Spring Garden in Late April (Part II)

Back again.  Here is the second half of the garden update.  After the four rows of onions, we have two rows of tomatoes.  I had a catastrophe this year with all my planted tomato seeds.  I lost almost all of them.  I supplemented with (mostly) heirloom varieties that we purchased at a local nursery.

It won't be that much longer before we have red ripe tomatoes!

I have another row of corn.  This one is a shoepeg corn called "Country Gentleman."  I like that name.  The corn is a whitish color and it is sweet.  The weird thing about it is that the kernels aren't in uniform rows like most other corn.  the kernels are randomly spread.  I'll explain better with a photo once we harvest.

I have four varieties of okra planted this year: Clemson Spineless, Beck's Big Okra, Burgundy Okra, and Jing Orange Okra.  We ran completely out of okra this year before "gumbo season" was over.  Shame!  That won't happen again.

Here is a little plot of rainbow chard.  You can see how it gets its name.  The one with bright yellow veins and stems is hidden behind the other leaves.  The greens and stalks are sweet and very healthy.

From left to right in the photo below:

Amaranth!  Now, I've never grown or eaten this before, so this is a new thing.  It is supposed to be very healthy and a high source of protein.  I'm learning something new here.

Bull's Blood beets: We're harvesting beets almost every day now and eating them with every meal.  

Black Turtle Beans:  These will be over-running the beets soon.  We dry these and then make refried black beans.  We really like them with fresh-made tortillas!

And that about wraps up the garden, except for the potato patch and the melon patch.  Maybe I'll show you that next week?

Making Pickled Beets

Many people - especially kids - make faces and turn up their noses when you talk about beets. Beets just aren't their favorite thing. I can understand that.  There are certain things that I'm not crazy about eating.  Turnips, for instance.  I happen to really like beets.  I like them cooked in broth.  I really like them roasted in the oven with olive oil.  But I'll show you tonight a way to prepare them that most everyone can enjoy.  Pickled beets.  My grandmother we called "Bumby" always served pickled beets as an appetizer at Sunday dinner and on special occasions.  I liked them as a kid and I still prepare and eat them pickled today.

First, you gotta pick 'em.  I grow two types of beets.  This is a bull's blood beets. The leaves look the color of bull's blood, I suppose.

Bull's Blood Beets

This is a Chioggia Beet.  It originates from Italy, and I'll show you something neat about this variety in a minute.

Chioggia Beets

I picked 10 pounds of fresh beets in a produce bucket since that's what the recipe calls for.

I brought them in and washed them to get all the dirt off of them.

Then I sliced the bottoms and tops off of them.  Chioggia on the left and Bull's Blood on the right.

Then I cut the beets all up - in chunks and slices.  Here's the neat thing I want to show you about Chioggia beets.  When you slice them, they look like a peppermint! You know, just like a starlight mint.  The others behind the "eye-catchers" you see below are the Bull's Blood beets.

If you cut the Chioggias 'long-ways' the red & white designs really stand out!

But enough about what they look like.  Let's make pickled beets, so we can talk about what they taste like.  Obviously, you'll need 10 pounds of beets.  You'll also need a couple of cups of sugar.  I used some pure cane sugar that is grown an hour south and east of here.  The recipe also calls for 1 Tablespoon of kosher salt, a quart of white vinegar and 1/4 cup of whole cloves.

A quick side-note about cloves.  I love the way they smell.  If I inhale deeply in the container of cloves, it reminds me of my childhood.  When I was a boy, my grandmother, Bumby, showed me how to make a craft with cloves.  It is a simple craft project that involves an orange and a bunch of cloves.  She had me press the pointed end of the cloves into the orange until it was pressed all the way in.  We repeated that with a bunch of cloves all over the orange until you couldn't even see the orange anymore.  It was solid cloves.  It was a sachet, I think you call it, to be placed in a closet or drawer to make everything smell nice.  Over time the orange got smaller and smaller, but it smelled GREAT!

Sorry for the diversion.  Back to making pickled beets.  Here are the ingredients ready to go.

Put the 10 pounds of cut up beets in a pot of water and bring to a boil, cooking for about 15 minutes or until they are tender.  I tested the tenderness with a fork.  When I could press the fork in easily, they are done.  Pull out 2 cups of the "beet water" to save for later.

Sterilize your jars, lids, and rings in boiling water.  In a separate pot (I made a big mess in the kitchen), add the sugar, vinegar, beet water, and salt and bring it to a boil.  While you are waiting for this to boil, fill your jars with beets.  Then pour the hot brine over the beets in the jar using a canning funnel.

