Fruit Babies!

There is nothing like homegrown fruit. Last year we enjoyed warm raspberries off the vine and perfectly sweet strawberries along with two (yes, just two) Italian plums. The anticipation for this year's fruit starts with tiny flower buds and bitty baby fruit that are revealing themselves now. Here are some of the fruitlets we are tending this year:

concord grapes, montmorency cherries

strawberries, and red raspberries.

Not pictured are the fuzzy green peaches, snow drop blueberry flowers, soft chartreuse figs, and hard emerald lemons gathering sunlight and water in our garden.

Are you growing fruit this year? What kind(s)?

How to Freeze Berries

Did you pick strawberries last week and then receive quarts of them in your CSA this week?  That's the case with many of my friends who are now looking for quick ways to process the excess. The fastest way to preserve berries, in my opinion, is freezing.  Frozen berries can be popped into yougurt parfaits, smoothies, baked goods, or jam later in the season.  They last for at least a year in the coldest part of your freezer.  Lil likes frozen blueberries as a snack as they retain their texture better than other berries.

First, hull or pit the fruits.  If they are organic and not visibly dirty, you can leave them unwashed.  If you do wash the fruits, dry them thoroughly with tea towels.

Next, lay fruit in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  Sometimes I line mine with parchment if the fruits are particularly juicy to prevent them from sticking.

After 4 - 12 hours in the freezer, pop the fruits off the cookie sheet.  Quickly transfer them to a labeled freezer bag or vacuum seal bag.  Remove as much air as possible to prevent freezer burn.

If you have a large quantity of berries, repeat the process a few times.  Store delicate fruits like strawberries in the refrigerator until you an freeze them.

I have successfully used this method to freeze strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, pitted cherries, and peach slices.  They stay individually frozen which makes portioning for recipes or snacks a cinch.

Healthier Strawberry Shortcake

When we returned from a short vacation last week, there were plenty of ripe strawberries to pick.  Lil asked sweetly, "Can we make strawberry shortcake please Mama?" She is hard to refuse.  But after four days of restaurants and treats, I wanted to make dessert a little healthier.  I adapted a recipe my mother uses for shortcake by lessening the sugar, using white whole wheat flour, and substituting skimmed milk.  The recipe might originally be from an old version of a Betty Crocker cookbook but I'm not sure.

Served with a heaping portion of strawberries, one eighth of this cake has 213 calories, according to Spark People online recipe nutrition calculator.  It has 4 grams of protein, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 8 grams of fat, 50 mg of potassium and plenty of other vitamins.  While still falling into the category of a 'sometimes food' in my opinion, this version of strawberry shortcake is reasonable to serve as a weeknight dessert.

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Strawberry Shortcake Makes: 8 servings Time: 20 minutes preparation, 35 minutes cooking

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup 2% milk

1/2 cup (local in season) strawberries per person, chopped

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream shortening and sugar with an electric mixer.

Add egg and vanilla and cream again.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to creamed shortening and sugar alternately with milk.

Spread in a 8 inch circular cake pan and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.  Allow to cool slightly and top with strawberries.

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Bird Netting EVERYWHERE: Why and How

Just after the second set of pea leaves appeared, birds started eating them.  I blame sparrows, the possibly invasive species that seem to swarm our neighborhood in the spring.

So, bird netting is on the peas.

Last year we lost strawberries to the squirrels.  Even with Alex's not exactly legit squirrel hunting, they still come around.

Bird netting is on the strawberries.

Then I noticed that despite plenty of rain and sun the lettuce just never seemed to grow.

Five days of bird netting and the leaves are rounded and growing.  Same with the endive.

As much as I hate covering everything in little bits of plastic, I raise plants for me!  Go away birds and squirrels!!

