City Mouse Moves to the Country

We finally realized our dream and bought our country home in the Sierra Foothills.  Follow me on my new gardening journey with a new blog.

City Mouse Diggs the Foothills

Raised Bed Remodel

I thought it was time to remodel the garden and improve upon my raised beds.  Originally I had planned to install redwood raised beds, but the price tag was a bit hard to swallow.  So I went with a heavy border material.  To the left of the photo, you see the raised stone area where the new double barreled compost bin will sit.

 PVC Pipe mini greenhouse set-up for seedlings.

I think I went a little overboard with the tomato and pepper plants.  These guys are now moved into the greenhouse outside and I am preparing to get the Okra, Squash and Beans started.

 Red Mustard Greens and Collard Greens in my large grow bag.  These guys seem to love the partially processed compost that I buried in the bottom.  I thought the trenching method of composting might work well in the grow bags.

 
More Collard Greens and Indian Green Mustard Greens.

Oranges! Oranges! Oranges!

The recent deep freeze that we've had in Northern California in the last few weeks meant pulling the oranges off the Navel Orange tree in a hurry.  We ended up with about 45 lbs. of ripe oranges.  The next question, was what to do with all of these oranges.  Last year I made 35 jars of orange jam and orange marmalade, so that is definitely out.

I dehydrated peeled orange pieces for healthy snacks.  3/4" round slices were dehydrated at 130 degrees for 28 hours (yes, a long time). I vacuum seal oranges in mason jars as they tend to get crushed using the vacuum sealer bags...and they look so pretty in the jars.

Dehydrated Orange Pieces

Full orange slice were dehydrated for pretty decorations and flavoring in water, punches or Sangria (yumm).

  The internet was full of recipes and raves for this Orange Vinegar Cleaner.  It is simply orange peels submerged in vinegar (white or apple cidar) for 10 days.  I haven't tried this yet (only on day 4), but I will update you once I've tried it.

Orange Vinegar Cleaner

 I also found a recipe for using dehydrated ground orange peels as a garden fertilizer and bug/cat repellent. I will try this and see how it works.  It's supposed to be great for getting rid of aphids and repelling cats.  However, my dad brought to my attention that it would be easier to just throw the peelings in the compost than exert the energy required to dehydrate them and apply to the soil as fertilizer.

Orange Fertilizer

 Instead of zesting the orange peels and then drying them, I used a vegetable peeler to remove the peelings with the pith and dehydrated them.  They dehydrate quickly ( 6 - 8 hours at 130 degrees).  I then powdered them using my blender (a coffee grinder or other device will work as well).

Dehydrated Orange Zest

I also water bath canned 24 pint jars of fresh orange slices in a light syrup.

So, that's it so far, but we still have a whole 2nd tree whose oranges will be ready in a few months...hmmm what to do, what do do?

Oranges, Oranges, Oranges!

The oranges are coming in well this year despite the several hard frosts we've had.  The naval oranges came in first and I've been working diligently to preserve them and give them to family and friends.

I've been trying various ways to preserve the massive amounts of oranges we get because orange juice doesn't maintain very well nor freeze very well. Dehydrating worked well but, took too long and when rehydrated they were pretty tasteless.

I attempted a short cut to Orange Marmalade that I found on YouTube...basically cutting up the oranges and putting them through the food processor.  Yuck too much pith...and it took forever to jell. So, I tossed that batch uut I then went the tried and true method of peeling the oranges and juicing them after peeling.

I wanted to try and see if I could use every part of the orange and found a recipe for candied orange peel.  After boiling the peels several times to remove the bitterness, I  cooked them in a simple syrup and tossed with sugar.  I then put them in the food dehydator to dry.  Very good treat.  If you want less sweet, omit the tossing sugar coating . 

6 lbs of oranges made 8 jars of marmalade, 11 jars of jam, and 1 jar of orange simple syrup (I'm thinking for iced or hot tea). Compost bin got the pith.

