Home Grown Kidney Beans

When shopping for seeds at the feed store this past spring, I saw a package of kidney bean seeds.  I've never grown them before and thought it might be a fun experiment.

Marc planted three rows of kidney beans, next to the regular bush beans.  The bean pods took a bit longer to flower and set than other varieties but otherwise, they looked very similar.

I had the idea that I would pick them as they matured and can them without having to dry, soak, cook, etc. As I said, I'd never done it before, but had this bright idea.  Turns out, that's not how it works at all.

There's really not a lot of info out there on raising these types of beans.  I'm guessing that's because not many people do it nowadays.  Everything I read said to leave the pods on the plant until dry, shell and store.  That was about it.

As a couple of beans matured, I picked them and ate them raw.  Nothing to write home about.  As I did a little more googling I learned that eating raw kidney beans will make you sick! Supposedly even a few will produce vomiting, diarrhea, etc.  I literally learned that right after I'd eaten those few raw ones.  I waited for the violet illness to set in but it didn't happen thankfully.  I'm pretty sure I'd have thrown them all out. Anyway, they must be well cooked before eating.

For the most part, all the beans were ready at once and before I knew it they were all dry on the plants.  It was a very simple harvest job - just grab the dry bean pods and dump them in a bucket for later shelling. Unlike the fresh eating beans, the dry pods are brown and stand out against the green bush, making them easy to spot.  There were a few green ones still not dry when I harvested them, so I popped out those beans and put them in the dehydrator for a bit to get good and dry before storing.

We had 3 rows about 25 feet long total, and harvested 5 pounds of beans.  That may not sound like much but again this was only 3 small rows.  The beauty of the whole thing is you drop in the seed and walk away until they're dry on the bush.  So little effort, unlike the fresh green beans, which have to be picked as they mature and canned, these can sit around until it's convenient to deal with them.  At the height of harvest and canning season, it was nice to have something that I didn't have to worry about going bad before I could deal with it.

I made a pot of chili with some the other night and they were quite good.  Maybe it's my imagination but I think they were better than store-bought.  ; )

Paprika Peppers

Fresh Paprika Peppers

This year's tomato crop would probably seem large to most people, but it was a small one for us.  We had about 125 plants in all - about 1/3 of the usual number.  The first few trays of seedlings died (due to operator error).  So, since the harvest would be smaller, salsa was the number one product we wanted to put up.

I have shared the Salsa Recipe I use before, but for the last couple of years we have been adding something extra - about 1 tablespoon of SMOKED paprika.  This really is the best salsa we've ever made, and really the smoked paprika is the difference.

We have canned about 65 jars of salsa and that's got to last us till next tomato season. That's just slightly over 1 jar per week. In our minds, that's not much at all!

I had never tried smoked papriks until sister Dana picked some up at a really neat spice and meat processing supply shop called Townsend Spice in Melbourne, Arkansas, and ever since I tried it, I'm hooked.  I love it. 

I set out on a quest to make my own smoked paprika.  It seemed simple enough - find paprika pepper seeds, plant them, harvest peppers, smoke, dry, grind, etc.

The first challenge was finding paprika pepper seeds.  I only found a couple of different sources on the internet.  I ended up buying seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  They carry two varieties, and I bought the Leutschauer Paprika Pepper.  They are supposedly originally from Hungary.  The package contained only 25 seeds and almost all seeds germinated.  The plants stayed quite small (probably because we neglected the seedlings) but produced a lot of peppers.  They are a lipstick red when ripe. 

Peppers in the dehydrator

The fresh and dried peppers are too hot for my taste, even though I remove the seeds and membranes before drying.  My next experiment will be to cook the peppers before drying them.  Cooked jalapenos don't seem nearly as hot so I am hoping this will help the paprikas as well.

Zucchini... out the Wazoo

 

 

I've often heard that you can't kill squash and zucchini and that you're inundated with them when you grown them.  I've never had the best of luck with them in the past.  The only reason we have so many fruits is that we have a lot of  plants. 

 

Stink bugs seem to be everywhere here and they love to eat everything, especially squash.  Plus it seems like several fruits on each plant mold.  So if we only had a few plants we wouldn't have much squash or zucchini to eat I'm sure.  I think we have about 20 plants producing right now and more coming up. And butternut squash are about 7 inches long.  Fingers crossed that nothing eats them!

