Blossom end rot

Not a question, but a comment and suggestion for the man with a not very productive garden and blossom end rot on his tomatoes. I’ve learned that blossom end rot is worsened by a lack of calcium. Calcium can be fed easily to your plants by crushing a few egg shells and putting them in the bottom of the hole when planting the tomatoes. I have my own chickens and buy crushed oyster shell for them, so I add about a tablespoon of the oyster shell to the bottom of the hole instead of egg shell. I hope he has better luck with his garden in the future! A successful year will probably convince his wife.

Karen King
Menomonie, Wisconsin

Good comment, Karen. Indeed, a lack of calcium often contributes to blossom end rot. I’ve found that the calcium is usually a secondary contributor, however, and that steady, adequate watering nearly always takes care of the problem. Mom used to crush egg shells in her tomato holes, too. And she always had great tomatoes. I, too, sincerely hope his wife is encouraging to his endeavors. — Jackie

Old laying hens

What do you do with your old laying hens? Mine were about 3½ years old and their laying had really fallen off this summer. We butchered them last weekend. We took the breast meat and ground it up, we added about ¼ pound pork sausage to ¾ pound chicken. This made a dry, but tasty sausage. After 5 days I boiled the legs and thighs for 45 minutes. This meat is still so tough it was hard to get it off of the bone. I was planning on canning the meat but now I don’t think that its texture would improve with canning. I ground it up with the large blade that came with my Kitchen Aid meat grinder and am thinking about making chicken salad sandwiches out of it. Can you think of any other uses for this meat? What do you normally do with those old laying hens?

Shirley
Stevenson, Washington

We use our old hens for soup and stews. Boiling the meat for 45 minutes is definitely not enough to get them tender. I don’t grind the meat, except sometimes for chicken salad sandwiches, which comes from the meat I have canned. Pressure canning your old hens definitely tenderizes the meat. To stew your old hens, cut the carcass up, then put it in a large kettle with plenty of water to cover it, then add seasonings as you wish. Bring to a boil, cover, and gently simmer for several hours. I often stew a hen on our woodstove until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender. Then remove the bones and make your gravy or soup from the broth and meat. I’ve never had a real tough hen, yet. Most of our old hens get canned up after pre-stewing so I have ready-tender meat to use at any time. Other uses for your ground meat? How about chicken enchiladas or fajitas or mixing it with an egg and cracker meal and frying chicken patties, mixing it with your ground pork, an egg, and cracker crumbs and make chicken loaf, similar to meat loaf? — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

It always seems that this time of year, we have so many jobs we want to get done “before winter!” We keep hacking away at them, but it’s getting colder and colder every day. This last few days, we’ve been busy putting the garden to bed and hauling composted horse manure onto our back yard. I got the garden all cleared up, then plowed it to turn in the thick reed canary grass mulch I’d put on the tomato, bean, and potato rows. Our tiller wouldn’t handle that thick a mulch and we wanted to get it underground to rot over winter. So I plowed it, then ran our raggedy old disc over it for half an hour. I’ve still got some work to do on it, but it looks pretty good now.

Will’s been hauling black, composted horse manure — by the dump truck load — from the pasture onto our back yard. Previously, it was very rough, steep, and rocky. Full of wild raspberry bushes and weeds, it was not a thing of beauty! He spent an afternoon, grading the old yard with Old Yeller, our trusty bulldozer. Yesterday, he finished hauling the black dirt-compost and got it all smoothed out nicely.

Not only are the big rocks buried deep, but we also have MORE back yard and it’s much flatter. Eventually, we’ll put in a nice goldfish pond and flower beds. But next spring, we’ll just seed it with grass and wil be able to keep it mowed and under control. Gradually, we’ll put in a retaining wall for our someday walk-out basement and we’ll add flowers, shrubs, and herbs here and there. For now, we’re tickled pink with the huge improvement! — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

We spent another (luckily very nice) fall day down at Bill’s, helping sheet his garage addition. One of Bill’s friends, Andy Gunderson, volunteered to help and came for the day, too. So Bill, David, Will, Andy, and I set to work and got nearly all the roof sheeted on Saturday. The framing of the valleys where the new addition met the old garage took quite a bit of extra time and work, which slowed things down quite a bit. But we got past that, just as darkness fell. The rest will be easy for Bill to finish a little at a time.

Like us, he’s going to tarp the roof for winter, just as we did our house the first year, instead of going into debt for the sheet metal roofing. And the sides will also be covered with house wrap to protect the OSB. In the spring, Bill plans on using sheet metal on both the new addition and the old garage that was his — and later his and Kelly Jo’s — home for several years while they built their gorgeous log home. The new addition will also be sided on the front to match the cedar siding on the old garage and board and batten siding, cut from trees in the woods.

