Freezing Green Tomatoes and Getting Ready for Storm Ion

Storm Ion is on his way and for us Florida folks we are preparing like it is a hurricane not a winter storm.  Well not prepping exactly like a hurricane but just as much work is involved in getting ready for the steep drop in temperature.
We decided to pick a lot of our green tomatoes and put them in the freezer. They are great for making fried green tomatoes.  First wash tomatoes and slice into 1/4 inch slices, second place on flat tray and place in freezer for a couple of hours, and  finally when the slices are frozen place them in a freezer bag and keep frozen until use.  To use thaw slightly and coat with your choice of flour, cornmeal, or bread crumbs.  Fry in hot oil , drain , and salt to taste.  I love my fried green tomatoes topped with feta cheese. 

yep it started out with a high of 70 and will end the day with a low of 27.  If we can survive until Friday we will be okay.  This is our first really cold weather for this season and at least it waited until January.  Back in November we had a day of cold weather and R didn't want to take a chance on loosing any of his tomatoes so we put the plastic up on the sides of the greenhouse.  Of course with 80 degree days we had to take down part of the plastic. So this morning in our short sleeve shirts and shorts we put all of the plastic back up and transferred what plants we could to the greenhouse.

 

Leaving only enough space for his heater

 

Yesterday we picked all the vegetables that were ready and put them in the freezer.   I shredded  and diced the cabbage and blanched it for the freezer,  The shredded cabbage is for making egg rolls  and the diced cabbage I use in soups.

 The cabbage was grown in our NFT system.  Nutrient film technique (NFT) is a hydroponic technique wherein a very shallow stream of water containing all the dissolved nutrients required for plant growth .
We transfered the strawberries from the NFT system into the floating pond system which is inside the greenhouse.  Since this is our first year growing strawberries we are not sure how they will survive the cold.  So we decided to be safe and not sorry and placed the strawberries where we can keep them warm. 
Here are few more pics of various vegetables growing in our garden

Onions

brussell sprouts

Mustard Greens

Bok Choy

Hope all these vegetables survive the freeze tonight.

Tomorrow will only be in the low 40's so we will probably be inside all day.  This will be bad for R because he does not like to be inside.  Wonder what he will do all day. 

OKRA OKRA AND MORE OKRA

The plants are beautiful with their large green leaves and pale yellow flowers.

As beautiful as the okra plants are they can be brutal to the skin when cutting the pods.  The itchy feeling is quickly gone as soon as soap and water hits the skin.  This is never a deteriorate from cutting this delicious veggie. 

This is the perfect vegetable to grow in the extreme heat of summer.  It seems the hotter the weather the more pods it produces. 

I love okra!! Sauteed, fried, Pickled and in soups  -- Okra is the best.

My freezer is slowly filling up with okra for the winter. Here is how I freeze okra

Wash and dry ( I use newspaper -spread out on counter - with a top layer of paper towels) Let okra air dry for about 15 to 20 minutes.  Then I slice pods into small circles and put in bags in freezer.  This can be used for soups or pan sauteing.

Another way I prepare okra is by cutting off each end in putting the okra pods in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes then immediately into a cold water bath.  I drain the pods but do not air dry.  I cut the pods and shake them in cornmeal.  The cornmeal will stick without anything else added.  I then place the corn mealed okra on a tray and place in freezer.  After they have frozen I put in a freezer bag. This way they do not stick together.

Hydroponic and Dirt Gardens are doing good

Hard to believe when it is still 95 degrees outside that it is time to get a move on the fall garden.  I told pawpaw last night that if we don't pick up the speed it will be time to get the plants in the ground and we want have enough to plant. Gotta get those seeds in the starter cups now.

We did plant a few squash, pumpkin, kale, broccoli, and collards last week.  Hoping to put the kale, collards, and broccoli in our hydroponic system and see how they grow compared to the ones we start in the soil. 

The squash and pumpkins were started in my newspaper pots.  I made these according to the directions of a YouTube video.  I just googled newspaper pots and came up with several videos then I chose one, followed the direction, and made several pots.