If you struggle with critters eating your plants, netting might be the answer:

• Purchase an appropriate quantity of netting. I have two 14x14 foot packs I purchased from the local nursery for about $6 each.
• While it is still carefully folded, cut to the length of your garden bed.
• Spread each piece gently over top of the crop you are protecting. It doesn't have to be perfectly aligned. If your area is particularly windy, use several small sticks to secure the corners.
• When plants have been established, you can try removing the netting. Gently peel it away from the plants, unwinding tendrils if they have grown through the netting.
• Fold your netting to reuse next year. It never seems to pack down to the size it was when I purchased, so we keep a large grocery bag filled with folded up pieces of netting.
• Enjoy your peas/berries/lettuces munch free!

Strawberries!!

Our berries are growing gangbusters this year!

This is their second and third year in this bed, one in between our house and the neighbors.  It gets sunlight for about 6 hours of the day now and that time is ever lengthening.

Weeds are a threat to these berries.  I weed the bed almost daily removing the starchy sticky stems of milkweed that seem to grow inches overnight.

As the green fruits are already the size of my thumbnail, I laid bird netting over top this week.  I want to enjoy every sweet berry, leaving none for the squirrels or birds.

When friends ordered alpine strawberries earlier this spring from The Strawberry Store, I could not resist joining their wholesale buy.  I'm so glad I gave in because these are the sweetest tiny plants I have ever seen!

Alpine berries are supposed to have unsurpassed flavor.  Unlike traditional strawberries, they can be divided for reproduction.  I have two varieties, red Alexandria and Yellow Wonder.

Alex dug out an addition to our regular strawberry bed for these tiny wonders, barely visible in the picture above.  I can't wait to taste the fruits!

Putting the Straw In Strawberries

Strawberries are named such because gardeners traditionally cover them in straw during the fall.  The straw mulch both prevents weeds from growing in early spring and protect the delicate plants from cleaving through frozen soil. Now is the time to put straw on your beds in central Ohio.  I happened to score some free straw from Giant Eagle the other day (it had been used for a pumpkin display) so I knew it was time for strawberry maintenance.

First, I gently weeded and raked the strawberry bed.  I rearranged some runners.  These will be the young plants next year and I want them to grow in the bed where older plants are dying off.  I found this confused white berry.

Then I covered with a few inches of straw.

In the spring I'll remove some of the straw so as to not smother the berries. Because I have a whole bale of straw, I covered the garlic beds and around perennial herbs too.  Easy mulch!

Strawberry Struggle

Every year we go strawberry picking.  Usually we eat a third fresh or in baked goods, freeze a third, and make the rest into jam. This year, our little garden patch has produced well enough to satisfy our out of hand desires and I even froze about a pint.

We tried to pick twice in central Ohio but the weather was awful once and the patch was picked over the other time.  Then we left on vacation to Massachusetts.

My sisters picked up our fruit CSA from Wayward Seed farms.  We got 6 quarts of beautiful strawberries(!)....but I was out of town and couldn't process them into jam.  My youngest sister Heather did freeze half for me and also brought the rest with her to Massachusetts for a huge batch of strawberry shortcake. Thanks Heather!!  But, no jam yet...

I got a crazy idea that we could spend an afternoon picking here in Massachusetts and make jam here.  The house has a nice lovely kitchen and I need to buy more pint jars anyways.

So, I called around nearby, but the farms are almost out of season and price per pound is outrageous, even when picking ourselves.  Foiled again.

I am crossing my fingers that I can pick my own when I get back on June 21.  I could just buy strawberries, but homemade jam becomes an expensive proposition when we do that.  I could use the frozen berries to make jam, but then we wouldn't have any frozen for smoothies and yogurt in the winter.  The last alternative is to just forget about strawberry jam and make peach or blueberry preserves this year.

Any other ideas?

Strawberry Picking Fri. June 5 1PM

We will be picking strawberries at Doran's (5462 Babbitt Road, New Albany, OH 43054) this Friday afternoon around 1 PM.  Weather is slated to be partly sunny and 76 deg. The walk to the strawberry patch is about 300 yds at most.  They sometimes run a tractor with flatbed for rides to/from the patch. They have a porta john out near the field.

Pick your own are $1.59/lb.  Last year we talked about chemicals and they are a low-chem farm but not organic. The berries are delicious and if the time is right we can probably pick peas too.

They also have pre-picked for $4.50/qt.

Anyone want to join me?