Bill showed Will the half-log siding that he cut from logs, which he used to enclose the gable end of the interior of his house. It looks so nice that Bill wishes he’d have done that on the outside instead of using (expensive!) milled logs from the lumberyard. It does look much nicer. Will’s now planning to cut log siding for our south-facing greenhouse/porch front, as well as the storage building. It’s great to exchange ideas with others!

I’ve been working at tucking the garden away for winter, removing all the tomato cages, stakes, row markers, and hoses. When I get finished, we’ll plow the garden to turn under the thick straw mulch, then hopefully get the manure from the indoor cow pen and goat pen hauled down to spread on it to rot over winter.

This past spring, Will scraped the horse yard, outside the horse barn, and piled the manure up in “mountains.” It composted all summer and fall, and now it’s good rich, black dirt. He’s hauling it up in dump truck loads to our very rough backyard. When it’s spread out, it’ll not only cover the tons of large rocks, but will also fill in the steep grade of the hill here and there, to make a much nicer, more fertile yard. Last week it looked like a weedy gravel pit hill. Now it’s got distinct possibilities! If winter will just hold off a few more weeks! — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

Pectin and fruit questions

I read your posts this morning on the Pectin and the Cider and had a question. After we can that Pectin following that Cider recipe, how long will the pectin be good for?

Got a couple of fruit questions too, we were blessed enough to get several fruit trees at some unbelievable prices. 4 Elberta Peach, 1 gala Apple, 1 Jonathan Apple, 1 Santa Rosa Plum, 2 Kiefer Pears, 16 Blueberry Bushes (2 different varieties), 14 thornless Blackberry Bushes (2 different varieties). The Berry Bushes, believe it or not were $1.00 each and are in gallon pots. All were 1 to 1 1/2 foot tall (not counting the pots). We have hard clay for soil. After we dug our holes, we added some potting mix and peat moss to each and then put a good 3 inch layer of cypress mulch around the base of each plant/tree. My questions are, is there anything else we need to do, to prepare these new plants for winter. We live in Central Alabama. Also, what should I feed them in the spring? We have access to horse manure right now and just started a compost bin.

Jenny
From Alabama

Jenny, your pectin, once canned, is good for years and years. You got a real steal on your fruit! Good for you. Be sure to water your trees and berries until freezing weather hits. (If it doesn’t freeze tight in your area, give them a drink once in a while all winter.) In the spring, mulch them out to the drip line (trees) and around your berry bushes with rotted compost and manure. Do be sure your manure doesn’t contain hay that comes from a field that was sprayed with herbicides to kill weeds in the hayfield. Those chemicals can kill your garden plants and trees, too. Fortunately, this practice is not yet widespread. — Jackie

Ground meat jerky

I want to make some ground meat jerky. I have conflicting recipes, however. Some say to bake in the oven first, then put in the dehydrator and dehydrate, while some say to simply use the dehydrator. Do you have a preferred way of doing it? I’d love to get your recipe.

Sarah Axsom
Natchitoches, Louisiana

I just use the dehydrator or my oven with the heat turned down as low as it goes. Mine goes down to about 160 degrees. I do several different flavors and really don’t have one recipe I use exclusively. Here’s a start for you, though. Remember that the marinade is just that; it has nothing to do with the keeping ability of the jerky.

3 lbs. ground, lean meat
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder or one clover garlic, crushed
1 tsp. liquid smoke
1 tsp. salt

Mix this well and either use a jerky gun (very cheap and really makes a nice product) or form meat into jerky-sized strips about 1/2-inch thick. Briefly lay the strips on a paper towel to absorb extra marinade, then lay another on top of the meat to absorb any extra from the top. Place in your dehydrator at 145 degrees. When your jerky is nearing doneness, raise the temperature of your dehydrator to 160 degrees and finish it at that temperature. Dry until it is leather-like. Store in the refrigerator or freezer. (In the “old days” people dried their jerky to stick-like dryness, which took real effort to chew. But it kept without refrigeration. Modern, flexible jerky won’t keep long at room temperature without getting moldy.) — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

Winter’s quickly approaching! First we had a terrific freeze (down to 20 degrees) with a hard frost. The frost was pretty, as it made beautiful patterns on our truck and lawn. But right on its heels, was SNOW. I’m talking about an inch here, not a few flakes! Boy, does that shove us into “getting ready for winter” mode!

