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Posts Tagged ‘winter squash’
Pumpkin and Pear Post Produce: October, 2011
October 22, 2011 | 
Author Let’s start with “Post Produce.” Inspired by Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, Your Small Kitchen Garden blog sponsors Post Produce on the 22nd of every month. I encourage bloggers everywhere to tell the world what they’re consuming from their kitchen gardens. Do you have fresh produce? Are you using preserves?
Post your Produce and then return here and link to your blog so other Post Produce participants can see. I hope you’ll join me this month. (Here’s more about Post Produce.)
And My Produce Is…
This isn’t all the squash I’ve harvested, and there’s still more in the garden. Notice the two rather small squashes on the left side of the stack. One of those cooked down into exactly a cup of mashed squash that went into a pear and pumpkin pie.
For this, the second ever Post Produce, I present pumpkin! Well… it’s actually butternut squash, but I use winter squashes and pumpkins interchangeably in my baking. I have quite a heap of butternut squashes and neck pumpkins, and there are still four decent-looking but very small blue hubbard squashes on the vines.
But the story actually begins with pears. Pears have teased me for more than a decade as I’ve experimented to find compelling ways to incorporate them into baked goods. I’ve learned that concentrating pear juice by boiling away a lot of water barely intensifies the flavor, and by the time even very thick pear syrup combines within cake or bread, it might just as well have been raw sugar.
I’ve also made many custards that contained pear juice, but they’ve all tasted pretty much like regular old custard. In fact, this year I thought I’d finished with my whole “baking with pears” period. And then it struck me: I’ve had pumple pie a few times, and was always unimpressed (pumple is pumpkin pie with embedded apple chunks). But it seemed to me that combining pears with pumpkin would result in a much more compelling pie filling.
Ready for pie? Pears and raisins add texture and visual appeal to a slice of pumpkin pie. Please let me know what you think if you bake one of these beauties.
Experimenting with Pears and Pumpkin
I’ve made a few pear and pumpkin pies in the past few weeks. The first was poached pears baked into pumpkin custard, and it was fine. However, I felt it could use a bit more texture, so I made another that included homemade raisins. Along with texture, these provide flavor bursts that make the pie complex and unique.
I hope you’ll try my pear and pumpkin pie. If you do, please let me know what you think of it. I’ll be serving this at Thanksgiving, but I’ll probably bake a few others as long as there are fresh pears available at the local farmers’ market.
I put the recipe for pear and pumpkin pie on another page so it wouldn’t slow the loading of my blog. It contains a list of ingredients along with step-by-step instructions and many photos. Find them on the page titled Cooking Pear and Pumpkin Pie from Your Small Kitchen Garden.
Now You Post Produce!
Show off your garden produce in your blog. Then, return here and create a link to your Post Produce post. After you link, leave a comment so other participants can find you!
Posted in post produce | 
Tags: pears, pie, post produce, pumpkin pie, pumpkins, raisins, winter squash | 
7 Comments »
Launching Post Produce: September 22, 2011
Sorry. I had to lead with sad apples. It rained nearly every day from apple blossom time until June. To grow pretty apples in such conditions, you need to apply anti-insect treatment constantly, and that gets really expensive. I can buy a bushel of apples for around $12 at the farmers’ market and I might have spent $40 or more to keep ahead of the rain. I gave up very early in the season, and this is typical of what’s on my trees now.
September 22, 2011 is the first Post Produce day. Because my Small Kitchen Garden has experienced its worst growing season in 16 years, I’m tempted to share scenes of sickly vegetables and rotting plants. But the whole point of this day is to Post Produce in celebration of kitchen gardening.
There have been some bright spots, despite the crazy weather, and I’ve captured many of them in photos. Captions accompanying the photos provide details. I hope you’ll join me in this monthly celebration of home kitchen gardening and post about your own produce. Find instructions for how to participate by scrolling to the bottom of this blog entry.
