Port Potager

Most of the perennials in the cutting beds are past their prime — or in between their first and second flushes of flower. I'm relying a lot on annuals (or snipping from the border out front for those hyrangeas) to make up the difference.   Zinnia, cosmos, and calendula. Echinacea. Hydrangea. Zinnia (in shades of pink that I actually like — not too fuchsia). Marigolds.

Yesterday was kinda rough , in no small part because of the utter pain in the ass that is peach processing. It started out well enough, when I chose about five pounds of our peach harvest to use for a batch of jam: As you can see in the picture, I chose some firm peaches for this (see how they're a little more yellow than orange? That's a clue that these came off the tree slightly underripe). I figured that since jam requires so much sugar, and since I've read that using firm peaches works well in canning, that these would be good for this project. A mistake. I scored and blanched these first, which is supposed to make them easier to peel. (There's a great, full tutorial on peeling peaches here .) That part wasn't a big deal, but it didn't work as well as it should have. One minute in the water was enough for the ripest ones, but the skins weren't just sliding off most of them. So I learned that underripe peaches are going to need more l...

Sometimes, it's hard. Not just hard work, which is no big deal. Today was not that (although it involved elbow grease, too.) More just a mistake-riddled, bad-luck-prone, exhaustion-inducing day. First off, beginning to process the peaches took a lot longer than I thought. I cut myself, burned myself, and I still have cramps in my hands from peeling and pitting just the first five pounds of our big harvest . And then this happened while I was processing the jam: One of the jars broke in half. See the bits of peaches floating in the water bath? That was super-fun to clean up. Also, I'm not sure if this jam even set up properly, after all that. More on this tomorrow. In the midst of the canning madness, a crying child came home with this nasty gash down a shin: The quarter is for reference — this is the shot I texted to Kirk to get an assessment of its suture-worthiness. In the end we decided to let Nurse Dad patch it up with Steri-Strips when he got ...

Over the past few weeks, our Reliance peach tree has bowed ever more under the weight of all its fruit: It's a little hard to see because the photo doesn't really do justice to just how laden the tree is, but you can see the arc of this major branch pretty well. The whole tree is being bent into a cascading, peachy fountain. So much so, in fact, that a few days ago I had to prop up a branch with a bucket because several feet of it were trailing along the ground. It's an almost shocking embarrassment of riches, considering how last year we only managed to snag four or five peaches before the squirrels got the rest . Something is eating the fallen ones, though: I'm not sure what creature lives in this hole, but it only has nibbled peaches that are already on the ground, as far as I can tell. Fletch has more than earned his keep by keeping the critters at bay, and today when I showed him that hole, he put his hunting face on right away. Woe to what...

Still lots of cucumbers, so still lots of pickles to make. Last week I found myself with some P.O.U.S.es , both extra large: and extra small: The extra large were a mistake (their yellowing betrays how long they managed to remain hidden on the vine — they are much bigger and older than they should be, but I didn't see them when they were small and green). The tiny ones, though, I picked early on purpose to make gherkins.  I sliced the accidentally large cucumbers into thick slices (about 3/8 of an inch) to make sandwich pickles. Once again, I used the Ball Blue Book for a recipe. Basically the spice mix is turmeric, celery seed, mustard seed, and brown sugar, and I also added some dill seed. The big cucumbers make for nice, big rounds to cover a burger or sandwich. We ended up with three pints: The sandwich slices only took a day to make, but the sweet gherkins are a week-long process. I used the recipe in the Ball Book again, but there is an almost...

We've already had our fill of zucchini bread , and have had zucchini pizza three times in the last two weeks. And still, three biggish zukes were left on the counter: My original plan was to shred and freeze for later, but when I was looking through the Ball Book  to see how to do it, I hit upon directions for drying zucchini instead. Their idea was to dehydrate slices to reconstitute later in soups, but we have plenty of winter soup veggies coming in the next few months. But we could just eat the slices as chips, right? I don't have a dehydrator, but we've use the oven in the past for herbs and tomatoes with no problems, so that's what I did here. Our lowest temperature is 170 degrees, and at that temperature it took about six hours to dry our zucchini chips. I made some with just salt (for Jonas) and others with a spice mix. Both turned out really yummy! Thai Zucchini Chips zucchini juice of 1 lime 1 tsp. kosher salt 1 tsp ground ginger 1/4 tsp...

Pale pinks and whites are long gone — time for the bright, hot colors of late summer! I'm warming up to most of the pink shades of the zinnias, although I left some purplish-pink ones uncut. Zinnias and black-eyed Susans (a lovely gift from a friend's garden!). Black-eyed Susans and cosmos. Black-eyed Susans, calendula, cosmos, blanketflower, and zinnia. Zinnias and yarrow. Astilbe leaf, snapdragon, zinnia, echinacea, and salvia.