The newspaper pots are great for the squash and pumpkins.  Another free seedling starter pot we use is the pods from our keruig machine.  PawPaw used the coffee grounds in the compost pile and he also read the grounds are good for his blueberry bushes. 

 

Cucumbers are coming along but the kale and broccoli are slow grow.  I think it is too hot for them to sprout. 

 

Here is an update on our hydroponic plants

the eggplant has doubled in size in only two weeks and it is starting to bloom.

Bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants are really growing.

 

One good thing comes from the heat.  Pleanty of okra for the freezer and for making pickled okra. 

 

So Much Work !! but I do love our garden.

 

 

 

Lovin my Hydroponics

Only one week and I can hardly believe how the plants are growing 

Fall Garden Plans

Since I am not spending my free time harvesting, canning, freezing, or dehydrating my vegetables-- I am dreaming of my fall garden and surfing the web for gardening ideas.

When me and Rog  return from our trip to Chicago it will be time to start planting.  This year we are going to set up a hydroponic garden.  We have been ordering our supplies and watching loads of youtube videos.  There is a youtube guy --MHPGarderner-- that has over 200 videos which most are about vegetable gardening.  MHP is where we are getting most of our information for hydroponics.

I have been growing sweet potato slips for the last month.  Three little sweet potatoes have produced enough slips to plant a row in our garden.  I place the potatoes in a container with toothpicks holding half of the potato out of the water

 

Hydroponic Vegetables

After many hours of watching YouTube videos, ordering and shopping for supplies, and getting our seeds started we have started to assemble our dutch bucket growing system. Hydroponics is growing vegetables without soil.  The system takes some knowledge to get the equipment setup and a few already rooted vegetables.

As I was searching for gardening techniques on the Internet I found several videos from MHPGarderner.  He covers a lot of farming ideas from planting straight into the ground, growing veggies in his greenhouse and the idea that really caught my eye- hydroponics.  So we used a lot of his ideas and here is a pic of our new system before the plants have been added.

If you are interested in this system then be sure to check out MHPgardener. 

Our soil is so sandy and really does not have the nutrients needed for a great garden.  We have had to work with the soil and add compost, muck, and chicken poop to the small garden area we have.  We are hoping this will be the answer to expanding our growing possibilities.

Once our buckets are lined with a paint strainer and the perlite is added then we will plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in the buckets. A small pump will pump the nutrients into the buckets and excess will drain back into the reservoir (AKA blue container).

The lids need to be added to the buckets.  Roger has to drill a 3 inch hole in the center for the plant.  The lid helps keep the rain water out (somewhat) and the wind from blowing the perlite out of the buckets. 

Can hardly wait to see if this works!!!

Summer Harvest

The only vegetables left in the garden are okra and eggplant.  Eggplants are heirloom from seeds purchased from Burpee.  Heirloom are not always the best way to go.  These eggplants are white with lavender and have no flavor.  The package of seed said the eggplants were mild tasting  which from now on I will translate as no flavor.  Okra is doing okay even though it has rained everyday since the end of June.  Some okra is in the freezer and some I have pickled but the majority has been cooked and eaten.  We love okra.

The summer harvest nearly kicked by butt this year.  Vegetables do not wait until you have the time or energy to do something with them.  No they must be attended to immediately or you will loose the harvest.  So no matter how tired I am when I come home from work I still have hours of work to do at home.  I LOVE IT!!

Once the freezer became full I had to go to other forms of preserving our vegetables.  The top photo is my dehydrated vegetables and the bottom is canned vegetables and pickles.

My dehydrated jars consist of zuchninni , yellow squash, onions, kale, celery, strawberries, and a variety of my herbs.

Canning jars are mostly dill pickles and sweet pickles.  I also canned yellow squash, tomatoes, and carrots.

First year growing carrots -- well not the first year we planted them but it was the first crop we ever harvested. When planting carrots we found that it is important to water them every morning and every afternoon until they sprout up from the ground and then water as needed - usually everyday in Florida -- until they are well established.  Even the frost we had in March did not hurt the carrots. 

Corn did not go so well.  It would have if the worms had not eaten most of the crop.  It was growing pretty big ears.

and when it was shucked the ear was pretty awesome too

We have corn in the freezer but we had to purchase it from another farm.