If any kitchen garden plant likes rain, it’s tarragon! I set three tarragon plants in a new bed last fall and they have grown into a forest. In fact, I cut them back aggressively about a month ago and already they are overwhelming the shorter thyme plants in front of them. Until this season, I’d grown tarragon only in containers, and I had no idea how massive these plants could become.
Another standout rain-lover in my small kitchen garden is sage. I moved several plants from a wooden barrel planter last fall, and they have exploded with new, lush growth. Those pretty flowers are invaders from my wife’s nearby ornamental bed. If I ever plant a show garden, I may pair these two much as they look in this photo.
I planted a 14 foot row of chili pepper plants in a repeating sequence of jalapeno, banana, and poblano. Apparently, that row ran above an underground lake and the plants’ roots were waterlogged most of the season; I harvested about a pint of tiny, shriveled peppers. Happily, I also set some bell pepper plants in containers on my deck. In a few more weeks, I expect nearly a dozen large fruits to be red or orange and ready to harvest. They all will end up in a pot of red pepper relish.
While my main garden bed spent two-thirds of the season as a swamp, my garden annex drained quite well (it used to be a sandbox), and bell peppers and poblanos I set there produced a modest number of fruits. It’s not a typical abundant haul, but we’ll enjoy a few meals that feature these smoky delights.
Cucumbers disappointed me this year. They grew vigorously in containers on my deck, but none of the fruits they produced were quite appealing enough to pickle whole. Still, I have used these little morsels in salad, and I’ll probably mix up some pickle relish with the dozen or so that are ready to harvest.
Yippee: green beans! This is my first significant harvest and I collected them today. I planted Kentucky Wonders to climb on my tomato trellises and all the plants died as a result of heavy rains in August. But I’d planted a short row in one of our ornamental beds, and they have grown into a nearly impenetrable clump of intertwined vines. This first picking could serve a family of four if three family members despised green beans. There are green bean babies on the vines, so I’m hoping our first frost is still a month away (though, given the way the season has gone, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got frost at noon today).
This year’s big winner is winter squash. Sure, there are water stains on some of them, but these neck pumpkins and butternut squashes look spectacular considering the season. The biggest neck pumpkin weighs about 12 pounds, and the heap weighs more than 50 pounds. There are several more fruits ripening on the vines (even as the vines drown from recent storms), and there are even a few Blue Hubbards in the garden showing some promise.
Join in and Post Produce!
Join the celebration and show the world what you’re eating from your garden. To participate, Post Produce on your own blog. You don’t have to post photos. List what you’re harvesting, write a poem about it, record a song… create whatever post celebrates your food-growing successes.
Then, return here and create a link to your Post Produce post. Also, leave a comment to entice other participants to visit your blog. That’s all there is to it!
For a few more details about Post Produce, follow this link. There you’ll find a bit about why I started Post Produce along with further suggestions for types of things you might post. I’ll watch for your Post Produce posts and visit every one.
Posted in post produce | Tags: apple, bell pepper, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, poblano, post produce, sage, tarragon, winter squash | 8 Comments »
Painful Return to my Small Kitchen Garden
My artichoke plants are a semi-satisfying success in my small kitchen garden this year. I started several plants from seed indoors in February, and transplanted four into my garden in June. These plants clearly have no intention of making chokes this year, so I’ll devise cold frames or other cover to protect them from deep-freezing during the winter. Perhaps next year I’ll harvest some artichokes.
The growing season had already been tough on my small kitchen garden, and then I really let it go. I spent a week at the annual symposium of the Garden Writers Association, and left my garden to fend for itself. Things were pretty sketchy when I left, but they were downright distressing when I returned.
When I left, I had been collecting tomatoes but things had just gotten started. Plants were topping out at seven feet, and I’d harvested about three gallons of fruit. While there appeared to be many more fruits setting, some type of infection was spreading among the plants. Lesions that looked like late blight had started low on stems and leaves and they were working their way up the plants.
