Heeling in fruit trees

Jake and I have been evaluating our major food purchases from last year. Aside from grain which we can't grow in quantity, we spent most of our money on fruit. We can grow soft fruits like straw-,rasp- and blueberries. Our freak show (5 graft) apple has started to produce some fruit but other than that we purchase most stone fruit, like peaches and cherries. So with that said I made a pretty impressive purchase of fruit trees that we intend to espalier along all fences. If we allow 8' for each tree we can roughly get 20 trees on site! I just purchased 10 trees and 4 current bushes. In other fruit tree news, our neighbors got a shipment of fruit trees last year and by shipment I mean over 100 trees! It helps to know orchard people... anyway they've agreed to give us our pick once they see what survives this winter. They were hoping to get 15 full size trees and had a jaw dropping moment when several packages with TONS of trees arrived. Being slightly overwhelmed they just trenched them in and were going to prep the ground for their orchard this spring. Long story short, we'll get some leftovers!

So my list of newly purchased fruities goes like this: All are on dwarfing root stocks.

Current- Red Lake- 4 bushes
Apple- Honey Crisp
Plum- Japanese Elephant Heart
Cherry- Craig's Crimson
Lapins
Stella
Peach- Redhaven
Red Baron
Nectarine- White Arctic Jay
Pear- European Comice
European Bosc

I know the neighbors for sure have an excess of plums and apricots, so I decided to purchase the trees I know I love and crap shoot with the free trees. Here they are being "heeled in" in our garage. The trees are still dormant so I raised a pot off the ground so the cement wouldn't cool the roots too much and basically planted 5 trees to a pot until the ground thaws. They should keep just fine for a month until the ground thaws enough to dig holes. *Fingers crossed*

I do want to purchase some blackberries which is one soft fruit we don't have growing yet. But I think I'll try and find a type I like at a nursery locally, maybe thornless? We do have a grape growing called Himrod but with a late frost last year all it's top growth was killed and it had to come back from the roots. We'll see if it had enough time to bulk up before winter, I do hope it survives.

In a constant busy state

Life is crazy right now! It's not all work and no fun though. I've been in demolition stages of the garden for the last week. Pulling plants out that are done and generally harvesting everything I can get my hands on.

Our tomatillo plants did not like this really cold weather, the whole plant started to yellow and look generally unhappy about the arrival of fall, so I harvested everything. Like a complete geek I forgot to weigh the end result so I'd have some idea of what we pulled from 4 plants. My best guess is about 15 pounds or less, that is loosely based on how heavy the basket was bringing the haul into the house. Here is the husked and about to be washed tomatillos. They almost filled the sink.

Yesterday I pulled almost our entire bush bean harvest. It consisted of Montezuma's Red, Hutterite Soup, and Black Valentine they are red, white, and black respectively. I am not worried about keeping the plants straight because the beans are so obviously different. So I dumped them in a giant pile and got to hulling the bean pods off the plant (mom helped with this big pile.... thanks mom.)

In other exciting news..... look it's our first grape harvest!! Although I am not sure if harvest is really the right word for it.

We intend to make a very small bottle of wine..... HA HA! We tried it though and it could've stayed on the plant about a week or two longer and they'd have been a bit sweeter. Still, we are looking forward to next year when we may actually have some to eat!

Canning and fruit stuff

I've been doing a TON of canning, herb drying, fruit dehydrating and such. So far I've canned;

Dill Pickles
Bread and Butter Pickles (for mom)
Green Beans : Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
Gingered Zucchini Preserves
Balsamic Caramelized Onions
Jerked Onion
Dried White/Black/Garbonzo Beans
Peaches in light syrup: Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
Summer Solstice Jam: Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving ( I let the jam over heat so it's similar to leather... no matter, I'll find something to do with it...)

That's just this week mind you....

I've also got cherries out in the solar dehydrator and I have peaches to cut up and dehydrate or freeze for oatmeal.

Our little tri-star strawberry patch is producing like mad house right now. They are a late ever bearing strawberry that is small and sweet. We're rooting some of the daughter plants right now to place into our old June bearing strawberry bed. I can't remember the name of the June bearer but it did nothing 2 years in a row, so it can no longer take up garden space. Jake and I ripped it out and are going to plant the tri-star daughters in it's place. If the second bed produces as much as the first one, we should be rich in strawberries next year.

