I took a few day’s break from working on the cutting boards and associated machinery because my car is in repair. Without it, I cannot buy the necessary materials, and it’s not worth ordering these online. I also cannot buy groceries until the car is repaired, so yesterday I baked bread, and today I baked pizza. It was under guidance from my mother who told me what to do and what ingredients to use etc. but I think I can claim most of the credit because I did most of the actual work and I did in fact knead the dough.
The bread looked kinda meh going in.
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But it looked splendid going out. I had it for dinner and it tasted absolutely fabulous. Not even the best bread bought at a supermarket can beat a home-baked loaf.
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The pizza looked as usual going in. I.E. a mess.
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And it did not look any better going out since pizza is one of those foods that looks like someone already ate it.
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But it tasted great too and after that lunch, I could not move for several hours and still have left over for dinner.
I also harvested about 45 kg of potatoes. The small patch near my greenhouse dried up about 90% already so I decided to dig them all up. 45 kg is a reasonable harvest considering that in this patch, I planted mainly leftover tiny/green potatoes from the previous year and about 5 kg of those that I could not fit into the main potato bed. Of these 45 kg about 34 kg were in good enough shape for storage and 11 kg need to be eaten or otherwise processed asap.
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Thus after the very crapy start of the year it at least appears I might get my money’s and time’s worth out of the garden after all. I already harvested enough pumpkin to can them as canned fruit (ala pineapple), pickled (ala gherkin), and sauerkraut ersatz to last for two years. I am still not even on the money due to the huge amount of molluscicides I had to use at the beginning of the growing season, but I should get there easily now. It would be strange if I did not get at least 100 kg of potatoes from the main patch and I will definitively get more pattypans and pumpkins still.
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Tomatoes outdoors got consumed by mold despite my best efforts. The weather was simply too wet and I could not spray them with fungicides all the time. At least the potatoes appear to have resisted it and the tomatoes in the greenhouse are shielded from rain and fog and thus so far resisted too. While annoying, it is not too big a loss. The weather was so cold and wet that the tomatoes outdoors did not grow above my knees anyway whereas those in the greenhouse are up to my shoulders, as shown in the picture. I hope those in the greenhouse do not catch it because if the weather stays reasonably warm, I could harvest tomatoes at least till the first frost. I would very much like to try my hand at homemade ketchup and dried tomatoes. It looks promising. The first tomato started to blush on August 2. and as these things usually go, others followed quickly after that. It takes about two weeks for a tomato to fully ripen therefore sometime toward the end of next week I should start harvesting.
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Like every year for the past few years, I planted beans along the south wall of our house. Those appear to have thrived and I can look forward to at least a few kg of shelled beans and some canned bean pods. Although I hope most of them ripen and dry – we still have not eaten all the canned pods from last year.
Did you have any success this year in your gardens? From what I read in the news, most people around the world do not experience abnormally cold and wet summer this year, quite the opposite. I would not mind the wet, but the cold is bumming me out. One of the strangest things that happened due to the cold weather is that some of the corn I planted in the spring started to grow only about two weeks ago. It appears that wet and too cold or dry and too hot are the only two options we have now. We haven’t had what I’d call a “normal” summer for about a decade by now.
Mmm, home made bread. A hearty-looking loaf.
Congratulations on the harvest so far! Wishing for the best for your under-glass tomatoes.
Pumpkin sauerkraut? I see a courgette or zucchini type of squash in the photo, but I’ve never heard of preserving it like sauerkraut.
The greenhouse tomato’s are very healthy looking, and the red blooms on the pole beans are quite pretty against the green house. You will need a ladder to pick them!
Congratulations on beating the slugs and delicious homemade bread and pizza. I am now very hungry!🤤
@Tethys, I do not quite get the english pumpkin nomenclature. To be precise, these are Cucurbita pepo, variety Květa -click-. It has the shape of zucchini but it is white instead of green and it has IMO better taste. A lot better taste.
Slightly harder fruit can be grated into stripes similar to cabbage and preserved in vinegar/salt/sugar mix. If you are interested, I will get a recipe. We did this with pattypans and zucchinis in the past too and they are suitable as well. I like this sauerkraut ersatz better than actual real sauerkraut.
Here, it has recently started raining enough to alleviate the drought somewhat, and turn the lawns green and pretty. It was too late for the wild raspberries and bilberries, so they were pitiably small and I have only harvested them a little for the taste. Lingonberries are now ripening early and developing into a good size, thanks to the rain. Mushrooms are starting to show up. It’s lovely walking in the forest after a summer rain, but the weather is still too warm and humid for my taste.
More importantly, I nowadays have access to some communal fruit trees that are growing bigger and more productive each year. The trees are also more drought tolerant than our native wild berries. For the first time, I harvested a mass amount of sour cherries, removed the pits and froze the flesh. It seems I can cook the cherries into a nice jam, but I prefer to store them in the freezer. Now the plums are just starting to ripen. Also huge amounts of pears, but nobody likes eating those. Everything is ripening early, because every summer here is a warm summer nowadays.
I’ve been harvesting tomatoes and cucumbers from my glasshouse balcony, and recently started sowing leafy vegetables for the autumn. The normal sized tomatoes always turn out thick-skinned and soft-fleshed regardless of what cultivar I grow, so I mostly mush them up in the freezer and try to make pizza at some later time. I think I’ll stick to growing only cherry tomatoes from now on.
Charly -- I’m not a fan of squash, but I like cucumber slices that are briefly marinated in acid like they’re ersatz sauerkraut (like you said). In Finland, this traditional recipe usually uses vinegar, but I prefer the juice from actual (store bought) sauerkraut.
@ Charly
Ah, it’s Marrow. I’ve read of it but haven’t ever grown it or even seen it. I have both yellow fruited summer squash and the zucchini variety in the garden this season, but they were planted late and the only thing they have produced so far is lots of male blossoms.
Thanks for the offer of a recipe. I will decline as I don’t think I’m going to attempt sauerkraut.
Nomnomnom. That looks tasty. I’m afraid my sourdough starter didn’t survive my sister’s care so I have to make a new one.