 

Every couple of days I am blanching and freezing them.  In the pic above I have 9+ pounds bagged up ready for the freezer.  We're eating it fresh just about every day too.  We may get tired of it soon, but in the winter we will be happy to have lots of it in the freezer.

 

I made fried zucchini the other night and they turned out good, even though I forgot to add salt.  I made them by dredging the slices first in seasoned flour, then dipping them in beaten egg, then a final coating in panko crumbs.  My thermometer broke so I had to wing it on the temp.  As you can see they are a wee bit darker than I would prefer.  I made home made sour cream ranch to dip them in.  Yummy.

 

I am weighing or talllying up everything that we put up this year.  I've tried in the past and petered out but I am determined to get a grand total on everything that we put up this year.  Stay tuned for more exciting posts on vegetables . . .

 



Getting Ready for Spring Gardening

We started our first seedlings in early January.  It didn't take long to run out of space.  I had tried to economize by buying the smaller seed trays (from Johnny's) but it became evident fairly quickly that I would have to repot them in peat pots as they outgrew the seed trays.  Annoying. 

Anyway, we have hundreds of seedlings growing nicely.  Keep your fingers crossed that they'll all grow in the garden!  Marc already tilled two of the three gardens so they're ready to hill up and plant. 

We can't wait to get started and get some fresh vegetables growing.  But wait we must.  We are used to a USDA zone 8-9 in Texas, in which gardening could be done year round.  It's a bit different here.  We're in zone 6B.  Without a good greenhouse, nothing can be grown outside in winter.  In Texas, potatoes were traditionally planted on Valentine's Day but here it's St. Patrick's Day - a full month later!

Strawberries

Marc planted about 200 or so everbearing strawberry plants last year.  This year they have really produced a lot of fruit.  We've picked lots and there are more blooms on the plants.  We lost some in the drought but remarkably most of the plants survived.  These particular berries ("Eversweet" variety from Womack Nursery) is ok, but not the sweetest berry I've ever had.  The supposedly produce well in this area, which is why we tried them.  The idea of the everbearing type of berry seems like it would work well  - you get a steady supply of berries throughout the season.  However, even with 200 plants we only get about 1/2 gallon every other day or so.  Of course, we lose some berries to birds and bugs.  Considering that we don't use any chemicals on these berries, I think they've done really well.  I think the next time we plant strawberries we'll plant the "June bearing" type, which gives you a lot of berries over a short period. 

We've been enjoying the berries fresh as well as in strawberry milkshakes.  I made some strawberry frozen yogurt in my cuisinart ice cream maker - it was super easy.  I bought some fat free yogurt at Kroger for $1 for about a quart (the expiration date was coming up so they wanted to get rid of it), added about 2 cups pureed strawberries, sugar, milk, and vanilla.  I also poured a little of this mixture into some popsicle molds and froze them.  Rylan and Journey liked them.  I've been freezing sliced strawberries in portion sized containers and pureed berries in 2 cup size containers for making jam. 

I have tried the various pectin products available in the stores and never really liked the way the jams turned out.  I don't like jelly so I never make it.  I have seen Pomona's Pectin in the health food store but it was a little pricey, so I never tried it.  I wasn't sure if I would have any greater success with it, so I didn't want to spend the extra money on it.  They claim you can use less sugar and one box makes several recipes.  I got in on Dana's coop purchase not too long ago and they carry the Pomona's Pectin from the coop that Dana buys from, it was much cheaper than the store.  It does in fact make several batches from one box, so it really turns out to be cheaper than the store pectins.  It jelled really well, almost too well.  Next time I will not cook it quite so long. 

With the Pomona's Pectin you mix up some calcium (included in the box) with water and keep it refrigerated.  It lasts a long time (months).  Somehow this calcium makes the pectin jell better.  Anyway, other than the calcium, the method is pretty much the same as any other pectin product.  I was able to use less than half the usual amount of sugar.  With the usual recipes, you basically end up with fruit flavored sugar.  With this method, you can actually taste the fruit. 

Mash & measure the fruit

Bring fruit to boil, have sugar/pectin mix ready



Getting ready to process the jam in a boiling water bath canner



Finished jam

Rylan enjoying Grandma & Granda Krause's Strawberry Jam

Onion Harvest

Wow, check out the great onion crop! Marc planted about 400 onions and most of them made it. We've been using them and have sold some and we still have about 350 or so. We have white, yellow and red.