Before putting the lids on, sprinkle the cloves and then seal up the jars.

Put a rack in the bottom of a stockpot so that the jars aren't touching the bottom and bring the water to a boil.  Put your jars of beets in the boiling water, making sure that the tops of the jars are covered.  When the water returns to a boil set your timer for 10 minutes as that is how long you will process them.

Pull them out and let them cool.  My pickled beets don't look traditional as the Chioggias are white and aren't the traditional deep red color, but that's okay with me.  They still taste great!

We'll snack on these before meal time and on special occasions.  Tasty pickled beets.  Nothing goes to waste.  The beet tops and peels get fed to the milk cows. They love the sweetness just like we do, I assume.  I even found an interesting use for the boiling water that I'll show you the next time I post.

Making Beet Kvass with the last of the Bull's Blood Beets

I harvested the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets and we roasted them in the oven.  Tricia reserved 3 of the fattest beets to make a beverage that we hadn’t made in a while – Beet Kvass.  Kvass is a word that means “leaven” or “fermented” and has been around since the Middle Ages. THIS ARTICLE talks a bit more about the history of kvass, where it originated, and how it is made.

Kvass is a very popular drink in Russia and Eastern European countries.  I found it interesting that when western soft drinks reduced the consumption of kvass in Russia, they began marketing it as a patriotic alternative to colas and cola sales fell dramatically.  In response to this loss of market share, Coca-Cola introduced its own brand of kvass.

With the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets, we decided to make beet kvass.  It is a very healthy lacto-fermented drink and we use the recipe from Sally Fallon in the Nourishing Traditions cook book.  Here’s what the cookbook says about the nutritive benefits of beet kvass:

“This drink is valuable for its medicinal qualities and as a digestive aid.  Beets are just loaded with nutrients.  One 4-ounce glass, morning and night, is an excellent blood tonic, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments.”  This beverage is non-alcoholic, but the directions in the recipe state that you should chop and not grate the beets as grated beets release too much liquid and will cause it to ferment too quickly.  That will produce alcohol rather than lactic acid.

To make Beet Kvass, you’ll need some fresh picked beets – 3 of them to be exact.

Fresh Beets

We peel them with a potato peeler...

Beet Pulp

And then chop up into pieces of peeled beets.  The beet pulp can be composted or fed to the cows or chickens.

Chop in half and then just cut up into smaller pieces

The beautiful red color stains your fingers and cutting board!

Caught 'red-handed'

Then you simply place your chopped up beets, ¼ cup whey* and 2 teaspoons kosher salt into a half gallon mason jar and add filtered water to fill the container.

*Whey is a by-product when making yogurt or kefir when the milk separates into curds and whey after standing at room temperature for 1-2 days.  Whey is a good preservative.

Back to the recipe, stir the ingredients well and screw the lid on tightly and then keep out at room temperature for 2 days and then transfer to the refrigerator.  The beets immediately turn the liquid bright red and bubbles cover the neck of the jar, letting you know that it is fermenting.

Half-Gallon of Beet Kvass

When you are finished drinking the half gallon of beet kvass, you can make another batch by refilling the jar with water and sitting at room temperature for 2 more days.  How does it taste, you ask?  Well, it is salty, tangy and bubbly, with a hint of sweetness from the beets.  I won’t say it is delicious, although Tricia really likes it, but it is good and knowing that it is healthy for you makes it easy to drink 4 ounces in the morning and 4 ounces at night until it is gone. 

  

Harvesting Bulls Blood Beets - 2016

This weekend we transplanted our tomatoes into the garden that we had grown from seed.  It was nice to get that done.  The only thing we have left to plant is peanuts and then to transplant our yellow squash, zucchini squash, and cucumbers that we have grown from seed.  BUT, before we do that, we need to make room in the garden.  That means harvesting an existing crop.

Fortunately we have a row of Bull's Blood Beets that are ready to pull out of the ground.  They have become a favorite variety of ours.  They are a little different from other beets in that the greens are a dark red color that resembles the color of blood.  Here are some of the bull's blood beet greens:

Bull's Blood Beet foliage

A quick tug and the fat beet is out of the ground, fitting nicely into the palm of my hand.  It is plump and about the size of a tennis ball.

Perfect size!

I pulled up about half of the row, filling a colander with a bountiful portion of what will become one of tonight's side dishes.

Beautiful!

I take them in and but off the greens and then use a potato peeler to skin the beetroot.  The deep red color almost hurts your eyes to look at.  Food nutritionists always say that the bright colored crops are the healthiest for you.  If that is so, eating this ought to really add years to your lifespan...

