glory! All our hard work has finally paid off. Just kidding. Garlic didn't actually require any work.

I finally pulled up all our garlic. It turned out great. It's the first time we've grown garlic and I'm pleased with the result. Tastes great, and the aroma is strong and permeating. Much more intense than store-bought garlic. In the end we had about 17 big bulbs. Considering how easy it was, we'll definitely be doing it again this winter.

 

 

We roasted a whole bulb to give it a taste. Very nice. Roasted garlic is so soft and subtle. It makes a good little snack. 

June Update: Drought and 1st harvest

I haven't posted anything in a while. It's been a bit busy. But the garden is still going, and we seem to have come through the drought quite well. It was so hot and dry all of May, one of the driest may-months on record. Most of western europe was thoroughly parched for most of the spring. But the last week brought some decent rain, and the weather seems to be getting better. For us it meant a lot of biking to the garden to water it as much as possible. We lost a few tomato plants to the extreme dry conditions and from a storm that blew them over. But we've still got some nice plants, and the tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing fine.

And the rabbits also took out a number of plants. Most of our broccoli and cauliflower (we've replaced them now) and one of our brussel sprouts. But for the rest, all the plants are doing well and slowly coming up. We had our first little harvest last month. The cucumbers are also in perfect shape, and 3 of our plants are giving some nice produce. We planted 2 extra cucumber plants a month later, so they should start delivering in a few weeks also. Lettuce, courgettes and squash are also pickable. I also couldn't resist pulling up one of the garlics to see how it turned out. I'm happy with the result. Big cloves, and a hearty garlic flavour.

To get back up to speed, I'll post a picture summary of what's happening in the garden.

Basil

Helping hand

 

Courgette and squash

from L to R: Aubergines, gherkin, cucumbers, tomatoes

Cukes

The first garlic

Red cabbage

 

Lettuce

Butter lettuce

Beets and Purple Queen Beans

Spinach

Raspberry

Squashling

More squash

Taking a break

Cheers.