Marc has really big hands so they make these onions look average-sized.

But just look at the weight - 1-1/4 pounds!!! I think onion rings will be on the menu this weekend.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Remember when I said I wanted enuf Salsa to last the whole year, and how I wanted to try to produce all the tomato products we needed? Well, I have 62 jars of Salsa so far, so I'm pretty good on that, and have about 42 jars of tomato sauce, so next will be stewed tomatoes. Last night I made Salsa Verde (green that is) from Yellow Pear Tomatoes. I thought it would end up yellow, but apparently the color is in the skin, which is discarded when making salsa. This was SO easy - no coring or chopping - just drop them in the hopper and grind away.

SO, this is what I saw when I walked in the door tonight. All I could say was OMG. Mary came over, walked in and said OMG. Seriously, have you ever seen so many tomatoes from ONE picking???

The Perfect Day

For those of you UP NORTH... the temp was in the mid- 70's today! I wore flip flops outside! I managed to get a lot done:

• laundry (all of it!)
• clean the kitchen
• organize the laundry closet (yes, I know it's not terribly exciting but it needed doing and I can get more STUFF in there now)
• sewing
• pruned all the fruit trees, crepe myrtles and other assorted trees
• Marc tilled up a flower bed around a crepe myrtle and we planted some daffodils, daylillies and irises that we've had in pots for THREE YEARS in the new bed and around the well house
• enjoyed the sunshine (right now I'm sitting in a rocker on the front porch looking out over the pond enjoying the sound of the birds)

When we sold the house in town we potted up some plants that I had in the yard. It never dawned on me that three years later the flowering plants would still be in the pots. What's really cool is most of those plants were in the yard when I bought that house, but had been neglected for so long they had pretty much quit blooming. I divided them and moved them and they took off. The irises were salvaged from some trash bags that someone had set out for collection after digging up flower beds in their yard. One man's trash is another's treasure.

I haven't had flowers in so long - I am really excited about that. I loved having roses and other flowers in the yard. I vowed that I wouldn't plant anything until I had my picket fence. Marc says he's going to tackle it soon....

Meanwhile, the trees are budding out. The fruit trees will have blooms soon and the bees will be buzzing. If we don't get another freeze, I may have some apricots!

2010 Garden

Here in Texas gardening is a year round activity. Right now we have lettuce ("Spring Mix" (leaf lettuce) and Red Romaine) and radishes in the garden and we're having salads just about every night. We also have carrots, broccoli, swiss chard, cabbage, cauliflower and who knows what else growing right now. I just cooked the last of the butternut squash the other night (I'll post a couple of my favorite recipes soon).

While it's nice to have fresh winter vegetables, it's more exciting harvesting vine-ripened tomatoes. Marc has started enough seed trays to plant 1/4 acre of tomatoes! Like Blue Bell we plan to eat all we can and sell the rest.

Here's a picture of the seed starting stand he built using PVC pipe and grow lights holding about 12 flats of seeds. We need about 2 more of these units.

What Feels like Autumn in Texas is What Summer is Like Everywhere Else in the US

Today when I got up I went out on the back porch to have coffee and the temperature was 68 degrees! I can't remember the last time it was that cool! The high was around 90, which isn't TOO bad, considering we just went through a horrible drought and heat wave, where the lows were around 85.

I got quite a bit planted in the garden today: spinach, beets, swiss chard, carrots, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, sugar pie pumpkin, and sugar beets.

I am hoping that we won't get an early frost and I'll be able to harvest the winter squash I planted today. I'm going to plant more butternut squash tomorrow. They grow like weeds. I have a laundry basket full of butternut squash already and more to pick tomorrow. I am going to make muffins out of some tomorrow. With the abundance of the all the squash I am going to try some new recipes. Maybe I'm going overboard with the butternut squash but I refush to buy any high priced store squash again! The last time I went to buy one at the store it rang up $4.50. I told the clerk to take it off - I'm not paying $4.50 for ONE squash!!! It wasn't even organic! So that weekend I planted the first butternut squash and they've done great.

I have some acorn squash "making" right now. The variety is Honey Bear and they're a miniature "personal" size. I think they will be perfect for two servings.