Small Kitchen Garden on the Brink
When I left, climbing beans were just starting to put out flowers. There were three distinct clusters of bean vines growing among the tomatoes. A too-small trellis in an ornamental bed supported too many healthy-looking, crowded bean plants,
Finding a fence panel out of position makes me a little uneasy: how long has it been this way? What classes of rodents have noticed? Is anyone now inside my kitchen garden? What might already be dying because critters have come-and-gone through this huge opening in the garden’s defenses?
When I left, a stand of sweet corn held the promise of, perhaps, two dozen ears for meals—assuming anyone harvested them as they became ripe.
When I left, my cucumber plants formed a bush of healthy green on my deck and they were flowering like nobody’s business.
When I left, my bush wax bean plants were bereft of mature beans, but there were many young beans starting, and plenty of bean flowers were open.
When I left, my winter squashes were putting out blossoms every morning. I hand pollinate my winter squash, so I dreaded missing so many days; no one in my family would be willing to pollinate the squash flowers.
The Sad State of My Small Kitchen Garden
The photos show and explain what I found when I returned to my small kitchen garden. For the most part, the garden’s situation is grim. There are some bright spots, and I’m confident things would be little different had I stayed home… sometimes the elements simply don’t cooperate with a kitchen gardener. It makes me unhappy for a bit, but eventually I shrug and look ahead to next season.
When I returned from the Garden Writers Association conference, my wife asked, “Where are your bean plants?” She had, apparently, looked for them so she could harvest beans, but she hadn’t found them. Sure enough, plenty of beans had matured beyond tender while I was away; I sorted through them to find young beans my family would be willing to eat… but it gets worse: When several of my tomato seedlings had failed in late summer, I had planted climbing beans in their places. The bean plants were healthy and poised to bloom when I left, but two plants were wilting badly when I returned. Those particular bean plants have since died.
Sure, most of my corn plants tipped during a big storm, but kitchen gardeners lament that corn always falls over. My sadness related to corn is that no one harvested any while I was away. There are, perhaps, two dozen ears that should have been eaten but that will, at best, be old and tough if I harvest them now.
I pick tomatoes when they just start to blush. These tomatoes are nearly fully-ripe. I found many overly-ripe tomatoes in my small kitchen garden after my weeklong trip… the green shoulders and cracks illustrate why I pick tomatoes at the first sign of pink and let them ripen indoors.
As sad as I was to find nearly-ripe tomatoes on my plants, this discovery made me much sadder: there’s no question my tomatoes have late blight; all my tomatoes. Many look healthy, but the plants they’re on are in horrible shape. My tomato harvest is done for this season—far too early.
The cucumbers also misbehaved in my absence. In fairness, had I stayed home they’d have been no different. Several oddly-shaped cucumbers developed, but none are compelling enough that I’d harvest and eat them. For this, I’ll concede I didn’t give them the best chance to succeed. I planted too many seeds in deck planters and they performed as if stressed. I’ll grow cukes in planters again, but I’ll set far fewer seeds per gallon than I did this season.
There is a bright spot in my small kitchen garden. Actually, it’s all over the garden: My winter squashes are in decent shape. On the left: a small neck pumpkin. In the center, two small butternut squashes next to a huge butternut; the rear-most squash (only partially visible) is at least five times the size of the one in front of it. On the right: a Blue Hubbard squash that doesn’t seem interested in becoming a giant. Still, it’s great to have several Blue Hubbards that have survived past the typical onslaught of Squash Vine Borers… I hope they survive this more than double the average rainfall for August and September.
This may be the champion squash in my small kitchen garden. It’s a neck pumpkin hanging on what I usually use as a pea trellis. The squash was about 22 inches long in this photo, and it has grown about three inches longer since I took the shot. I’ve seen neck pumpkins weighing more than 25 pounds!
