Category: Outdoors

Is that a squash under the bed?

Now is the time when gardeners often have too much fresh produce. People joke about locking their cars to keep neighbors from placing unneeded zucchinis in them. Our mothers and grandmothers labored over hot stoves on hot days to put up tomatoes in jars for winter, or to make jam. Now there are better, easier ways to preserve the harvest. Let’s have a look.

I keep tomato products for later use in a number of ways. First and easiest, I freeze tomatoes whole. I put clean tomatoes in zipper bags and freeze them whole. Later, when I want tomatoes for a soup or stew, I just run hot water from the tap into a big bowl and drop in a few tomatoes. That softens them up so I can easily chop them, but it also loosens the skins. I just rub the skins with my fingers, and the skin comes off. A few minutes later I chop them and they are just like canned tomatoes.

Want tomatoes for winter sandwiches? Cut them in thick slices and roast them on a sheet pan at 350 degrees until most of the moisture has gone. Then cool and place in zipper bags for storage in the freezer. When you need a tasty tomato in your sandwich, take a few slices out, and cook slightly in a toaster oven to thaw it.

I grow many hundreds of cherry tomatoes each summer. I plant a dozen or more ‘Sun Gold’ cherry tomato plants each year, and each produces a bounty of rich, golden nuggets of flavor. What do I do with all those? I cut them in half and dry them in a food dehydrator, cut side up. When dry they will keep well in the pantry (or the freezer) in a wide-mouth quart jar. I toss a handful into every soup or stew I make.

Of course you can slice and dehydrate any kind of tomato. I have a friend who slices tomatoes, dries them until they are very crisp, and then grinds them in a food processor to make dried tomato flakes. She sprinkles the flakes into or on to a wide range of dishes. And she usually gives me a pint of them each year, which I treasure — I use it to add that mystical “umami” flavor to a dish.

A few words about food dehydrators. I have lots of experience with two good ones: NESCO American Harvest is a round dehydrator that will allow you to add many extra trays (up to 30, but with much increased drying time). NESCO dehydrators come with either top or bottom heat, so drying time is a bit uneven. The other is Excalibur, a square one with nine trays. These blow air across the trays, and everything gets dry at once. They both have thermostats and timers that will turn them off when desired.

I use my dehydrators for drying apples and pears that are great for snacking. I cut slices about 3/8 inch thick and bag them up for snacking while they are still chewy. It looks like I will have a great grape harvest this year, and I may try making raisins. Set temperature at 125 to 135 degrees so you don’t break down vitamins.

I also use a dehydrator for drying hot peppers until they are brittle, then I grind them up in my coffee grinder to make hot pepper powder. That way I can sprinkle a little or a lot into a recipe, depending on who will be sharing dinner with me — I like food spicy.

I make tomato paste each summer, but that is more like the hard work my grandmother did. I core the tomatoes and squeeze out excess juice and seeds, then cut them in half and drop into the Cuisinart. I run it until the tomatoes are a slurry. Then I pour the slurry into a heavy enameled cook pot. I heat it slowly, allowing the mixture to just slowly simmer (to avoid burning it).

It takes a couple of hours to fill the big kettle, and all evening for it to boil off the excess liquid. When I can literally stand up a soup spoon in the mix, I know it is thick enough. I leave the pot on the counter all night to let it cool and evaporate some more, and then in the morning I spoon the paste into ice cube trays and freeze. I put the cubes in bags or jars. It is nice to never need to remember to buy tomato paste — and to have a good use for damaged tomatoes that might otherwise end up in the compost. I cut out the bad spots, and use every one.

I have never gotten excited about making jams or jellies. But if you have a dedicated freezer for storage, you can cook your raspberries or blueberries with sugar and spices, then freeze them. The canning process is lengthy and messy, so I generally avoid it. If you just want a little jam, make three or four jars and store in the fridge. It will be as tasty and it gives you an excuse to spread some on ice cream, using it up before it gets moldy.

Of course, storing food is the easiest, cheapest way to eat the harvest long after it. Winter squashes like butternut and blue Hubbard store for months in a cool, dry location. They store well for months under the bed in a guest bedroom with the radiators turned off.

When digging potatoes or pulling onions, try to do it in a dry time (not hard this summer). Lower moisture levels are better for storage. Cure them for a few days in a breezy place out of the sun. Store potatoes, carrots, celeriac and rutabagas in a place between 35 and 50 degrees with high humidity. Garlic and onions like lower humidity with cool temperatures. Sweet potatoes should never go in the fridge; they need to be stored in a warm room like the kitchen.

