First Freeze of the Year

It really is that time of year. We finally had our first frost/freeze of the year last night on 10/27. I saw the freeze warning, so I figured I should pick the remaining frost sensitive veggies left in the garden. That included beans, zucchini, peppers, and some of the greens. Not much fun picking vegetables in drizzly 40 degree temps as the light was fading, but I got it done. From left to right in that picture are sweet "popper" peppers, bell peppers, the bucket with zucchini and beans, cayenne peppers, scallions, and arugula. I cut the pepper plants at the ground and I'm glad I did because it was a lot easier to pick the peppers off the plant while they were waist-high in front of me rather than bending over to search for the peppers.

Here is what the almost 3 pounds of cayenne peppers looked like. There was one good burst of peppers in mid-summer and while those ripened the plants kept growing, but didn't seem to make many more flowers. Then after the first set had ripened, the plant exploded in tons more flowers in mid-late september and kept flowering through October. Unfortunately, that second set didn't have time to mature. I probably should have picked the peppers from the first set as soon as they turned red, but I left them on thinking they would keep better on the plant. I'm not sure if that slowed down the second batch or not. If I grow these again, I'll probably pick the ripe ones and let them dry. By the end of the year, the first ones had pretty much dried out on the plant as it was.

This is what more than 9 pounds of mixed peppers looks like. I gave away a bunch of these, but I probably still have about 5 pounds left. I'll be making stuffed peppers soon, and I'll probably chop some up and freeze them. The red cayennes I will almost certainly use to make some hotsauce.

I took a look at the garden today and it looks like the bean plants, and the zucchini definitely got hurt pretty bad by the frost/freeze. Asparagus, broccoli, and peas all survived the temps, but are probably done for the year. There are still pak choi, rapini, lettuce, kale, and one very small cauliflower head that can be harvested. None of these guys seem to be growing anymore, though.

2012 planting

I've already started planting for next year. After digging up the potatoes, I sprinkled what remaining chicken manure (dried, pelleted) fertilizer I had left on the area, then turned over the dirt with a shovel. I saw some of the fattest worms I've ever seen in there. When they were not extended, they were about 4-5" long and almost as wide as a sharpie marker. Thats got to be a good sign for the dirt.

After turning over the soil, I planted a few different things. First was 12 cloves from the garlic that I harvested in July. According to the internet the size of the garlic plant and the yield is proportional to the size of the clove that is planted, so I took the biggest cloves from three different bulbs. Some of them were quite large and most, if not all, were larger than the cloves that I planted last year.

Next up was the "potato onions". I'd read about these previously online. They are supposed to be kind of between shallots and regular onions. Each plant makes 4-8 bulbs of varying size, the largest ones probably being almost the size of normal onions. Much like garlic, you can just just keep a few of the onions to plant for the next year and eat the rest. Supposedly they are what most people used to grow in their own veggie patches 100 years ago, but fell out of favor because they weren't really appropriate for large-scale farming. I do plan to plant some regular onion sets in the spring in case these don't live up their promises.

Lastly, I planted a small quantity of fancy french shallots. Supposedly they are the kind that are most prized by foodie types. I'm not sure that I have a refined enoung palate to care about such things, but I figured I'd give them a shot. Again, these should hopefully produce a cluster of shallots for each one that I plant.

I probably should have taken a picture of all this stuff before I planted it, but I forgot to. These all get planted in the fall because it gives them time to start a good root system and get primed for fast growth in the spring. This variety of garlic is quite hardy and shouldn't have a problem surviving the winter around here (no problem last year), but the potato onions and shallots are somewhat less hardy. These potato onions are supposedly ideal for Virginia. To try to help them survive the winter, I put about 3" of compressed leaves on the area, and then I put some of the potato vines on top just to keep the leaves from blowing away. Here is what it looked like when I was done. Hopefully those fat worms don't eat all the insulation before winter.

Potatoes!

Here is what the garden looks like in mid-october. Its still surprisingly green and growing. The potatoes (bottom right) look like they are just starting to die out. It doesn't matter if they are done or not, because I need to plant next year's garlic where they are now!
After some digging it quickly became apparent that the early-season Red Norland potatoes (died off in early july) did not do too well this year, while the late-season Kennebec Whites (the ones that are still alive in the picture above) exceeded expectations. Thats why I planted a couple different varieties. If the conditions are poor for one kind, they might still be good for the othe kind. After all the digging and washing, this is what the potatoes looked like. I put the camera lens cap there for some scale, but it still doesn't quite convey how big some of those white ones are. How much potatoes is that you ask? After taring the weight of the bin, those potatoes weighed in at 41.2lbs!! I've already asked Jaime to start looking into potato recipes, but its likely that we'll have to give some away because there is no way we can use that many potatoes. Combined with the 2.5lbs of red potates I harvested earlier in the year, that comes to 43.7 lbs. Approximately 5lbs were red and 38lbs were white.

Here fishy fishy fishy

The Miller homestead focuses mostly on growing vegetables, but we also take part in harvesting fresh local protein when the opportunity arises. Late September is the beginning of the local Salmon run. While the pacific northwest seems to get all the salmon run press, we have one as well, right within the city limits of Rochester.


Last year I went out with a few friends and tried to catch salmon with absolutely no luck, not even a bite. This year, I've been out a couple times with my friend Mike. The first time I had one on, but it got off as we were trying to figure out how we were going to land it without a net. The second time, Mike brought a net and we fared better. He landed this "small" 14lb King Salmon. I say small because other people who were nearby told us that this was smaller than average and they get a lot bigger (up to 40lbs or so).

After spending a little while figuring out how to gut it and remove the head, we took it home for further processing.
We probably spent about 1.5 hours cutting this thing up. Mostly it took that long because we didn't really know what we were doing, but it also took a while to remove all the pin bones. In the end, we were left with two sizable filets that we portioned. In the end there was about 5.5lbs of meat. I haven't actually had a chance to try it yet, but hopefully its yummy.

I was a bit hesitant to eat the fish since I had heard some unflattering things about Lake Ontario Salmon, but I did give it a try. I pan seared the Salmon and did a side-by-side comparison to some wild Washington state Coho salmon. In the picture below, the Coho is the pinker one. I actually had some wild King from Washington state and it was paler than the coho, but not as pale as the fish we caught. The Lake Ontario Salmon was significantly milder than the wild Coho. Much less fishy, but also less flavor in general. The texture was good. It was moist and soft. Not bad at all. I would eat it again, which is good since I have another 1.5 lbs of it! Also of note from this meal, the beans and potatoes are from the homestead, as well as the rosemary and sage used to season the potatoes and fish. Also had a pretty solid harvest from the garden this week. >1 lbs of bell peppers, >2 lbs of green beans, plus small amounts of broccoli, peas, and small peppers. The peppers that you see in the picture below had to be harvested because the branch they were on broke off due to the weight of the peppers and the heavy rain we got over the weekend.