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

I slice up the skinned beets and toss with olive oil, sea salt, and coarse ground pepper.

Ready for the roasting pan

But what about the greens?  Don't throw those away!  We share a few with the cows, but we cook these down just like you would mustard greens, kale, chard or spinach. With beets, we eat everything except the skin and the dirt that was on the skin.  

Although we remove the skins before roasting, you can also roast them whole.  Once they are cooked, the skins slide easily off of the beetroot, leaving a nice red root for you to slice.  

Beet greens washed and ready to cook

And here are some of the beets, hot right out of the oven.  Roasting beets, and any root vegetable, for that matter, is a great way to prepare them.  The sweetness seems to be concentrated in the roasted beets.  Delicious, tasty, nutritious.

A (somewhat embarrassing) word of caution about beets that you should be aware of when eating a bunch of beets like we do at this time of the year:  That beautiful, bright red color you see in the beets?  Well, that bright red color works its way through your digestive system and bladder.  If you aren't prepared, I'm trying to state this subtly and delicately, you can be surprised and scared that you have a significant health problem and are passing blood.  Fear not.  Nothing's wrong.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Eating Bull's Blood Beets is very healthy for you and very flavorful as well.   

Marching to the BEET of a Different Drum

A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat

independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and re-use its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people. - Wendell Berry

I like that Wendell Berry quote.  It kind of encapsulates everything bouncing around in my little brain about small-scale agriculture at any given time.  I am always amazed that you can work up the soil a little bit, removing the weeds and put a dead seed into the ground and with a little water and a bit of sunshine, in no time flat little seedlings are popping up out of the ground.  If those seedlings are cared for properly and if the grower exercises a bit of patience, the happy gardener will be harvesting delicious vegetables that will be enjoyed by family members.  Healthy vegetables from healthy soil results in healthy people.

Of course there are things that we can't grow here.  I love mangoes, but we can't grow them, so we must purchase them.  While many are content to purchase most of their vegetables and fruit at the grocery store, if it is possible, growing them yourself is the better choice in my humble opinion, but maybe I march to the beat BEET of a different drum...

Well, it was, after-all time to get the beets planted.  We like beats.  They are great sliced and cooked in a pot with a little broth.  They are great pickled, making a delicious appetizer and fantastic cut up and roasted in the oven.  In the past we threw the beet greens over the fence to the cows, but now we've started eating them. Sorry cows.  So I worked up a 24 foot row that is approximately 30 inches wide.  I stepped off three similarly sized blocks on the row and using a stick, made two furrows, evenly spaced, on top of the row.

Late afternoon sun shining on the Beet Row

We're putting in three different types of beets this year.  We're using the old stand-by variety that we always plant - Bull's Blood Beets.  While varieties like Detroit Beets have green greens. Bull's Blood Beets have red greens.  We tried a new variety last year called Golden Beets.  While we didn't get the yield with the Golden Beets that we did with the Bull's Blood Beets, we're planting them again.  They just look so nice on a plate next to the red beets -  a work of art, you might say, on your supper plate.

Three beet varieties

So the new variety we're trying this fall in the Chioggia beet.  I'm assuming it must originate from Chioggia, a town in the province of Venice in Northern Italy.  This beet comes highly recommended, and I've read that it is the SWEETEST beet there is.  We'll see.  I think it is interesting because the beet, when sliced, looks kind of like a starlight mint.  Starlight mints will always remind me of the candy that you try to quietly unwrap in church prior to the end of service and pop in your mouth to ward off the dreaded "church breath" that threatens to offend your fellow congregants if not properly dealt with!

The "Starlight Mint" Beet 

Beets are a very pretty root crop and they come from a dull, unassuming seed. Although I've tried to save seeds from beets, I've never been successful in getting them to flower.  Perhaps I'll try again this year.  

Beet Seeds

I sowed these seeds in soil that I've amended with lots of organic matter over the years, so it works up nice and deep.  They are planted 1/2 deep and spaced about 4-6 inches apart.  In addition to the three varieties shown above, I'll also plant Mangel Beets, a mammoth beet I talked about HERE to feed to the cows during the cold weather.

I like beets and I like to march to the beat of a different drummer.  Henry David Thoreau said at the end of Walden:

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Sounds like good advice to me...

You Just Can't BEET it!

I walked out to the garden and walked down the rows looking for a vegetable or two to cook as a side dish for some homemade chicken and dumplings that Tricia was working on preparing in the kitchen. Tricia likes a variety of colors on the plate to liven things up.  I've read somewhere that vegetables with lots of color are loaded with nutrition.

