Granny Apple Sauce

What a view! What a day! Its nearly October, it was 92 degrees, sunny, with a gentle breeze as I stood beneath the shade of apple tree in my flip flops for perhaps the last time this year. Last week one of my neighbors was very kind to invite me to their yard to help harvest the plenitude of apples that their trees were producing this year. I was very honored indeed especially after seeing how beautiful her apples were and the care and attention that she gives to her trees. The trees are about twenty years plus old.

These apple trees were obviously well established. They were full blown mature trees, with thick sturdy trunks. The trees were not too tall, which made picking easier. My neighbor even gave me a tour of the trees and did taste testing. Delicious!

One beauty of a tree in particular was a granny smith apple tree. Granny smith just happens to be my boyfriends favorite apple, so I was very excited that of all the trees this one in particular had by far the most apples on it.

Now in anticipation of my apple picking visit I thought I'd try my hand at making my own apple picker. Knowing the trees wouldn't be too tall I figured a ladder wouldn't be necessary if I had an apple picker. The night before picking, I did some research online of apple pickers and got the general gist of what was involved. The next morning my boyfriend suggested using my garden cultivator to make the picker. In a few minutes I whipped together this apple picking contraption.

The idea I got from my apple picker investigations was that you would have something that would hook between the apple and the branch allowing you to pull down and break the stem.

Then your apples would fall and be caught by some kind of basket, in this case I used a juice jug that I cut the top off of and zip tied to the cultivator. I tested the apple picker on the ancient apple tree we have in the backyard and it worked well. Unfortunately after about half an hour of serious apple picking my picker started falling apart. Maybe it was the juice jug, or maybe it was the zip ties, but it just wasn't holding together. Oh well.

Regardless the apple picker helped me scour the upper branches of the tree to get a good five gallon buckets worth of apples. At her request, the most perfect looking apples were reserved for the local food pantry which she was going to drop off the fruit to in a couple days.

Immediately upon returning home the chopping began. My intention from the start was to try my hand at making applesauce. I've never made applesauce before, but from what everyone has told me its super easy.

With my paring knife in hand and following a recipe and some pointers from my mom, I quartered the apples- cutting out the cores and whatever insect/other damage I found. Then I cut smaller pieces into my largest stock pot. I cooked the apples for a little while until they started to become soft. Meanwhile I set up... my squeezo.

My squeezo. It may look complicated, but its really a simple and time saving tool. When I was a kid every August when the tomatoes were ready to make sauce out of, my job in the kitchen was to man the squeezo. It was so much fun!

Basically the tool allows you to separate juice and pulp from the skins and seeds of the food your processing. So in this case, I put the softened apples in the big funnel looking thing. By turning the hand crank and the food is fed through a spiral shaft surrounded by a screen that strains out the pulp and juice... which slides down into a waiting bowl, while into a second bowl the seeds and skins are deposited. I can only imagine how much time I saved in peeling the apples... I probably would have saved more by not coring them with my paring knife, but I was worried about worms (which I notice like to burrow from the bottom up through the center of the apple) and ended up just carving out that part for each apple.

The end result was so smooth and sweet. I didn't even add sugar. After passing through the squeezo the applesauce was done and ready for the canning jars!

Here are our 'orchard' in the making. These are four apple trees planted two years ago. Around here deer are very destructive and we knew we needed to devise a protective cage for all the saplings. I was explaining this to my neighbor who was having some problems with a sapling she planted, but which was getting abused by animals- so I promised to share our fencing method in this post.

First we secured stakes into the ground, here a U post on one side (something tall and strong) and a wooden one on the other. Using about 1/4" hardware cloth on the bottom extending upward about 24", the trees are protected from rabbits. On top of that is a heavier welded wire fencing which is about 48" tall. Both types of fencing were wrapped around and attached to the posts forming a protective cylander around the tree. Together the fencing stands about six feet tall. With mulch, weeds are not a problem and my boyfriend attached the fencing in such a way that allows flexibility for access to be gained for pruning or other maintinance.

At two years old the trees are looking mighty fine thanks to all of my boyfriends' hard work in caring for them. The time cannot come soon enough when one autumn day we can tromp out and pick our very own apple harvest from the backyard.

The September Mega Garden Profile

Here is the September garden. Autumn is knocking at Summer's door. From 90 degree weather just two weeks ago, we now are back to normal September weather. However, the cooler weather is just a reminder of how much more work there is to be done.

Despite being nearly autumn, the garden is in full swing. Some folks I have spoken to seem to be under the impression that once summer is over, so are gardens. "How's your garden? All put away?", "All done with the garden?", etc. This mega garden profile will show that the garden is far from done! There is plenty of plants laden with produce for the picking and the preserving.



One of the pretty gourds emerging from the chaos of vines.

 Gourds always have done well in my garden. I'm not sure what their deal is, but I won't complain. Last year when hardly any squash was able to grow, the gourd plants went crazy. Although I can't eat them, their mix of colors, textures and shapes are fun to have in decorating the house for Halloween and beyond (I actually JUST composted my last gourd from last year just the other week).

This is my first year growing pole beans. The pole beans have been awesome. Maybe too awesome. I planted them around the border of the fence thinking that it would give them something to climb on. They did just that. Now they are likely to pull the whole section of netting down with their weight! By some miracle the fence is still in one piece, though sagging, and I've been doing my best to keep up with the bean harvest. Of all the beans I grew this year, the pole beans were hands down the tastiest. Even when over mature, they still tasted  great. One other thing I observed is that they are a smoother bean. I am sure there is a botanical term for it, but beans can be... a little fuzzy, and its ok unless your eating a bunch raw (which I love- like eating healthy french fries). These pole beans seemed to lack that slight fuzziness, which makes me wonder if this is a quality present in only pole beans or maybe just this particular variety. Its something to ponder. 