So, sugar beets you may be wondering. I have had this weird fascination with sugar beets, so I finally found a source for seed. Supposedly they grow to be huge and we can cut them up and feed them to whatever animals we have.

Here are some garden pics:

This is the new field that Marc worked up a month or so ago. You can see eggplant on the left. These rows are 100' long. On the right is a row of French cantaloupe. I have never tried them and can't wait. Supposedly it's the best melon you can grow. The seeds were quite expensive, so I started them in seed trays so I wouldn't waste any of them. The cantaloupe we grew over the summer were very good - SO different from store-bought melons! The butternut squash over-ran the melons so I missed a few and they got overripe, but Pig-Pig LOVED them. He even ate the rinds.

Fall tomatoes. Our timing on our spring crop was way off, so I am hopeful that we'll get a nice fall crop. We have a LOT of them. I've lost track of exactly how many. Note the plastic. Mulch is the only way to go. We just can't stay ahead of the weeds without it. Marc put down irrigation first which has really made it easy to keep everything watered.

This is my Earthway Seeder. I got it from Johnny's Seeds with a gift certificate from Stephanie. It has "plates" sized for different seeds. You pour your seeds in the hopper and start walking. Talk about a back saver!! It drops the seeds at perfect intervals and covers and tamps down the dirt too.

We live about 125 miles from the coast and yet our pond has had a flock of whooping cranes on it for the past week. We could drive back and forth over the dam and they stayed in the pond, but flew off if we walked along it. They probably got every catfish in the pond. Yesterday Marc snapped a few pics of the birds (I really want a telephoto lens!!) and today they're gone.

As we drove by the pond today we saw yet another water bird. It was pink like a flamingo, but had a spoon shaped bill. Marc says it's a Spoonbill. We saw them at Freeport. I need to get a bird watchers book for Texas.

Our bell pepper plants are still going strong even after the drought. We have gallons stored in the freezer. This picture shows just one picking!

Here's a pic of Marc starting a spring garden on Feb. 29, 2008. I took these pics from the loft balcony. He had a load of mushroom compost delivered and you can see it's in the middle of the garden. That stuff is like black gold. It seemed like we couldn't kill the plants if we tried - they grew so well. We planted tomatoes, including grape tomatoes for the first time ever, potatoes, peppers (jalapeno and banana), onions, radishes, lettuce (mix of several varieties), spinach, summer squash and cucumbers. We were able to put up some tomato sauce (which is finally all gone), dill pickles (gone), bread & butter pickles, salsa, pickled peppers, and tons of frozen squash. Mary and I made salsa together in her kitchen. We were over run with tomatoes at that time. I was able to can pickles and tomato sauce while living in the camper. We set up the "turkey fryer" in front of the camper and put the water bath canner on that. I figure if we could do as well living in a camper and working on the house at the same time we should be able to produce a whole lot more next year. When we starting doing finish work in the house (around May-July 2008) we abandoned the garden. Marc tilled under everything a week or so ago to get ready for a fall garden. But believe it or not, as of today's date, Nov. 22, the peppers are still going strong. It's crazy. We're going to set out brussels sprouts tomorrow. We have "salad" seeds on order. It will be nice to have "free" salads again. That stuff is $3-4 in the stores. When we had it going in the garden last spring we'd go out with a colander, and pick what we wanted for dinner. It was really nice having a "salad bar" in the garden. One day I went out there and some bug or other had totally decimated the spinach. That's what happens I guess when you ignore it for a week and expect everything to be as you left it when you go back. I've never been able to grow summer squash before, so it was a real treat to have all we could eat fresh. Those squash kept growing until Marc finally took a hoe to them to till this fall. It was like some kind of "Day of the Triffids" thing - they would not quit growing! We were so busy with the house that we just quit picking them but those crazy plants just wouldn't die. Ditto with the tomatoes. We planted a variety called "Celebrity" and they just kept coming. Of course, SOMEONE planted them too close, then never did get around to staking them... so they sort of sprawled all over the place. Despite that, almost all of those tomatoes looked perfect. We didn't have as good luck with the Roma variety. For whatever reason (again, perhaps the spacing issue??) they developed blossom end rot on most of them. The grape tomatoes still have flowers. It's crazy. They were very easy to grow but a lot of work harvesting cause they're so small.