GARDEN GREETINGS TO YOU!!!
We’re all probably as busy as the squirrels scurrying here and there stashing nuts for the winter.
BLESSINGS AND BOUNTIES It’s that time of year of bountiful blessings from the garden, and the mad dash… more like a marathon, actually, to harvest, dry, cook, can, flash freeze, etc., all the many garden goodies.
We hope you’re faring well in all your efforts. Full pantries and freezers are always a satisfying and gratifying thing about fall, where the gifts of summer’s labor are neatly stored to bring sunshine fresh goodness through the cold winter days.
HICKORY TREES & NUTS Speaking of squirrels, the hickory trees in our yard have been especially productive this year and the squirrels are happily gorging and hiding them. Day and night, the huge golf ball sized orbs (and about as hard and dense) are clattering onto our deck, roof and even some windows!
So far, none have hit a head, but it’s probably a good idea to only be out there with a hat on. One of those could probably crack even a hard head, or at least raise a welting bruise.
Our son’s dog, Zeus, loves to husk them, so we end up with lots of husked hickory nuts ready to crack. Hickory nuts are delicious, but cracking and extracting them is a challenge, which is why shelled hickory nuts aren’t sold commercially. It's too tedious and the nuts are too small.
We’ve just scratched the surface on research on this so if you have any tips for cracking and extracting the hickory nut meat, please share it. It would be great to make better use of them, but for the time it takes.
In the “olden days”, Native American Indians even made hickory nut flour, but then they had a bit more time than most of us in modern life.
CUCUMBERS LIKE CRAZY!! When you’ve canned all the pickles you need, there’s the option of freezing cucumbers and also making refrigerator pickles and of course, cucumber water. A few of our cucumbers were bitter. Here’s why.
| | FERMENTED TOMATOES Preserving tomatoes with garden fresh tomatoes, basil and garlic brings more than garden goodness to your taste buds. They’re also a gut-healthy probiotic-rich food. If you’re already doing it, tell us your favorite way and feel free to include a photo/s. Anytime is a good time to consume fermented foods, but all the more during these Covid years and as we head into the cold and flu season.
HEALTHY BENEFITS OF ROSEMARY Wow! We’re fascinated by the MANY potent resources so readily available, easy to grow and vastly less expensive and far healthier than pharmaceuticals. We are grateful for the many advances in modern medicine, but first, we seek remedies and health from nature. Guessing you may as well.
LEMON BALM This easy growing, prolific perennial is such a wonderful plant! We’re enjoying our lemon balm, fresh in water and tea and also dried. I’m adding handfuls of dried lemon balm along with some stevia, fresh or dried to a dispensing pitcher and it’s wonderful! Make it stronger and it’s almost like black tea with lemon, only caffeine free and relaxing.
DRYING ROSEMARY AND OTHER HERBS We dug deep into the scientific research to discover the best way to dry herbs for the greatest retention of nutrients. Discovered we’d been doing it wrong. 😲
THE MIGHTY OKRA If you’re one of those who can’t stand okra, sorry you had the wrong introduction to it, for it can be cooked to avoid the mucilaginous properties.
But if you’re growing it, then likely your okra harvest is rolling in daily. So many benefits to this plant, all of which is edible, blossoms to seeds, pods to leaves.
THE MARSHMALLOW PLANT Are you growing marshmallow plants? Proven beneficial for coughs and respiratory issues, gut health and more.
| | ELDERBERRY TEA Good immunity booster… tasty too! Some of you are making syrup as well. Elderberry… more wonders from nature’s “farmacy”
FALL CAMELLIAS Are your camellia's blooming? Are you making tea with your camellia leaves? If you’d like to share your photos and info, we’re glad to publish it in our article with tribute to you.
| | RECIPES FROM THIS WEEK: We’ve been doing a lot of cooking up of garden goodies too, so sharing some of those recipes from our recipe website, for things which you might be harvesting around now or soon.
Sauteed Okra Greens Using fresh okra leaves and/or pods. This is something good to do at season’s end before you pull out your okra plants. But you can also make it with or without okra pods, and with or without the okra greens.
Gypsy Winter Squash Soup A favorite staple recipe, we make a huge pot a couple times a month, fall-through-spring. We made it this week to kick off the fall cooling spell, using homegrown butternut and Tetsukabuto squash.
Ramen Salad With Cabbage If you’re harvesting garden cabbage and/or carrots, this is a great recipe for enjoying them. If not, you can grate your own or take a shortcut and buy a bag of coleslaw mix. Either way, it's delicious!
| | BACK ON TRACK There’s so much more to share, but this is already long since we missed the last three Sundays (!!!) as busy-ness got the better of us. So we’ll save some for next week as we work to get back on a regular schedule. Feel free to send feedback on what you'd like to see more or less of in our weekly updates.
HOW’S YOUR GARDENING GOING? As always we love to hear what’s up in your garden. One of the reasons we always invite your photos, tips and all is because we love to share from folks who are actually doing it. MANY websites these days are publishing content by writers who are not actually doing the thing.
They’re doing research, so some of it’s valid info, and we do some of that as well, because there’s lots we don’t know, plus we love learning. But there’s nothing better than sharing direct experience, for there are always “field adjustments” when you’ve got boots on the ground.
WISHING YOU AN AWESOME WEEK… IN HEALTH, WELLNESS AND GOODNESS In these crazy times, let’s focus on the good and the blessings, rather than the craziness in the news and media, for what we focus on, grows. So we focus on the things we can do. We turn off the news and build a garden… and find solace in that special place where life makes sense.
From our hearts and hearths to yours,
Coleman and LeAura Alderson GardensAll.com
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