The raspberry patch is doing really good this year. Well half of it is, the bed runs slightly up hill and the up hill quarter of the bed does produce raspberries but they are not as sweet. We're not sure what to do about supplemental water for that part of the patch. This is the first year of actual raspberry production, we let it get a little out of control until july then we had to cut some of the shoots that were leaning way out into the walk way. Next year, now we know better, we'll keep better control of the patch and help the shoots to grow straighter by tying them up.

Only one of our grapes survived the winter. Our freakshow apple has one branch with apples so big it needs support. All the other branches have maybe 4-5 apples on it though. So we'll most definitely need to get apples from elsewhere.

The herbs I have drying on the front rack are: purple and green sage, some basil, marjoram, winter savory, rosemary, thyme, and 2 types of mint. I am waiting for more basil to come in so I can make my own Italian seasoning (this is what you get when your husband was raised solely on pasta.) I didn't plant any parsley or cilantro this year because I still have some from last year. I still need to harvest some marigold flowers and lavender as well.

Our intention this weekend is to rob the bees of some honey.... pictures/videos will document the wild rumpus!

Strawberry Harvest

Our goal was to keep up with plucking the flowers off the the strawberries the first year, in order to give them adequate root growing time. About late July we gave up because the job of plucking strawberry flowers was over whelming. These are from our ever bearing crop, and boy are they ever!




These pictures were taken on wednesday the 16th. Yesterday I picked at least this much if not more. And even before that we've harvested a small bowl. If this warm weather keeps up we could have fresh strawberries right up to frost! Fresh strawberry yogurt! Local milk, local honey, very local strawberries! Life is good!

Raspberry Jam

Well it is as promised a recipe for canning stuff. We did this about 2-3 weeks ago I know it's late but here goes. I made 2 different recipes because I have a brother who doesn't eat any processed sugar, so I had to attempt a wholly honey sweetened raspberry jam. Both were delicious! I do favor the sugar one only because honey tends to be a stronger flavor and there was a hint of it in the jam. Ok to the goods.....

bloggers note: For all my jams everything I add is either local or organic all of the fruit I have access to isn't organic accept the raspberries, so truly this is my only organic and local jam. Feels good.


Traditional Raspberry Jam (my way)

11 C. Mashed Raspberries ( I used a potato masher, rather nice for aggressions)
2 C. Honey (local please, don't by that shit from China even if it is cheeper)
1 C. Sugar
Pomona's Universal Pectin which allows for the drastic underuse of sugar to fruit ratio. This pectin is activated by the calcium rather than sugar like traditional recipes.
5 tsp. Calcium water comes with the pectin
5 tsp. Pectin

Heat mashed raspberries and calcium until bubbly. In a separate bowl mix pectin with sugar/honey this helps the pectin dissolve in the raspberries when you add it. Once it's bubbly add the pectin/sweets mix and re-bubbly it. Have your sterilized jars/lids/rings ready to go and the water bath boiling. To test if the jam is "set" to your liking I put a small dish in the freezer before I begin. After the jam has everything in it and is bubbling away, I take a spoonful and dump it on the freezer dish and put it back in the freezer for about 1 minute. This just brings the bubbly jam down to room temp quickly so you can see if you like how thick or runny it is. It was perfect so we moved onto the packing jars, lids, rings and get them in the water bath! We boiled ours for 12 minutes. Adding 1 minute for every 1,000 feet above sea level you are. I didn't write down how many 1/2 pints it made but I think it was around 12.


Jason's Raspberry Jam

This is the only honey recipe and it is a very small batch. It yielded 5 half pints.

4 C. Mashed Raspberries
1 3/4 C. Honey
2 tsp. Calcium
2 tsp. Pectin

Everything to process is the same as above, only I would have cheated and added about 3 Tbl. of sugar to help the pectin dissolve. It wouldn't blend with the honey and I ended up with pectin clumps that I had to squish. It slowed the process down considerably.

Cherry Jam With Pomona's Universal Pectin

We had a busy week thus far. Mostly along the lines of canning and dehydrating cherries. I made a cherry jam with the new Pomona's Universal Pectin. I must say I am very impressed with it. Here's the recipe:

Cherry Jam

10 c. Blended Cherries (not sure how much I started out with since I just grabbed and blended)
2 1/2 c. Sugar ( I only used this much to make it sweet and to help bring out the flavor that can be lost by canning)
6 tsp. Pectin
10 tsp. Calcium water (this activates the pectin and comes with the package)

Place blended cherries in a big pot, add the calcium water to the mix, heat it up to bubbling (just like any jam). In a separate bowl mix sugar and pectin. Once the cherries are boiling add the sugar/pectin mix it and return to boiling. Test the mixture for "set", I usually put a small dish in the freezer to cool the jam for an accurate test. Scoop off any foam on the top. Ladle jam into hot half pint jars, put the lids on and water bath process for 12 minutes. It made 13 half pints.