I try to eat something I grew every day of the year, and mostly I do that. Dried herbs, garlic and frozen foods are always there for me to use, so I do.

Featured photo: A straw used to remove air from a bag of cherry tomatoes. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Sensitive fern, interrupted fern, ostrich fern — take your pick

Many gardeners who focus on flowers and flowering shrubs are missing out on a beautiful and easy addition to their landscape: ferns. A few ferns are a bit aggressive and can elbow their way into flower beds uninvited, but most are polite and offer different textures and colors of foliage with little work.

One of my favorite ferns is the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris). This is a big fern, with fronds up to 5 feet tall. Each fern tapers at both ends, and they arrange themselves like the feathers of a badminton birdie. Its most distinguishing characteristic is a groove like you see in a stalk of celery, up the middle of each frond on the topside. It also produces fronds that turn brown and produce the spores.

In the wild, the ostrich fern prefers moist, shady places, but it will grow almost anywhere that is not bone dry or in full sun. It will tolerate some sun and ordinary garden soil, but rich, moist soil is where it thrives. Ostrich fern will spread by rhizomes, adding about a square foot of territory to each plant per year. They also produce spores that can fly in the wind to expand their territory.

Although you can buy ostrich ferns, you may be able to transplant some from your own property, moving them in from the woods or field to a garden bed. I have successfully transplanted ostrich ferns using a long, narrow shovel called a drain spade or transplant shovel. I push the spade into the soil on a 45-degree angle to cut roots and loosen the soil in four places around it, then push down on the spade to pop the plant, roots and all, from the ground. Best to do on a cool day after a rain, if we ever see one!

Another great fern is the maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum). In the spring it comes up on what look like black wires, then produces almost horizontal fronds that are fan-shaped. In the wild it indicates good rich soil. Books say it does well in moist, shady soil, but I’ve had it for more than 20 years in dry shade. I think once established it is fine in dry shade, but I’d water it for the first year if in dry shade, or in drought times.

Maidenhair fern is commonly sold in nurseries. I have also grown it in a pot on our north-facing deck. In our garden, a plant (or three?) has created a clump that is 8 feet by 4 feet in 20 years, so it’s not a fast spreader.

Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides): Unlike nearly all others, this fern stays green all winter and has very dark green leaves. It grows in free-form clusters and has simple leaves. The leaflets have a little bump (ear) near the base of each frond and are 1 to 3 feet long. In past times, it was commonly used by florists as a green to add to flower arrangements in winter, though that practice is no longer common as whole colonies were used up.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis): This fern has light green leaves that are quite wide. Leaflet pairs are opposite each other (like a bow tie). Top-most leaflets are smooth; others have wavy edges. It is very frost-sensitive, hence the name. It often grows in big colonies, either in sun or shade. Can be a pest in the garden as it spreads by root. It is the only fern that I always pull out if it shows up in my garden as it spreads fast.

Interrupted fern (Osmunda claytoniana): This is a big fern with fronds up to 5 feet long in a vase-like arrangement. It will grow in wet or dry shade. When spores are produced, they interrupt the arrangement of leaflets with smaller spore-producing sections that are not like the other leaflets. But not all plants will have an interrupted section, so look at a colony to find some that do to confirm the I.D. The little leaflets that produce spores get dry and turn brown in mid-summer.

Another fern I like is the hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula). If you have crushed this fern and sniffed it, it smells like fresh-cut hay. It is finely cut and stays just 1 to 3 feet tall. It is one of the few that will grow in a hot, sunny spot such as a west-facing, sandy hillside, though it does grow in shade. It spreads quickly and will fill in an area, making a large colony. It will out-compete weeds and grasses in sunny locations.

Are you interested in learning about ferns? Many guides use lots of technical language that only fern scientists understand. One exception is Identifying Ferns the Easy Way: A Pocket Guide to Common Ferns of the Northeast by Lynn Levine. There are just 28 common ferns in the book, and there are silhouettes of each at the beginning of the book. The silhouettes are divided into six groups based on how the leaves are “cut.” So a quick look will identify most ferns, and the straightforward descriptions quickly confirm which fern you are looking at.

Observe where ferns grow in your woodlands, and try digging up some to put in a shady garden in your cultivated areas. Stop discriminating against ferns and give some a try!

Featured photo: Sensitive Fern. Photo by Henry Homeyer.