Next week...Orange Curd and Orange slices in syrup.

Canned Tomatoes

My Super Marzano paste tomatoes came in and ripened so much faster than the other slicer tomatoes.  I purchased a new dehydrator earlier this summer and I am absolutely loving it! It's a Sedona digital 10 tray contraption that is programmable and very quiet.  Anyhow, I began drying the paste tomatoes and decided to can both the tomatoes I froze for sauce last summer and the fresh ones coming in.

Thawed and Peeled Pineapple Tomatoes

I stumbled on a tomato jam recipe and tried my luck. Actually turned out pretty good. I pureed the tomatoes and cooked them down with cinnamon sticks, a bit of lemon zest, sugar and pectin.

Tomato Jam

I also canned chopped tomatoes in tomato juice.  Had I known that canning the tomatoes in tomato juice required a 45 minute boiling water bath I'm pretty sure that I would have opted for plain water and 15 minutes as warm as it was outside.

Of that batch only 5 of the 8 sealed correctly and I ended up having to refrigerate them.  That night I went on Amazon and purchased a Pressure Canner...enough is enough.

I've got a new batch of tomatoes this week, so I will try out my Pressure Canner and see what happens.

Finally!

After a 6 month winter, my growing season is finally here.  This was the weirdest spring we've seen in a long while here in Sacramento.  So much so that I had actually thought about not growing a garden at all this year.  The poor little tomatoes I dropped in the ground in May struggled with the many wet storms and cold weather.  Just when I was ready to give up summer hit us like a brick and in two weeks my garden went from pitiful to plentiful.

I planted corn on a whim this year although I've always believed that it's not worth the garden space that it takes up.  I planted white against the back fence and yellow on the side.  Yes, the two are way too close together, but what the heck let them cross breed (it's not that serious for me especially for something I planted on a whim.

 It seems like I walked outside today and that pitiful garden had blooms all around it.  I swear the tomatoes seemed to have grown 3 feet overnight and there are actually tomatoes and squash out there.

Marzanno Paste Tomato

Collard Greens and Tarragon

I decided to shake things up and interplant my herbs amongst the vegetable to up my anti-bad-bug battle.  I used cedar bark to mulch this year although my other half says I'm going to regret it.  I think it looks good, smells good and I'll worry about it breaking down in December :).

California Bell Pepper

This is the first year the slugs and snails haven't devoured the poor pepper plants before they had time to grow and thrive.  Ha...ok thanks to the generous sprinkle of Corey's ( my only deviation from my organic gardening, cause the green friendly stuff just doesn't do it..the snails laugh at it.. believe me I've seen them:))

Lemon Grass

Remember when I said, I walked outside and everything seemed to bloom overnight.  Well I wasn't kidding, the squash got a little bigger than they were supposed to.

Eightball and Scallop Squash

I'm seeing a bit of powdery mildew on the squash leaves..hmm going to have to watch the overhead watering.

The eggplant still isn't happy.  Hopefully these hot days will help it come around.

I planted horseradish, now I just need to figure out how to harvest it and what to do with it after that.  

We planted these artichokes early last year, but this is the first time we've seen any artichokes on it.  It's partner plant next to it looks like it's on it's last leg.  Survival of the fittest I guess.

Butternut Squash

Trellising the winter squash worked great last year, so I'm sticking to what worked.

Ready to start finding new ways to cook, can, dry, freeze the bounty of our garden...

Gingered Green Tomato Spread

An abundance of green tomatoes, about 15 lbs. forced me to look for green tomato recipes.  On my recent visit to Apple Hill, I picked up a tomato cookbook that had about 10 recipes for green tomatoes. One of those recipes was for Gingered Tomato Preserves.

Ingredients: Green Tomatoes, Red Tomatoes, Fresh Ginger, Sugar, Salt, Ground Cloves, Nutmeg, Sliced Lemons, Fruit Pectin

We haven't tasted this yet as it takes approximately 2 weeks to set.