Mulching with straw and canning pureed zucchini

Your garden looks beautiful with the straw. We did the straw for the first time this year and were not satisfied at all. We put on about 6 inches of straw, and after about two weeks, little tufts of grass-like weeds sprouted everywhere. I am thinking maybe from the chicken manure. It actually caused more work for us in the weeding dept. What did we do wrong? Are you supposed to wait until everything is up good and growing before you mulch? Our tomatoes and peppers were all in Wall-0-Waters when we mulched. We had to spread back the straw. Pull the weeds (not hard to pull but a lot of them), then spread the straw back on. (only to have to do it again in 3 weeks or so). Any advice?

I also need your canning advice. I already have way too many zucchini. Am making pureed zucchini with about 1/2 cup almond milk. Can this be canned and if so how many minutes and pounds in the canner? I don’t have freezer room so would like to can it for future biscuits, breads, etc.

Joni Warren
Canyon City, Oregon

We don’t use straw anymore, but use our own immature reed canary grass, a locally-grown, wet-area grass with no weeds. When you use straw, there is some grain in the straw — can’t be helped. Usually you need to put on about 8 inches of straw and even that will sometimes result in grain sprouting up. But that’s not a big problem as it can’t root in mulched areas and is quite easy to pull up. We do wait to mulch until everything is up and growing. We till and hand weed the garden twice, then put the mulch down. No more weeding at all. It sounds like you got straw that had plenty of grain left it in. I’d pick another farmer next year and hope for less volunteer grain. And put down a real thick mulch to discourage grain sprouting.

Sorry, but your zucchini recipe won’t can up. It would be a too-dense product for safe canning. Have you considered using your zucchini as a cucumber replacement in pickle recipes? It works great. It also dehydrates perfectly, taking up very little room in storage. Just slice and dehydrate. It’s wonderfully versatile in so many different recipes. — Jackie

6 COMMENTS

  1. Joni,

    I don’t have any information on canning recipes containing almond milk either, so you’re right; you better freeze it.

  2. The Pureed Zucchini that I am doing is not that dense as I am adding almond milk & water to it. It has the consistency of milk because it is so watered down. I was using it in Smoothies. Guess I will have to just freeze the liquid.

  4. Since pureed zucchini isn’t safe for canning, I assume my mashed banana isn’t either. I already canned a few jars of Monkey butter, with mashed banana, crushed pineapple, brown sugar, cherries, and bottled lemon. It all sealed, and I made it about a week ago. Will it still be OK if I put it in the fridge? For how long? (It’s delicious, by the way!)

  5. We too had all kinds of oats sprout from the straw we put down. We ended up putting down newspaper first and then the straw, had much less sprouting!

  6. One thing we resorted to in desperation was to shred the zucchini and dry it. We’ve used it as breading, I’ve ground it for flour, and we’ve used it as a thickener in a soup. It stores wonderfully this way, and it’s a great use for the oversized ones.

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