Focaccia Across the Seasons
Category: Vegetables
Preserving
I always try to preserve vegetables and herbs from the garden. This year, I preserved tomatoes by making slow-roasted tomatoes in oil, pickling green tomatoes and making a roasted green tomato salsa. The pickled tomatoes keep for a couple of months in the fridge (I love them in sandwiches, especially with sharp cheddar, sliced green apple, arugula and coarse mustard), the salsa keeps a few days, and I always freeze the slow-roasted tomatoes and move one jar at a time to the fridge for use. Those are terrific in pasta recipes or on pizza.
I also made Thai hot sauce, quick-pickled several batches of cucumbers and made several batches of Thai pesto and regular pesto, including a delicious garlic scape pesto with sunflowers. The hot sauce is stored in the fridge (it keeps forever, the last batch kept for two years). The pickled cucumbers keep for a few weeks, and I always freeze the pesto in ice cube trays and use one or several cubes in my cooking as needed.
As I do every year, I cured my garlic and winter squash. The softneck garlic hangs in my pantry (I used up all the hardneck garlic), and the winter squash is stored in the unheated back hallway that connects the kitchen and the back porch. Both will keep well into the spring if they last that long.
I also froze a big ziplock bag of red currants that I had harvested in June. And I cleaned and froze my home-grown ginger. I don’t grow enough herbs (other than basil) to preserve them. But maybe I will grow some next year to dry.
Winter Kale
First wintry mix this morning. Rain had turned to snow overnight.
Last Swiss Chard
We are expecting our first “real” frost tonight, so this afternoon, I harvested all the Swiss chard that was still in the plot. Not much else still growing there: kale, some leeks (that I will let overwinter), some small carrots plus fall greens and komatsuna (both of which need to be harvested soon as well).
Fall Clean-up and Planting Garlic
Today, I finished cleaning up my plot (weeding, spreading compost and salt marsh hay), and I sowed my garlic for next year – 6 rows total, 15 cloves of hardneck garlic, and 20 cloves of softneck garlic.
November Harvest
Late October Plot
Today, I started cleaning up the garden plot. It is (unseasonably) warm during the day but there will be frost tomorrow night. I took out the tomato plants and harvested all the butternut squash. Over the next week or so, I will get an area ready for planting my garlic. I still have chard, kale, radishes, beets, fall greens, leeks, carrots and flowers growing.
Late October Harvest
September
Things are winding down in the garden. I have only a few tomatoes still on the vines. Still growing are winter squash, chard, kale, and leeks. On the right side of the plot I have my recently sown radishes, fall greens, beets and carrots. Plus flowers everywhere.
More Fall Sowing
Today, I sowed one row each mache (seeds were from 2020, so my hopes of germination are extremely low), komatsuna (also known as Japanese mustard spinach) and French Breakfast radishes in the plot. I had sowed some radishes yesterday in containers on the back porch. The winter lettuce (Landis) I had sown about two weeks ago unfortunately never germinated. I have two rows of fall greens coming up (lettuces, chards, kale, arugula, mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, spinach, endive), plus two rows of beets (one Golden, one Chioggia) and a (spotty) row of early carrots. My plan is to have the mache and komatsuna overwinter under a row cover. And perhaps the fall greens as well. We shall see.