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: beans, cucumbers, garden problems, late blight, neck pumpkin, winter squash | 1 Comment »
Winter Squash Damage at Your Small Kitchen Garden
I’ve written about squash flowers repeatedly in this and other blogs. Every morning in late summer, a new crop of flowers emerges. Blossoms remain full and open in the cool of morning, but they start to fade in the afternoon. If a female flower doesn’t get pollinated on the morning it opens, it probably won’t get pollinated.
Winter squashes are among my favorite harvests from my small kitchen garden. In late summer, winter squash plants put on a spectacular show as they blanket the planting bed and pop out dozens of bright orange blossoms. Squash fruits grow from miniature to full-size in a matter of a week or two—and for some types of winter squash, those fruits can be ginormous.
Winter squashes have rich, earthy flavors that work well sweet or savory… but that easily seduce you into mixing sweet and savory in the same dish. One of my favorite ways to prepare squash is to grill it with a light sprinkling of salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder, and brown sugar.
Winter Squash is Resilient and Durable
There’s a benefit of winter squash that many kitchen gardeners don’t consider when planning their gardens: some winter squashes are amazingly durable and resistant to damage. These characteristics make winter squashes extremely low-maintenance, long-term storage food products.
I picked this squash shortly after a small animal had chewed it up around the stem as you can see in the photo on the left. I set the squash to cure where it stayed warm and dry, and about a month later the damage had healed (as you can see in the photo on the right)! Even after such a sketchy beginning, the squash held up nicely until it suffered a new malady in April.
Six months after harvest from my small kitchen garden, this neck pumpkin was as healthy as I could hope. Yes, it’s the squash from the earlier pair of photos. Sadly, here after 6 months, gouges began to appear where last summer’s damage had healed.
As I explained in an earlier post titled Store Butternut Squash from Your Small Kitchen Garden, winter squash left on the floor of a mildly cool and dry room can keep from harvest through mid spring. In fact, even today (May 1) I have a few neck pumpkins on my dining room floor; they’ll be nearly as good eating today as they would have been last November.
As you’ll see in the photos, winter squashes protect themselves from damage. I harvested a neck pumpkin last fall that had all kinds of tooth marks from a small rodent. Many of those marks went through the squash’s skin. Within a month, all the holes in that squash had healed; the fruit had grown scabs and new skin even without assistance from an attached, healthy plant.
It became apparent that something was eating my carefully-stored winter squash… and it should have been no surprise: the residential rhubarb inspector of past blog posts is also a residential winter squash chomper. The year in which a puppy joins your household is not a good year to store winter squash on your dining room floor.
New Winter Squash Malady
While my winter squashes have kept well on my dining room floor, in April they began to show signs of an unlikely malady. Scratches appeared near the stem ends, and eventually whole sections of skin simply vanished. The cause became clear: PUPPY! Our chocolate lab puppy, Nutmeg, apparently likes the flavor of squash as much as I do.
Sadly, the squashes she has chewed aren’t healing; exposed damp surfaces have grown mold.
So, I offer an observation to amend my earlier post about storing winter squash: make sure the cool, dry floor where your store your squash is out of reach of family pets.
Our residential rhubarb inspector doubles as a residential dishwasher inspector. She gave me this look when I asked her if she had any idea what might be damaging the winter squash. It’s kind of impressive that so many puppies make it to adulthood.
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: butternut squash, neck pumpkin, puppy, winter squash | 5 Comments »
Your Small Kitchen Garden Seed Giveaway 2011
This is a paste tomato from which I harvested seeds for the giveaway. Yes, I fermented the seeds to kill bacteria and fungus, so they’re not likely to introduce disease to your garden. I believe this is an Andes tomato. It contains very little moisture and few seeds… it’s mostly meat. It tastes terrific raw, in salads, dehydrated, canned, and sauced. The plants are indeterminate, and I pluck suckers. In a bad growing season a plant yields 15 or more 8- to 12-oz tomatoes; in a good growing season, about 30.THE FREE SEED OFFER CLOSED ON FEBRUARY 13, 2011 as stated originally at the end of this post. Chances are that I’ll have more seeds to give away for the 2012 growing season. Please check back in January or February of 2012.
