Preserving Herbs: Drying & Freezing

Last year I managed to dry some thyme successfully and ruin some chives in an attempt to preserve both. This year the results were far more tangible.

back: dried sage, marjoram, & rosemary.
front: ground sage, mint, &  rosemary in jars

Michael Ruhlman's simple tip to place herbs in a wooden bowl and let the air circulate and dry them, naturally works incredibly well. We've got little buckets of sage, marjoram, rosemary (see above photo) along with jars of dried mint, ground sage, rosemary, and a rosemary/marjoram mix. This also works well with thyme and oregano.

Along with drying herbs we even freeze some. Granted herbs taste MUCH better when they are fresh with over 1.5 lbs of chives harvested this year, there is no way we could eat all them as we picked them. Throughout the season as I would cut chives I would freeze them in individual layers on cookie sheets and then put them in a freezer bag. We also freeze dill, a tip from my mother, which is great for soups and hearty potato dishes and freeze easily.

We keep a jar of 'fresh' pesto in a bit of oil in our fridge, but we also have baggies full of both basil and garlic scape pesto cubes that we freeze and use all year round. They are a great attention to fresh and canned tomato sauces!

What other herb preservation methods do you use?? Add them in the comments section, if I get a good list going, I will post it for posterity.

Harvest Monday July 4th 2011

The Garden is starting to take off and kick into the heat of summer. Below is our incredibly fresh harvest as it was harvested today after a hard day of work and the great 4th of July Picnic/Barbecue the Fenway Garden Society threw. Here's what we harvested after some hard sweaty work this morning:

Chives: 4 oz

Mesclun Greens: 2.90 oz

Green Garlic: 1.25 oz

Lettuce (Red Cross Butterhead): 12.65

Total for this week: 1.3 lbs (20.80 oz)

Total for the season: 3.834 lbs (61.35 oz)

We also harvested 3 heads of non-green garlic which I will add to the harvest total once they are dried out.

If you want to see what other's are harvesting or share in your own bounty stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday June 13th 2011

We hit our first milestone this week. Thanks to this weeks harvest we've passed the 1lb mark for the season! The name of the game this week was variety! Here is the single biggest harvest of the past week which included a little more kale, chives, parsley, green garlic, and even a few flowers!

What we harvested:

Chives 1.20 oz

Green Garlic 2.10 oz

Kale 2.55 oz

Parsley .80 oz

Radish 2.25 oz

Total for the week: 8.90 oz

Total for the season: 1.184lbs (18.95 oz)

This time last year we had harvested half of what we've had this year, but far more salad greens. What a difference a year makes!

We've had a few days of rain so I haven't had a chance to do much in the garden, but I'm sure I will have lots of weeding and harvesting in the coming weeks!

If you want to see what other's are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday June 6th 2011 a little of this & a little of that

Another week, another small, but appreciated harvest. The chive blossoms I mentioned yesterday came attached to some great chives! I also trimmed some Kale leaves off a few of the plants. Not a ton yet, but enough for a bowl of kale chips! We also ended up with a few small radishes that were crowding out their brethren and had already popped themselves out of the ground!

Radish .75 oz

Chives 2.55 oz

Kale 3.25 oz

Total for the Week 6.55 oz

Total for the Season 10.05 oz

The garden is teeming with life and the signs of harvests to come!

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Chive Blossoms

We harvested more chives this week, specifically those with open blossoms. I wanted to make a small batch of chive blossom vinegar. Unfortunately my choice of jar was small, and the chive blossoms were a little cramped:

It would have been better if this plan wasn't spur of the moment, all we had on hand was distilled white vinegar and cider. I went with the cider option producing an interesting mix of colors:

The remaining chive blossoms that come from the garden will find their way into various salads.

Do you eat your chive blossoms or use them for anything??

First Harvest Monday of the season 5/30/11 & garden update

Gail and I enjoyed our first very small harvest of the growing season late last week.
With my job transition followed by tons of rain we were a little behind on the gardening front but we did our best catching up routine this week as well. Our garlic is really taking off and looks great and some of the walking onions have started forming bulbs on their tops:

We've also got a variety of herbs and greens that are doing great including some kale, volunteer chives, flat leaf and & parsley, garlic chives, and even the tiny sage is starting to show signs of life, as are some radishes and bush beans! Here is a nice shot of the volunteer chives and kale as seen from a distance:

We planted our tomato (3 Cherokee purple & 3 speckled roman) and pepper (4 'Golden Summer' bell peppers,23 cubanelle's, 2 jalapeños & 1 that was unlabeled but I think is a cubanelle.) We also planted all the marigolds, and the 3 bush bay mini zucchini!

On to the harvest!!!
We harvest a small mix of herbs & greens this week. The chives started to blossom so we took some home with us to put in our dinner and in some of the cheese we made(more on that later this week). We also got some parsley and a small bunch of arugula, both of which found their way into our dinner!
Here is what we harvested:

.25oz/7.08g Parsley
.80oz/22.68g Chives
2.45 oz/69.46g Arugula

Total for the week: 3.50 oz/92.22 g

Not a huge harvest but I'm really happy now that we are pretty much caught up with getting the garden fully going! Here's to the first of many wonderful harvests & garden updates of the season!