The jam is very firm, I am not that fond of cherry jam so I haven't tried it accept for the original test. But my family says it VERY good! I intend to do the same with raspberry jam later in the week. I haven't figured out the cost per jar of jam but I will do that, considering I only used 6 tsp of pectin and 2.5 cups of sugar.... in just supplies the cherry jam is cheaper than the strawberry.

The strawberry recipe is Here.

Strawberry Fruit Leather

What's with the recipes? Anyway a fruit leather recipe that is totally easy!

Strawberry Fruit Leather

1.5 lb. strawberries ( I kinda guessed on this.... I don't know maybe 5 cups)
3 TBL. Honey
Dash of fruit fresh to help it "keep" longer

Pick off greens and wash strawberries. Place in a pot, mash with potato masher until pulpy. Cook on medium heat until it reaches about 160* or slightly bubbling, (just before a rolling boil) this is to kill any germs. Add the honey and mix well. Place in a food processor or a blender until liquid.





Line 2 baking trays with plastic wrap. I have smaller 9 x 11 baking trays you may need to up the strawberries if you have giant ones. Pour an even mixture of the strawberry liquid onto the baking tray about 1/4 of an inch thick.



Place the trays in the dehydrator (plans coming I swear) or in the oven on low. Mine were done in about 7 hours, the temp out side was about 88* so the temp in the dehydrator was 120* or more. Remove from plastic wrap or roll the fruit into the plastic wrap and store.

A useful website about strawberry preserving.

Chaos season... I mean canning season begins

Last year was my first ever canning year. I learned a lot, like patience, grasshopper, patience, also get it fast because the goods are going quick. I could kick myself for our laziness with cherries last year. Anyhow! Canning.

Our jam last year was runny, mostly because I didn't want to use TONS of sugar to make the jam "set" right. I found upon sleuthing Sure-Jell "pink" allows you to make jam using little to NO sugar! WOO HOO. Only the "no" sugar option is reserved for Splenda. YUCK! Regardless we were still able to use 1/2 the sugar the normal pectin calls for to "set" the jam.

Our reciepe:

8 cups of mashed strawberries
4 cups of (organic, fair trade, sugar)
1 package of Sure-jell pink box pectin
Sprinkle of Fruit Fresh (instead of lemon juice, helps the fruit stay color or keep from browning.)

From there we followed all the directions at Pick Your Own. This website has all the pictures and step by step instructions. We fudged on the recipe a little, it should be 6 cups of strawberries to 4 cups of sugar, but that was too sweet for us.

Which brings me to my most recent discovery. The Sure-Jell pectin from above is close to $3 per box. Which in the long run is expensive. So I tried to search out low to no sugar pectin in bulk. I discovered Pomona's Universal Pectin.

According to some forums I searched this is THE pectin to use. If you do a lot of canning (jam/jelly) this is the cheapest solution in the long run. It comes in 1 oz. 1/2 lb. and 1 lb. boxes. But here is the kick! It is so strong that 1 oz will make 2-4 batches of jam depending on the size batch of jam your making. The Sure-Jell (1 oz. package ) will make 1 batch of the above recipe. The only down side is you must weigh it out, because it is in bulk. It won't be an issue for me because I have a kitchen scale.

I bought some of the Pomona's Pectin for future batches of jam, I'll review it after I try it OK?



Our 36 lb. of Strawberries ended up in 15 pints of Jam and 18 lb. of vacuum sealed for freezer and future use. We plant to go back up and get more for right now eating and possibly more jam... gifts maybe?

Strawberry Picking 2009

This year we utilized our lovely Green Bluff Growers again! Only decided to try Knapps Farm this year. They had a giant field of strawberries, which was good because we crawled all over it like ants to honey! They had 3 types growing, only two were ready to pick. I don't remember the names, and didn't care because hello? IT'S STRAWBERRIES!! AHHHH! Fruit is officially rolling in and I am stupidly excited about it.



We ended up with 36 glorious pounds of strawberries! It took us about 2 hours to pick as much but we were being really choosy.