FREE SEEDS! Your Small Kitchen Garden blog is celebrating its second annual seed giveaway. You might guess from the blog that I love to grow vegetables and fruit, and that I love to share my love for kitchen gardening with others. By giving away seeds, I hope to encourage other people to grow food and maybe share the wonder of it.
Last year, I gave away packets that contained seeds to grow Neck Pumpkins, Blue Hubbard squash, and Paste Tomatoes (probably of the Andes variety). I’m doing it again! Here are the details:
Small Kitchen Garden Free Seed Sets
The offer I’m about to describe ends on Sunday, February 13, 2011. A “set” of seeds contains three packets—enough to grow one hill of neck pumpkins, one hill of blue hubbard squash, and at least 20 paste tomato plants.
I’m not sure how many sets of seeds there will be as I haven’t yet butchered the blue hubbard squash. I anticipate approximately 45 complete seed sets to give away, but I’ll send some partial sets if I run out of one type of seeds. As things went last year, I ran out of blue hubbard squash seeds first and mailed a few sets that contained just neck pumpkin and paste tomato seeds. This year’s outcome depends on how many people qualify for seed sets.
One sad caveat: Seeds are available only to folks in the United States and Canada. I reviewed Australian import rules last year and realized if I tried to do that for every country, I’d be at it until the fall harvest… so US and Canada only, please.
The thing in this photo that looks like a big butternut squash is a neck pumpkin. It is remarkably like butternut (also shown): very resistant to Squash Vine Borer, orange flesh, tastes like butternut. These things can grow to 20 or 30 lbs, though my largest this year was about 12 pounds.Earn Squash and Tomatoes from Your Small Kitchen Garden
Technically, I suppose I’m not giving away seeds; there are strings. Here’s what I ask for you to qualify for free seeds:
1. Leave a comment in response to this blog post. In it, tell me something about your preferences for tomatoes or squash. Tell me, perhaps, which you prefer, how you use them, or whether you’ve grown them… and make me laugh.
The blue hubbard squash in this photo is about a quarter the size of my chocolate lab. Thankfully, the dog didn’t fall asleep next to it or she might have awakened as a pod dog. This is a challenging squash to grow; it is very susceptible to Squash Vine Borer; all my blue hubbard plants succumbed without producing viable fruit in 2010. This year I’ll plant outdoors at the end of July… and I may use floating row covers to keep insects from laying eggs on the plants. If you get a few blue hubbard squashes from your plants, they could be more than 20lbs each. The meat of a blue hubbard is a rainbow of colors and has one of the best squash flavors I’ve ever tasted.2. Complete and submit a form on the Contact Us page. If you want to receive seeds, I’ll need your snail mail address, so enter it into the form. Make sure you use the same email address on the Contact Us form that you use when you write your comment. Also, if you plan to promote your entry (read items 3, 4, and 5 below), please identify in the form the Twitter and Facebook identities you’ll use—and/or identify the URL of the blog on which you’ll post a link.
If you do items 1 and 2, you’ll go to the end of my mailing list to receive seeds. I’ll mail seeds on a first-come-first served basis until I run out of seed sets… but there are some twists. You can move up on the mailing list by doing any or all of the following:
3. If you’re on Twitter, tweet a link to this giveaway that includes the hash tag #skgseeds.
4. If you’re on Facebook, post a link to this giveaway and include the hash tag #skgseeds in the text.
Each day that you Tweet or post on Facebook as explained in items 3 and 4, you’ll move up one place on the mailing list. The most you can move up in a calendar day is two places—one for Tweeting, and one for a Facebook post.