Yesterday, before the snow, I spent the day pulling tomato cages, piling spent vines, and stacking tomato stakes. I did three rows of 14 cages/stakes each. I still have another row and a half to go, but I’m getting there. I’m piling the plants to burn. Burning spent tomato vines helps reduce the possibility of blights or insects wintering over in the dead vines. And the resulting ash is good for our acidic soil.

Meanwhile, Will has been busily working on the barn and also picking up various “messes” around the yard. Some of these included some old lumber and logs, which we sawed up for firewood. I helped split them and we ran them into the house in the wheelbarrow just before rain came. Now our back porch is piled high with emergency wood and the woodshed is getting really, really full. What a great feeling. Especially when we woke up to that inch of snow this morning! — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

Mean rooster

You do not know how much help you have been as I try to tackle some of my dreams. But I have a question about our chickens. We have six hens and one rooster. The rooster was just hatched this past spring. He is picking on one of our hens who was hatched last year. He just goes after her to pick on her/attack her. It’s not the typical mating stuff. We’ve been able to keep them apart for the last month or so. (But we put The Boss in with all the hens at night and remove him first thing in the morning.) He used to get along with this particular hen. Could her molting have caused him to think she’s weak, and thus prompted his attacks? She’s done molting as far as I can tell, and he’s still attacking her. Is there anything I can do to help these two get along? She’s a good layer, and we were hoping to hatch a batch of our own chicks next spring.

Melissa
Allendale, Michigan

Sometimes one chicken just becomes aggressive with another. The molting may have started it, or not. His maturing hormones may have just gotten overstimulated. You can try trimming his upper beak off with a pair of dog toenail clippers, removing about 1/3. If it bleeds you’ll need to be prepared to cauterize it with a red hot screwdriver blade. This sometimes stops the picking. If not, I’d advise trading the rooster for another one or butchering him to save the hen. Or you could trade the hen to someone if the rooster is only picking on her. Good luck. — Jackie

Sick chickens

We have chickens; one is dying every week or two weeks. Bleeding out their vent. We have 3 ducks in with them and have not had any problems with the ducks. Any idea what is wrong?

Mike McIntosh
Rudy, Arkansas

Watch your chickens carefully. Are one or more of the chickens picking on the others? Often when there is bleeding from the vent it comes from having been picked by other birds. Hens can take very little of this before dying. If this is not the case, I’d advise taking a recently dead (or live bird with symptoms) to your local vet and asking his opinion. — Jackie

Poor garden area

What a wealth of info you are. Since you’ve worked with all kinds of soils, I’m hoping you can direct me a bit. For 5 years I’ve planted a 25′ x 50′ area beside my house. The soil had been covered with a mobile home for over 10 years and I had it removed. Everything I’ve planted has been hit or miss. I’ve planted tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, cukes and melons + other stuff. I’ve got a mostly clay/sand composition and had been adding a bit of peat moss ( about one bale of it across the entire plot.

This past year I contacted an old high school friend who raises horses and went and got enough manure to sprinkle over the entire surface last Jan. Then I tilled it in twice three weeks apart. Cukes went crazy, fantastic. Peppers, tomatoes and melons set a lot of fruit, but lost 95% to blossom-end rot. Our summer was very dry so I used soaker hoses, but several times we got torrential rains of several inches at a time. String beans did really well too, but okra didn’t get as tall even though it produced well. My wife is fed up and doesn’t want me to plant a garden anymore because of my poor luck. I also specifically ordered Heirloom seeds this year and started cukes and tomatoes from seed in the house, another thing she hates. Any suggestions ? I just want a garden that works.

Larry D. Petersime
Moncks Corner, South Carolina

Sorry to hear your wife isn’t supportive of your gardening efforts. But I think when your garden begins to produce well, she’ll come around. Nobody can resist all those garden fresh vegetables! Your biggest problem is your clay soil. You just need more organic material worked into the soil to make your garden work well. Many new gardeners experience partial (or total) failures with a new garden plot and give up. So sad! Hardly any new garden is really productive; it just doesn’t happen. Gardens require a few years of care before the soil gets into good condition and you gain experience. Here on our new raw homestead in the woods, we started out with pure gravel and rocks. But slowly, as we added more rotted manure through the years and worked the soil, picking tons of rocks, our soil improved into a rich black loam. And it’s terrifically productive now! Yours will be too. It takes rotted manure, hard work, and patience. See if your friend can give you a lot more manure this fall and winter. Pile it on at least eight inches deep (or what your tiller will till under), leave it to “cook” for a few weeks, then add another layer and till that in. Go a little light on the area you will be planting tomatoes and peppers — too much manure will result in lots of plants but few tomatoes. As your soil improves, it will retain moisture and blossom end rot will gradually be a thing of the past. Hang in there!

