Next up on the fruit horizon

The white peaches are just about ripe. They are tiny little peaches, apricot size really. But it’s a teeny, tiny little tree, so what do you expect, really? We keep having thoughts of taking the tree out, and maybe replacing it with an Oh Henry peach tree, but every August, once we have our first bite of fruit, we give it another year.

Our Fay Elberta tree is almost empty at this point. We froze a bunch of these peaches. Sliced them, layed them out on a cookie sheet and then into a ziplock. I can’t wait for a mid winter peach tart. I need to remember to make up some crisp topping too. We also made just a couple jars of freezer jam too.

Do you have any fruit trees in your garden? Are the peaches ripe in your yard too?

How to Make Fruit Rollups

I thought we had used up all of our nectarines in our recent canning spree, but Scott walked in the backdoor yesterday with another basket full (the last of them). Hmmm, what to do with them? I thought I’d try my hand at fruit leather again. Nectarines are a perfect candidate for fruit leather because they aren’t as juicy as peaches so they dry faster. Plus I like their tangy flavor.

I had tried making fruit leather in the past and was never very satisfied with my results, but I think I got it right this time. Here’s how I did it:

Pit the nectarines and place in a pot. Turn the heat to medium/high and mash the fruit with a potato masher. You can add sugar at this point if you like, but I chose not to for this batch since the nectarines were pretty ripe already. Bring the fruit to a boil for about 15-20 minutes. Blend (carefully–it’s hot!) with an immersion blender.

Once the fruit reaches a jam like consistency, spread it onto parchment lined cookie sheets.

Place in oven and turn the temperature to the lowest setting. Once the oven reaches temperature, then turn it off. You may have to keep turning the heat on and off for the next two or so hours until the fruit has become tacky to the touch.

Once it’s cooled, roll it up in the parchment paper and slice into one and a half inch lengths. Store your homemade fruit rollups in an air tight container.

You can use the sun to dry the leather, but you will need a breathable cover such as cheese cloth to spread over it. Or else you’ll get bug and lint covered leather (that’s what happened with a previous batch, not so tasty!). I’ve found that even in our arid climate it takes a few days to dry, which is why I went the easy route and used the oven.

Overall, it was an easy process and I would totally recommend trying it if you are overloaded in fruit.

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oh, the problems we have

We ate our first tomato this weekend. A San Marzano. Not this one above, but a different one, one without blossom end rot. Blossom end rot is something we seem to struggle with every year. Especially and almost exclusively with the San Marzanos. It’s caused by the plant not getting enough calcium. We already knew that we didn’t have enough calcium in our soil due to our home diagnosed weed problems, but it seems like adding that liquid calcium didn’t do enough to prevent blossom end rot entirely. It’s not affecting every tomato, just some, but its there.

One reason is that plants aren’t able to absorb calcium is by infrequent and inconsistent watering. I don’t think that’s our problem. We do water on a regular basis, about once a week. And it’s a deep watering since we do our drainage pipe method.

Is anyone else dealing with blossom end rot? You Grow Girl did a great post about this last week.

This next problem is a mystery to us and maybe you can help us.

It’s this spotting that’s happening on our nectarines. It’s on the vast majority of nectarines, no matter if they are in the sun or shaded by the leaves. It’s edible, we eat right through it, but it makes them kind of funky looking. Does anyone know what it is?

When life gives you cherry plums…

…make cherry plum jam!

We have these cherry plum trees all over town. They grow almost like weeds around here and I don’t think anyone really pays attention to the fruit. The plums just fall on the ground and make a great big, icky, sticky mess. And I’ll admit, I was completely one of those people. Then my ‘crazy’ husband went outside a few years ago, collected a few and made jam out them. I thought he had gone bananas. But then I tasted the jam. It was so good! Tart and sweet and the brightest shade of magenta you’ve ever seen. It’s now my favorite jam of all.

So far we’ve made 8 jars this season and as I type we have another big pot of jam boiling on the stove. Our exact as science recipe? A pot full of plums and a few handfuls of sugar. Simmer and smash them. Strain them and simmer some more. Then put up into jars. Enjoy on toast. Give away to friends.

