Welcome to this week’s homestead update.
As an announcement, I won’t have any new posts for the next 2 weeks. I’m taking a little break. I did set up a couple of recipe posts linked over to my Camping With Fritz blog. But I won’t be making any new posts until July.
Garlic scape pickles
Over the weekend, I picked the remainder of the garlic scapes. I decided to make some pickles out of them. I’ve never made these, but the sounded like they would be good. Plus I had a bunch of scapes to use up. I put some in a big zipper bag and into the fridge. While they don’t keep all that long, I planned on using them the next day, so they were fine to use.
Cabbage heads
I pulled the last of the lettuce that had bolted. While there, I decided to pull a couple of the larger Red Acre cabbage heads. This left half of a bed unplanted. So I planted Genovese basil and Poinsett 76 cucumbers. I used a folding tomato cage to act as a trellis for the cucumbers. The cages really don’t work as a tomato cage since the welds break and the wire isn’t strong enough. But they work great as a trellis.
Peas to be frozen
I took the family out to the garden to harvest some peas. We concentrated on the bed that is nothing but peas. We ended up getting about 5 cups of shelled peas out of that harvest. There are still a lot of pods on the plants. I guess we’ll harvest the rest this week. I blanched and froze 3 packets of peas and a small bag that will go into some other recipe. For those not aware of blanching, it kills the enzymes to keep the peas from rotting. Peas are quick. Boil water, put in the peas and allow them to boil for 90 seconds. Put the peas in cold water to stop the cooking.
Potato onion harvest
I pulled up the majority of the potato onions. There are still a couple that I’ll leave in the ground since their leaves were not browning. There were not a lot of big bulbs to eat, but there are a lot of small seed onions. That’s fine with me since I feel that I’m still in the process of building up my seed stock. I’ll plant these seed onions in September or October. Like all onions, these have to cure for a little while. I use a baby gate that we hadn’t thrown away. The key is to allow air circulation to dry them.
Thursday’s harvest
I know that I already talked about peas. But I impressed myself with this harvest. Thursday after it cooled down, we went to the garden to harvest more peas. The big bed didn’t have many peas that weren’t ready to pick, so we pulled up the plants in that bed. We picked quite a few peas. We shelled the peas and I blanched and froze 16 more bags of peas. Last year my wife said that she wanted more peas, so that’s what she got.
So what happened this week on your homestead?
