{"id":4185,"date":"2014-08-10T03:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T07:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=4185"},"modified":"2014-08-10T03:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T07:00:49","slug":"q-and-a-mulching-with-straw-and-canning-pureed-zucchini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2014\/08\/10\/q-and-a-mulching-with-straw-and-canning-pureed-zucchini\/","title":{"rendered":"Q and A: mulching with straw and canning pureed zucchini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mulching with straw and canning pureed zucchini<\/strong><\/p>\n

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?<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Joni Warren<\/em>
\nCanyon City, Oregon<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}