Do be aware that in some areas of the country, farmers and ranchers are spraying their hay fields with a herbicide to improve the quality of their hay (no weeds!). Unfortunately, this has seriously affected a few homesteaders who have used this composted hay/manure on their gardens. It has residual affects on all plant life, including your garden vegetables. This practice is fairly uncommon in most areas, thank God, but I thought I’d better mention it, FYI. — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

Green tomatoes and pizza sauce

I’ve picked every tomato in the patch in preparation for our first killing frost this weekend. Most will ripen up fine, but there will be lots of little green ones that are too immature to ever ripen. I’d like to make some mock apple pie filling with them and either can or freeze it. Any ideas?

Also, I put 20 gallon-size bags of whole tomatoes in the freezer for my mom and she says she won’t need them after all. I already have plenty for tomato juice so this would be a good time to make pizza sauce. Frozen tomatoes are easy to peel when they defrost a little. From that point on, what would you suggest I do and what seasonings should I add to make a nice pizza sauce? I plan on pressure-canning it.

Carol Elkins
Pueblo, Colorado

For the mock apple pie filling, here’s what I’d do:

I’d slice your hard smaller green tomatoes, as you would apples. Here’s a recipe if you end up with 7 quarts of them (adjust, as needed).

7 quarts sliced hard, smaller green tomatoes
2½ cups white sugar
2½ cups brown sugar
½ cup vinegar
½ cup lemon juice
2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 cup Clear Jel (optional, but add it if you don’t want to cook down your tomatoes)

If you use Clear Jel, add sugars, vinegar, and lemon juice as well as Clear Jel in a large pot along with spices. Heat and stir until mixture thickens. Add tomatoes and heat. Quickly fill jars with hot filling, leaving ½ inch of headspace. If you don’t use Clear Jel, cook all ingredients until mixture is slightly thickened (about 30 minutes) stirring to prevent scorching. Then fill jars, as above. Process quarts in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes. If you live at an altitude above 1,000 feet consult your canning book for directions on increasing your processing time to suit your altitude, if necessary.

What I would do with your peeled tomatoes is to thaw nearly completely, then run through a food mill or tomato mill (such as a Victorio). Then either put in a roasting pan in the oven at low temperature, in a slow cooker, or on a stove top, in a large kettle and cook down until thickened. Then add, depending on the amount of sauce you end up with, brown sugar, oregano, basil, onion flakes, garlic, salt to taste. Add a bit, taste, and adjust your seasonings to taste. To pressure can your sauce, process pint or half pint jars for 20 minutes at 10 pounds pressure. If you live at an altitude above 1,000 feet, consult your canning book for directions on increasing your pressure to suit your altitude. — Jackie

Unusual jellies

I just ordered some more of your books from BHM website tonight. Love your sharing your knowledge. I’m looking for jam/jelly etc. recipes for unusual things like Aronia, Sea Berry, etc. Have any? One of your books I ordered tonight is: Growing and Canning Your Own Food. Will that help me?

Francis Rosinski
Grapeview, Washington

I have not made jelly/jam out of aronia or Sea berry yet. But there are recipes for wild plum, chokecherry, and others. Basically, you can usually just use a like recipe for untried fruits (if it’s a tart fruit, use a tart fruit recipe; if it’s astringent, use chokecherry, etc.). Make a small batch, then adjust it as needed. — Jackie

Pie pumpkins

I planted pie pumpkins this year and for the first time ever I have about 15 pumpkins. Some are orange already from the field. But we had a hard frost and I picked the green ones. Will they ripen yet in our garage or house? Or should I use them green? Will they turn orange or just ripen inside with no color change?

Cindy Hills
Wild Rose, Wisconsin

If your pumpkins are quite mature, although green, they may go ahead and orange up. Some varieties do; others don’t. Give them a few weeks in storage and you’ll be able to tell. If any start to “pucker,” go ahead and use them green (like summer squash). If they hold, keep a close eye on them and see if they don’t begin to color up. — Jackie

Share or Bookmark

Flowering carrots

I have a question about carrots. Mine are flowering BIG TIME. Some look like they are going to seed and some are just simple dainty flowers. The carrots with the heavy flowers have a thick stalk-are they ok to eat? Are they going to seed, and can I save them somehow? I haven’t seen this before.