5. Finally, you can get a top spot on my seed giveaway mailing list by posting something about the giveaway—along with a link to this page—on your own blog. What do I mean by “top spot?” I mean I’ll build a mailing list of bloggers who post links on their blogs. I’ll mail seeds to the entire list of bloggers (in the order that they post) before I mail to any other entrants.
At Least Get on the List!
Don’t let all these options throw you. At least leave a comment and post your snail mail address on a Contact Us form (items 1 and 2). Chances are you’ll get at least some paste tomato seeds. Of course, when you get your seeds, I hope you’ll think of me during the growing season and provide an occasional update—perhaps with a photo. I was pleased to hear from a few of last year’s winners. I enjoyed that my friend over at gardenmom29 posted photos of her neck pumpkins… I’m pretty sure the two in the 5th photo in her blog post grew from seeds she got in last year’s giveaway.
The seed giveaway ends on Sunday, February 13. I’ll mail seed packets in the week after that.
Posted in home kitchen garden, plant vegetables, small kitchen garden | Tags: blue hubbard, free seeds, neck pumpkin, seed giveaway, squash, tomatoes, winter squash | 39 Comments »
Store Butternut Squash from Your Small Kitchen Garden
Your Small Kitchen Garden catches up with a series of posts about what went on in the garden this season while the kitchen gardener (Daniel) was busy writing his book Yes, You Can! And Freeze and Dry it, Too.
On February 12th of this year, the butternut squash from my small kitchen garden looked a little scary. Fortunately, just one fruit had gone soft; the others were in decent shape and we continued to eat them into March. I chucked the mushy one onto the compost heap.
I harvest a lot of winter squash from my small kitchen garden. Near the end of the season, squash vines cover nearly half of my planting bed. I love the flavor of squash, and I love its versatility: it works in both sweet and savory dishes, and you can cook it into many appealing textures.
But while squash’s culinary versatility is impressive, it has another terrific quality: it keeps well. I’d guess we call winter squash winter squash because of its durability: you harvest it in late autumn, and it keeps well into winter.
Proper Kitchen Garden Squash Stores
Most winter squashes keep best where it’s cool, dark, and dry… and by cool, I mean no colder than about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Ideally, store your winter squash in a single layer with no pieces touching other pieces. Relative humidity should be 60 to 80 percent and the temperature should be 50 to 55 degrees.
By March 24th of the year, we were down to our last butternut squash, and it was in reasonably good shape. Consider: harvested in October, and lying on the dining room floor for five months until March. Awesome!
Look closely at this five-month-old squash and you can see wrinkling and a touch of blotchiness; I’d never pay for this in a grocery store. However, the deterioration is (mostly) skin deep. With such minor surface blemishes, the squash meat inside is likely to be in decent shape.
Fortunately, air tends to be dry in winter, so low humidity shouldn’t be hard to achieve. Unfortunately, you might figure your basement for the ideal temperature, but many basements remain damp year-round.
Here’s the good news: if you keep the temperature in your house around 68 degrees, there are probably places on the floor that, in winter, are very close to 55 degrees. For example, you might have a rarely-used guest room that you don’t heat except when you have company. Or, the floor along an outside wall or under a picture window could be significantly colder than the air at chest level.
My Small Kitchen Garden Squash Store
Much to my wife’s consternation, I’ve left a heap of butternut squash on our dining room floor each fall for the past several years. The dining room has a double-wide sliding glass door onto our porch, so the floor is naturally cool in winter. My mistake, of course (besides annoying my wife), is that I heap the squash. However, I’ve had very satisfactory results. The photos tell the story.
Peeled, my well-aged squash looks as good as a freshly-harvested squash. There are differences, however…
Halved down the center, this well-aged squash from my small kitchen garden reveals evidence of aging. The fibers that hold the seeds have dried a bit and shrunk, and the squash meat, itself has dried giving rise to air pockets. Still, there are no soft spots; no rot. Cooked, the only apparent difference between this and freshly-harvested squash will be sweetness; the older squash may sweeter than a young squash.