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday - August 2nd 2010

This week was an explosive week in the harvesting department! The first full sized tomatoes were picked on Wednesday. 2 Early Girl and 3 Striped Roman tomatoes:

We headed to the garden to do some major weeding and prep work for the fall on Saturday. When we got there we had discovered one of the striped roman tomatoes was collapsing out of it's cage under the weight of all the tomatoes that were on it! For the sake of the rest of the tomato plants we pulled the plant and took home all of the green tomatoes. We also grabbed a few cranberry red potatoes, some baby onions, 3 more ripe tomatoes, and a hungarian wax pepper:

We ended up picking 2 more ripe tomatoes, and some small bunches of Basil, Chives, and Sage yesterday which didn't make it into a photo.

Harvest Totals this week:

1.55 oz Cherry Tomatoes (including the first cherry tomatoes from 7/22)

2.84 lbs Tomatoes

3.44 lbs Green Tomatoes

4.25 oz Potato

1.05 oz Onion

.50 oz Hungarian Pepper

.55 oz Sage

.65 oz Basil

.45 oz Chives

Weekly Total: 6.75 lbs/3.06 kg

Seasonal Total: 11.394 lbs/5.168 kg

Harvest Totals have been updated.

Now that full sized tomatoes have certainly been harvested, the tomato watch is over. I'll note the first harvests and keep track for next year!

Another First harvest this week:

2 undersized Cranberry Bean pods had already dried out, yielding 4 Ottawa Cranberry Beans. The beans came from Daphne by way of Ottawa Gardener.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday July 19th 2010

We harvested ALOT of Herbs this week:

What's that in the bottom right corner of the above photo? PEPPERS! Here's a better look at the first 2 Hungarian Wax Peppers we harvested yesterday: Each pepper measured about 6 inches long. We roasted them up last night and enjoyed them with our dinner of beans and rice. The peppers were not burning hot but left a slight tingle on the tongue. I'll be letting a few of the remaining peppers mature as long as possibly and picking the rest as they reach appropriate size.
Another pepper note: These Hungarian peppers far outpreformed our bell peppers! We don't have any bell peppers of noticeable size and there are at least 4 sizeable wax peppers with 2 or 3 smaller ones closing up the ranks.
Harvest Totals:
2 oz Beets (not pictured)
10.5 oz Genovese Basil
1.1 oz Chives
1.25 oz Dill
1.5 oz Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper
3 oz Parsley
3.9 oz Red Rubin Basil
3.55 oz Spearmint
Weekly Total: 1.675 lbs/26.8 oz/759.77 g
Season Total: 4.55 lbs/2.065 kg

Tomato Watch: As of 7/18/10: 140 Tomatoes have set fruit.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

31 Days of Gardening

I've been gardening at the Fenway Victory Gardens for 4 weeks now. Here is what the plot looked like the day we picked it out:

(April 25th-Day 1)

Here is the drastically improved look 4 weeks later:

(May 22nd-Day 28)

After this weekend I really felt that the garden was coming together and starting to show some real signs of life and future vegetables! Here's a peek at what is springing to life in plot Z-1:

-Broccoli-

-Leeks-

-Greens-

-Beets-

-Peppers-

-Tomatoes-

-Herbs-

Missing form the photo's: Cabbage, Onion, Carrots, Spinach, Potato, Kentucky Wonder pole bean, Ottawa Cranberry pole bean, Garlic Chives, & Sage.

For the Beans, Potato, Garlic Chives & Sage seedlings have not sprouted yet or are just beginning to sprout. (A trellis and a pair of makeshift trellis' have been installed for the beans and await their arrival)

The Cabbage, Onion, and Carrots have developed very slowly so there isn't even enough to take pictures of.

The Spinach is another story. Some piece in the row are starting to look like spinach, others have clearly been bothered by the encroaching bindweed which we are doing our best to keep up with.

I suspect some of the seedlings which are slowly to develop were either planted late or are the victims of soil which developed a crust after a few rough rain storms. It's still early and there is plenty to grow so stay tuned!!

We have liftoff (and bindweed)!

Gail and I headed to the plot Friday afternoon. When I arrived I found Gail happily weeding with a large pile serving as proof that we will be fighting an uphill battle against Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Lots of serious hand weeding is ahead of us!

Besides the Bindweed springing up everywhere it can we saw signs of a garden coming to life.

I am extremely ecstatic to report numerous Beet and Mesclun mix seedlings emerging from the ground a mere 6 days after planting! I looked very carefully in the rows next to the Mesclun for Spinach and Romaine seedlings and believe I saw a few, however the Mesclun mix and Beet seedlings were easily visible in abundance so I will only confirm those for now. No visible seedlings from the Onions, Carrots or Cabbage yet but I will be back Sunday afternoon and hope to find more signs of life.

To celebrate our growth we began planting our herb bed. Garlic Chives, Dill, Sage and Chive seeds were planted in short rows before we left on account of darkness.

Seeds!

I recieved my first seed packet in the mail. Not from a seed company but from Ottawa Gardener over at The Veggie Patch Re-imagined! 3 weeks ago she posted a free seed offer. A few days before I started this blog I sent an email requested Garlic Chive seeds. The seeds arrived saturday moring. Most of the seeds are going to be saved for spring but I'll be planting some this week to grow indoors as I've got the itch to grow something, and these seems like just the thing.

My indoor planting space/system consists of various windowsills and planters made from recycled yogurt cups, juice/milk cartons, and soda bottles.