Well, I think I found just the thing to meet the color requirement on a row smack dab in the middle of the garden - Bull's Blood Beets!  We have a few beets on the row that were the perfect 'pulling size,' so I pulled a couple beets from the ground. Bull's Blood beets get their name from the rich, dark red color of the beet leaves.

Bull's Blood Beets

We have had lots of rain, so the beets came up easy from the moist soil. Just a gentle tug brought the beet roots out of the soil and ready to bring inside and prepare.

Beet roots

While walking back to the house, I also broke off some purple cauliflower and some Swiss Chard. How's that for some color?  The wife was pleased!  The colors were so striking that I laid down the produce on a bed of turnips I have growing to show the contrast of the colors.  Just look at the brilliant beauty of tonight's vegetable side dish.

A palette of colors for our palates

I took them inside and cut the greens (in this case, reds) off the beet roots.

Then I got the potato peeler and peeled the skins off the roots.  Handling them turned my hands red. Now normally I feed the leaves and stems and beet pulp to the cows, but not today.  I have something else in store for the beet greens.

I sliced and quartered the beet roots on a cutting board.  This should make them cook a little faster.

Bull's Blood beets sliced and quartered

Then I got on the Internet and found just what I was looking for: This Recipe from www.allrecipes.com.  Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens.  It is a simple dish to prep and the only change that we made to it was that we substituted butter instead of olive oil.  I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, put the cut up beets in a roasting dish, poured 2 Tablespoons melted butter over them and tossed them around so that the butter coated the beets.  I put them in the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes.

Butter is Better

When the beets were almost done, I put 2 Tablespoons butter, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and 2 tablespoons of chopped Purple Onion in a cast iron skillet and let them get all happy.

This smells so good!

Then (sorry cows), I put the beet greens that I had torn in pieces into the skillet.  I will admit that I brought the stems out for the cows to eat, but I'm sure that they were disappointed to not get the whole thing.

I stirred them while they cooked and once they withered, I added some sea salt and criolla sella ground pepper and mixed it all in.

Ready to eat!

By that time, the buzzer went off on the oven and we removed the roasted beets and place them atop the bed of sauteed beet greens in my plate alongside the green cauliflower.  We saved the purple cauliflower for another day and instead cooked some green cauliflower that I had picked a day earlier.

A delicious vegetable side dish

I served a bowl of Chicken and Dumplings and I was going to take a picture of that too, but by the time I thought of it, they were all gone.  The beets and beet greens were delicious.  The flavors of the garlic, onion and butter were great, but didn't overpower the great tasting greens.  This Allrecipes recipe was fantastic and will be added into our rotation.  The recipe says to add some red wine vinegar to the top of the greens.  We didn't do that, but I'm sure it would have been good.  The cows' loss was definitely our gain.  

Harvesting Beets

We have been harvesting a few beets here and there and cooking them, but with the weather really warming up, it was time to pull up all of the remaining beets on the row.  We'll I'll likely replant the row with beans or purple hull peas.  The beets were of the Bull's Blood variety and we like the deep reddish maroon color of the leaves.

Bull's Blood Beets

Beets are really easy to harvest.  All you do is grab the leaves and with a swift tug, the beet root pops right up out of the ground.  While carrots have a long, skinny root, the beetroot is similar to a turnip - fatter and shallow.  In no time I had a bucket full of beets and that signified the end of the beet season until later this year when we'll replant.  Of course I threw some of the beet greens to the cows who were standing nearby.

Bucket of Beets

We eat beets many different ways.  We'll steam them, roast them in the oven, pickle them, and eat the leaves in salads.  Beets are so good for you and are loaded with vitamins and minerals, but I wasn't thinking about healthy eating when I was first introduced to beets.  I was a kid and when we would eat Sunday lunch at my grandmother's house, she ALWAYS served pickled beets as a side dish.  We would eat them up.

Today for lunch we're just going to steam up three of them.  It's easy enough, all you have to do is get out a potato peeler and peel the beets.  When you do this, you expose the red coloring of the beets and it will stain your fingers red.   Then we slice the beets in about quarter inch slices so that they will cook quickly.

Peeling the beets

Add the sliced beets into a pot with a little water and salt and let them cook on the top of the stove for a little while until they are fork-tender.  

Steaming the beets

We ate these beets for lunch today.  Delicious and Nutritious!  Tomorrow we'll show you one other thing that we make with beets that's kind of interesting.