Kale for Sale has a great post on wasted fruit, check it out. Also GreenBean has a good comment on that post…if you belong to a group in your town, such as a mom’s group, or maybe your local freecycle, send out an e-mail asking if anyone has any fruit they won’t use. You might end up with bags of free fruit that you can use for freezing, making tarts or jam.

harvesting cherries & garlic

For all the locals, isn’t this cooler weather nice? That heat wave was too much! Even though it did scorch some plants, it made our tomatoes and peppers very happy. But this weekends cooler weather allowed us to do some spring harvesting. We pulled up lettuce plant after lettuce plant….anyone want to come over for a salad? Dinner’s at 6:30 tonight!

We also harvested the rest of the hardneck garlic (the same garlic that I used a few weeks ago for Orangette’s green garlic & spinach soup). Scott pulled it out of the ground and just let it lay in the sun for a day or two, then yesterday cut off the leaves and put it in a box outside to dry. The hardneck made this garlic too difficult to braid, so we are going for box storage for these guys. We planted the single cloves back in January and we are now blessed with 47 large bulbs. Let’s see how long it takes us to use them up.

I also spent some time up in a ladder this weekend harvesting cherries. Looks like the birds were generous enough to leave us plenty for eating and some for freezing. We didn’t freeze any last year, only canned the jam, but since we have plenty of jam left, I thought I’d go for freezing this year. Being high up in that fifty year old tree, with limbs covered in lichen, the evening sun pouring through the leaves, I felt like a kid reaching for those shiny red jems. One for the basket, two for me. I could harvest cherries all day.

triple digits

Really now? Do we really need to be having this 100+ degree weather already? This is coming from a couple who dream of summer days getting to a maximum of 80 degrees. You know it’s going to be a toasty day when you open up the doors and windows of your 85 degree house at 7am and the air outside is not much cooler. Days like this are a tough one for the garden, but at least good for air drying laundry.

The cherries that we tried so desperately to save from a huge flock of cedar waxwings that decended on us last Friday are now a deep dark burgandy. It seems like last week they were just blooms, but already it’s been two months! How quickly time flies. It is wonderful to taste our first fruit of the season. Last year the birds for some reason let us have every last cherry on our tree and we made tarts and pies and we canned jars and jars of jam. This year they left us with only enough to eat, which is just fine. We have plenty of last years jam. The below photo is a cherry tart I made last Mothers Day from Mario’s book, it was incredible.

I noticed our first pea on the vine. Last year we were also bombarded with peas. I spend a lot of afternoons pureeing them into Charlie’s first food. This year, not so much. Maybe we planted too late?

The hardneck garlic is ready for picking and drying. We stopped watering it because we noticed that one started to rot.

We also ate our fill in artichokes last night. Even our three year old has demanded his own artichoke, eating not only the leaves and the heart but the stem too. Our three year old is the defination of a locovore. The only, and I mean only time he eats vegetables is if he sees them coming from our garden. Not a green veggie has passed by his lips all winter until last week when we picked our first spinach salad, then he kept asking for more. Hopefully his little body gets all he needs during these summer months because once winter comes he won’t touch anything green. Each winter I get worried that he’s not eating any vegetables but Scott keeps reassuring me that he’ll get his fill once summer comes.

Apple Blossoms

Thought I would share what’s blooming on our Golden Delicious apple tree this morning.

quick shots in the weekend garden

The cherry tree is in full blossom…

..and the peas are up!

Our Weeping Santa Rosa Plum Tree

Since moving to this spot, we’ve become a little fruit tree crazy. When we first toured the property we were excited about seeing the golden delicious apple tree, pear tree, and orange tree that were here, but since then we’ve planted an additional 10 or 11 trees to our third of an acre.

This Santa Rosa Weeping Plum is one of our newest additions and one of our favorites. It stands at the back of the yard out on it’s own, so it really is a showcase tree. I think this photo really captures a time when it’s at its most beautiful, right before the bud break. This was on February 28th. Now it’s in full bloom with branches touching the ground.

Since we’ve planted it we’ve had a problem with peach leaf curl and we don’t know how to treat it organically. The only thing we’ve been able to do, which is the only non organic thing we do in our yard, is to spray it with copper spray. If anyone knows of a better way to treat it, please comment. We’d love to know.