I encourage you to keep your own winter squash into the winter. Here’s a simple strategy to employ: Estimate how many whole squash you’ll eat by March, and store that many along with a few extra (in case some spoil). If you have any more than you expect to eat by March, freeze them or can them and they’ll last until your next harvest. I explain how to freeze winter squash in Freeze Winter Squash from Your Small Kitchen Garden, and how to can it in Can Squash or Pumpkin from Your Home Kitchen Garden.
Share Your Squash Stories!
I’m very enthusiastic about winter squash, and would love hear your squash stories: Which varieties do you grow? How do you store them? Do you have unusual ways to prepare them? Please leave your story in a comment.
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: butternut squash, squash, winter squash | 2 Comments »
Mid-Summer Rabbits in my Small Kitchen Garden
Your Small Kitchen Garden catches up with a series of posts about what went on in the garden this season while the kitchen gardener (Daniel) was busy writing his book Yes, You Can! And Freeze and Dry it, Too.
In July, rabbits demonstrated that I’d done a poor job of patching the rodent fence… a project motivated by activities of a large woodchuck (but that’s a story for another day).
I spent much of this growing season writing a book rather than writing Your Small Kitchen Garden blog. My kitchen garden, however, demanded plenty of attention, and I took many photos intending to blog about the subjects they recorded. One of the most unexpected incidents I photographed involved rabbits.
The Small Kitchen Garden Rabbit Haven
My garden’s rabbit fence provides great protection against rabbit predators… at least that’s what the rabbits seem to think. Historically, rabbits have moved into my planting bed in early spring before I’ve started working the soil. This year, they didn’t move in until July. The rabbit fence had been in place for months, I’d already removed the spent pea plants, and the winter squash was beginning the growth spurt that comes two or three weeks after transplanted seedlings adjust to their new setting in the garden.
My first clue that rabbits had landed was their in-my-face prancing among the vegetable plants. Honestly: I saw no sign that the rabbits ate my plants or my vegetables… only that they liked to hang out inside the fence. Of course, by being there they revealed my rabbit fence had holes in it. So, I chased the rabbits away, and patched the holes… poorly.
Bunnies in the Garden, Of Course
The bunny rabbits that hatched in July were adorable. Sadly, watering the winter squash scared them out of the nest when they simply weren’t ready to leave. I fence my small kitchen garden to protect my plants from woodchucks, and to protect rabbits from my gardening. I must do a better job next season; I hate when my gardening becomes a problem for these entertaining and innocent animals.
July and August were particularly dry in my small kitchen garden, so I hand-watered my winter squashes occasionally to keep them alive. When I watered one morning, I noticed unusual movement under the canopy of squash leaves: bunnies scampered about, apparently scared from a nest by my watering.
My first reaction: “What the…?” I had to acknowledge that my fence-mending skills are not pro-caliber. My next reaction: These bunnies were not ready to leave the nest. I shot a few photos, herded the babies back toward the squash canopy, and left the garden alone with hope that Mom Rabbit would return quickly and coral her babies.
Sadly, by the next morning, one bunny had died under the squash leaves. I suspect it Mom never found it, and it never found its way home. Apparently, as rabbit moms will do, this one carried her remaining bunnies out of the garden and found a new home for them. There has been no further rabbit activity inside the fence… or course, I made further repairs once I knew the rabbits had moved out.
The Rabbit Fence Project
As the growing season dwindles, I’m looking ahead to projects I must complete before spring. I guess it’s obvious what one of those projects will be. Are you building fences around your planting beds? How were the rodents in your small kitchen garden this year?