Last year I managed to get ONE sunflower. Like so many of my other seedlings, the sunflowers were devoured by pests. This year I started seeds in trays on May 2nd. I left the seed trays right outside so that they got plenty of sunlight, the temperatures were not too cold and if there was a frost warning I'd cover the whole thing (this also kind of eliminates hardening off). By starting the seeds off in a tray I had the idea that I would give them all a head start from the slugs in the garden, who would otherwise chew them up at their first tender emergence from the soil. Well, it worked. All the seedlings that I transplanted survived. They were big enough to not be as bothered by the pests and once their growth took off it was no longer a concern. I don't do much with my sunflowers other than admire them. Typically I'm not big on growing flowers in the garden other than utilizing them as a companion plant (like marigolds) or to help break up all the visual mass of green.

Tomatoes! They are doing great great great. With the blight of last year, I took extra good care of the tomatoes this year. I kept them weeded, the soil cultivated, pruned and trained. Now I'm busy keeping them harvested, but its not easy to keep up with all the tomatoes being produced by my 12 plants. I've already canned enough salsa (but I'll do more) for a year, I've made chili (which I found is a convenient way to use up tomatoes) and have been eating tomato salads every other day. YUM!

Another success story is my parsley. I didn't get any last year thanks to pests. Again, I did the whole seed tray thing to start the plants off. When I transplanted my parsley in the tomato rows, I sowed more seed directly in the rows. Not a single seed survived into maturity- slugs ate them all. Only the transplants were able to handle the damage and eventually grew large enough that it didn't matter what the slugs did. I've got a good part of the parsley dried already (which I'll talk about more in another post) and still plenty more to go.

The same story is for the basil. Only the plants I started in seed trays and then transplanted out survived. Everything that I direct sowed out in the garden were devoured. Lesson learned! I'm going to just start these guys in seed trays from now on and will just forget about the direct sowing. I've already got a bunch of pesto in the freezer to be satisfied with for the rest of the year, but my plants are still going and I'll probably make more pesto and dry the rest.

Zinnia. One of the flowers I was talking about that I use to break up the 'green' of the garden. My current opinion of flowers is that they are second rate garden citizens. They take up room that vegetables could be growing in. This is a horrible attitude for some to read, I know, but as time goes on I'm sure it will change. They are pretty and its nice to cut some for the house too. I may allow more flowers in the future to grow with my vegetables. We'll see.

There are still lots of tomatillos ripening out there. The fruits have been maturing at a steady rate. I pick all that I am able to, preserve them, and then wait for the next harvest. They are not as overwhelming as tomatoes can be, that's for sure. The plants do grow very large though. This was something I read about- 'can grow up to 6 feet', but I didn't believe mine would. For the most part I was right, except for this one plant (pictured above) definitely grew taller than me and then its own weight made it bend over. Its a huge plant though. The other tomatillos grew about 3-4 feet on average. I've learned now that they are a sprawling type plant- not easily tamed with training. They are at home on the ground however. There were a couple plants I thought I lost after we had some wind a few times that snapped their stems. I was a little sad about it, but let them be because they still looked alive somehow. Eventually I realized that they have roots that grow out along their branches and then the plants just re-rooted themselves in this way. That's a nice adaptability feature.

Beans and more beans. I still have yellow beans out there. I canned some of them and may not get them all preserved. After eating the pole beans raw, the yellow beans taste like crap, so I will probably not be inclined to raw munchings of these guys. I grew a lot of beans this year compared to years before. One reason was that my boyfriend is crazy about dilly beans, I think he ate all the ones I made last year within a couple months. Secondly, beans are a legume and legumes are nitrogen fixing plants. In other words they have the ability to take nitrogen that's in the atmosphere and put it back into the soil via the happy relationship with the bacteria found in their roots. So in a sense I'm also growing beans to improve the soil and I happen to get some food out of the whole deal.

Cabbage family. I love the cabbage family. So so nutritious and cold hardy. Above is a bed of Brussels sprouts and red cabbage. They will be fine outside even after a frost. This is the farthest I've gotten with both plants. Again last year I had nothing to show for my efforts. I'm still learning.

Leeks. Nurtured since February (technically January 30th). No pests. No problems. They can also be left out in the garden practically forever. What I learned from last year is if I fail to pick them all by the time the ground freezes solid, I'll just have to wait until spring when they regenerate (some rotting may occur). 

Who needs flowers when you have gorgeous veggies like this kohlrabi? I never knew what it was until I was working my way through the recipes of a vegetarian cookbook on year and found this delicious recipe that used them. Now I grow kohlrabi every year. They are companions with beets, so I always pair them up with each other in a couple beds. Since they are a cabbage family member I don't have to worry about harvesting them for a good while yet as they will withstand the frosts in October.

Strawberries? Yes, I have strawberries in September. I am understanding more and more why people grow Alpine strawberries. They are incredibly hardy and while the berries are tiny, they have been producing berries all summer and now into the fall!

Green cabbage. It nearly was a failure due to the chunk (groundhog) wars earlier this summer. They made a come back and are looking ready to eat!

More cabbage family. Kale will be the happening green along with collards for awhile. Another vegetable that I can leave in the garden and eat well into November (and December?). Frost actually makes the greens taste better so I've been holding off a little bit for the frost to munch on them in full force.

Lastly pumpkins. I tried growing a jack-o-lantern type pumpkin, but the plant never did anything. So I am left with the tried and true pie pumpkin. I didn't get many, but each one is welcome gift from the garden.

This concludes the September Mega garden profile. I skipped last month, but I hope to have more to share in October. See you then!