Fruit Trees and Blueberries

Just some quick pics about the fruit bearing tree/shrubs. All of them have been placed into the ground. The fruit trees in the front, with more room for 2 more (we are still deciding on what they will be) and the blueberries in the back yard next to the fence. We wanted to find a spot for them that would stay somewhat sheltered blueberries are notoriously difficult to grow where I am, we really want to make them stick around!

Tree's

In the front the cherry, behind and to the right the apple, and behind and to the left the peach (which is hard to see). 

Blueberries

There are 3 there.  From left to right Bluegold, Northland and another Bluegold.

Freak show apple

I wanted to post a picture of our 'science experiment' apple tree. See all the tags on it, each of them represent a graft. Each graft equalling a different type of apple tree. All of these are grafted onto a dwarf root stock, thus making the apple a dwarf freak show. I can't wait, it should produce yellow, red/green, and red fruit all on the same tree. 

The trees we planted last week are doing good, the apple and cherry are both leafing out and showing signs of progress. The peach however is looking kinda sad. I think when it was removed from it's original location and shipped to me somewhere along the way one of it's main roots was broken. I am fairly certain it will survive but struggle this first year. 

I have tons to post but little time to do it, but I promise I'll get it up here.

Fruit tree decision

Well I just did it. Yep I purchased the fruit trees that will make an orchard of the front lawn. Who says you need grass? I got them from RainTree Nursery. This lovely nursery sold me all the fruit that is currently growing (accept for the grapes... they are still asleep) in the garden. The fruit we eat the most are cherries, apples and peaches. No citrus grows where we are so when the mood strikes in December we usually buy some. The varieties I chose are as follows.

Dwarf Apple stock with 4 different apple grafts. The apple needs other apples to pollinate with, I have limited room for 2 apples so I opted to go with a "science experiment" apple. It will be more pruning work but for the space saving I think it will be worth it.

Lapins Sweet Cherry. This after some extensive research is known as the self pollinating Bing Cherry. The problem again is space, with a variety of tree that can self pollinate I am saving room and money on more trees. This guy is hardy to my zone 5 and from the forums, blogs, and reviews sounded like the best variety for us. Plus I use the "Bing" cherry as my pie cherry because of it's sweetness thus equalling less sugar added.

Avalon Pride Peach. I liked that this peach started it's life in my state, even though it was on the more temperate west side. This peach is similar to the Red Haven Peach, which Jacob and I both loved. I will admit I am not a peach professional, but for our zone and it's flavor, this Avalon seemed the best one for us.

In order to give these fruit guys room to thrive we are going to have to remove a weeping willow tree we planted 2 years ago. Admittedly it was not a wise move considering they get giant and eventually we would love solar panels. I like the idea of having edible landscaping, thus the willow was not a smart decision. The fruit trees will have to be staked and mulched heavily! But with any luck they will be producing good big fruit for us in about 2 years.

Cherry Picking plus some Raspberries

A blog in pictures of our Cherry Picking and Raspberry hunting adventure! Plus a video at the end. Enjoy.

Our day at Green Bluff strawberry u-pick

Yesterday was so productive! But there is still so much left to do that it doesn't seem that way. But I am only going to touch on the strawberry picking we did. Jacob and I including Mom and Dad went up to Green Bluff yesterday to a u-pick strawberry field.

Us riding the tractor wagon down to the field.

Mom and Dad on the wagon! 

We got our boxes and crates and off we went! The instructor told us that the back field was just opened up if we wanted to hike way back there. Of course WAY back there was relative, it wasn't far but most people chose to stay on the lower acres of fields. Jacob and I took off in search for riper strawberries.

Jacob in the field, in the distance you can see the buildings we left and the lower strawberry fields it wasn't really that far.

Me in search of the perfect little gem. I honestly felt like I was stealing little ruby's! 

After we got our loot it was time for a pit stop and ice cream. The Harvest House, which is like the main building. They have the best ice cream! Jacob had Huckleberry, I had Vanilla, Mom had Chocolate, and Dad had Cookies and Cream. Us relaxing and using the ice cream cone as a microphone, we were singing with the band!  

After all the fun was had we journeyed  home, we forgot to have Mom and Dad take a picture of us with our loot of gems, so we set the timer and did it ourselves. Us with our strawberries. Which cost 1.09 / lb. a total of  $26 and some change. We picked 23 lbs. of strawberries. It is time to learn how to make jam!