Jacqueline Wieser
Sidney, Nebraska

If your carrots are flowering, they do want to go to seed. This is unusual for first-year in the ground carrots; they usually require two years to produce flowers and seed. Usually carrots that go to seed put their energy into the flower/seed and the roots get tough and sometimes bitter. Check out one of yours and see if that has happened. If your carrots do set seed, enjoy it! Yes. You can save them. What I do is to gently cut the seed head so you don’t shatter the seeds, and place them in a paper bag. Then put your hand in the bag and rub the seeds free of the seed head. When you have your seeds, shake out the seed heads and discard them. Pour your seed onto a cookie sheet and pick out any bits of debris. Often you can pour the seeds through a sieve onto a cookie sheet to do this same thing. Leave the seeds on a cookie sheet in a protected location out of the wind (they are quite small!) until you are sure they are completely dry. Store in a dry place. If you don’t have any wild carrots (Queen Anne’s Lace) growing in your area, these seeds can be planted next year. However, if your first year carrots went to seed instead of making carrots, you might not want to plant them, as they might duplicate what happened this year. — Jackie

Hugelkultur

I’ve been reading about a gardening method called Hugelkultur, and wondered if you have tried it, how well it worked, etc. Do you keep adding wood and soil as it decomposes? It seems to have a lot of benefits such as little irrigation, and using up old wood to amend the soil. Any suggestions would help a total novice gardener to get started will be greatly appreciated!

Franki Johnston
Hot Springs, Arkansas

Well, yes and no. We have started several gardens on land that was previously raw woodland. So, yes, we did chop and till in plenty of rotted and even not-so-rotten wood pieces such as smaller stumps, branches, etc. We pre-burned some and worked in the resulting charcoal. Most we just plowed, tilled, and dug into our soil. I would not really recommend doing this if you don’t need to because you’re making a garden out of raw woodland or as some of our garden once was, stumps, logging waste and tree roots. It’s a lot of (I feel) unnecessary work. You can get very good benefits by using composted manure, natural mulch, which will break down and add tilth to your soil, and green manure crops that you grow on your own garden plot. (Do be sure your bedding has not been sprayed in the field with herbicidal chemicals which will damage your garden!)

Recommendations for a beginner gardener? Keep it small at first so you can learn without becoming overwhelmed. And buy and use my book, Growing and Canning Your Own Food, for a whole lot of tips for every vegetable and fruit in your garden and for your livestock as well. — Jackie

Canning meatballs and a squash soup recipe

Your meatball recipes on Page 191/192, of your Growing and Canning Your own Food book — how do you can them without sauce? (Plain meatballs) Also, I would like to use them for Porcupines — can I do tomato soup like I do the mushroom soup recipe? For sweet and sour meatballs, how can I process since I am not suppose to use corn starch?

A while back a reader asked about a canning recipe for Squash Soup. I have one from “The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning & Preserving” by Ana Micka Page 76
Creamy Squash Soup (Makes about 5 quarts):

5 celery stalks, cut into ½-inch cubes
5 carrots, cut into ½-inch cubes
3 onions, chopped
2½ lbs potatoes (red or other boiling potatoes)
5 lbs butternut squash, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
2 Tbsp. salt (I split the 2 Tbsp. between my jars)
Boiling Water
1. Sterilize jars, lids, and equipment.
2. Peel and cut potatoes into ½-inch cubes. To prevent darkening, soak in an asorbic acid solution of three 500 mg Vit C tablets crushed into 2 qts water.
3. Boil squash and potato cubes for two minutes.
4. Pack squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery into jars. DO NOT MASH!
5. Cover with boiling water, leaving a 1-inch headspace.
6. Follow pressure canning steps. Process pints for 55 minutes and quarts for 90 minutes at pressure listed for your altitude & canner.
7. When you are ready to eat, drain squash/potato mixture. Add it to a blender with a cup of milk, cream, or water per quart of canned vegetables (more or less, depending on how thick you like your soup). Pour into a pan and heat. Add additional spices at this time according to your taste. Curry or ginger adds great flavor. This is delicious.

Mary Helwig
Red Lion, Pennsylvania

To can plain meatballs, lightly brown the meatballs, then pack hot in your hot jars. Make a broth from the pan drippings with water. Heat to boiling, then ladle over meatballs. I used to can plain meatballs with no liquid, but they sometimes tasted too dry, no matter how I used them. So now I always use a broth, juice, or sauce. Instead of using tomato soup concentrate, I’d use a seasoned tomato sauce, instead. The flavor would be nicer, in my opinion. — Jackie

Share or Bookmark