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: rabbit, rabbit fence, squash, winter squash | 2 Comments »
Grill Squash from Your Small Kitchen Garden
My small kitchen garden sometimes pushes up so many butternut squashes that there’s no chance my family will eat all of them. This inspired me to set some on the grill. Now grilled quash provides a fine counterpoint to the baked, mashed, and cubed squash dishes I’d repeated so many times over the years.
My small kitchen garden sometimes produces way more of a particular vegetable than my family will eat. Worse: when we have too much of a type of vegetable on hand, it’s easy to fall into the trap of preparing it the same way again and again.
This happened a few years ago with butternut squash, and I developed a great urge for a quick but different way to prepare it. After some thought, I decided to exercise my grill: it seemed that a big slab of squash would perform much like a slab of beef or pork. The result made me very happy and I hope it will make you happy too. Follow the instructions in the photo captions to make your own grilled butternut squash.
If you try this, please let me know what you think—or share whatever variations you feel are noteworthy. Grilled squash goes especially well with smoked poultry or just about anything else you prepare on the grill.
Before you start on the squash, start your grill and leave it on high so it’s hot when the filets are ready. A vegetable peeler removes skin from a butternut squash; it helps to rest the squash on a firm surface and draw the peeler down toward that surface. After peeling the squash, cut off the stem and the blossom scar.
To cut up a squash for grilling, it helps to have a big honking chef’s knife. Be cautious and always cut toward a cutting board with the hand that steadies the squash safely above the knife’s blade. My first cut goes down the center of the squash, but notice that I start the cut through the seed end before standing the squash up and forcing the knife down through the neck.
I scrape the seeds out of the squash before slicing it into filets. The filets are about a quarter to three-eighths of an inch thick. Notice again that I start each cut at one end of the squash, cutting down and through (I’m not pushing the knife toward my hand in the center photo… just down toward the cutting board). This first cut acts as a guide when I stand the squash on end and work the knife down through the length of the fruit.
Once I’ve cut out all my squash filets, I paint them on one side with a thin coating of olive oil (left). Then I sprinkle on cayenne pepper and black pepper (center). You could add salt at this point if you like. I finish with a light distribution of brown sugar which I press into the oil with my fingers so it will adhere when I put the squash on the grill.
I place the squash filets seasoning-side-down on my grill and immediately paint the unseasoned faces with oil. Then I season them as I did the other sides. I put the cover on the grill and let the squash cook for just three or four minutes. Then I flip the squash and cook it for another three or four minutes. CAUTION! The squash may be soft when you flip it, so work a spatula along the length of each piece before lifting it off the grill.
Grilling caramelizes the sugar, but the charring usually adds complexity to the flavor of the squash; don’t reject it just because it looks singed. If six to eight minutes on the grill doesn’t get your squash filets soft, put them back on the grill or finish them off in your microwave oven. This grilled squash is soft, sweet, and savory with a touch of heat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: butternut squash, cooking, grilled squash, grilling, recipe, squash, winter squash | 7 Comments »
Freeze Winter Squash from Your Small Kitchen Garden
The Blue Hubbard squash I bought was 24 inches long and it weighed 27 pounds; 7 pounds more than the neck pumpkin it rests on in this photo… and, perhaps, 20 times the weight of the butternut squash from my own garden.
Some months ago I got all excited about winter squash and lamented that the only squash in my small kitchen garden this year was butternut. I bought a huge neck pumpkin at the farmers’ market, and a week later I bought a Blue Hubbard squash as the weekend flea market.
I canned the neck pumpkin in my pressure canner, and presented a two-part written documentary: Exploring Neck Pumpkin at Your Small Kitchen Garden and Can Squash or Pumpkin from Your Home Kitchen Garden. Then I promised readers a look at this amazing Blue Hubbard squash.
It’s been a long time coming, but here’s how I preserved the Blue Hubbard. This method is simple and valid for any winter squash you plan to use in pie fillings. If you want to freeze squash for later use mashed or in casseroles, leave it out of the blender; scoop the cooked squash directly into freezer containers.
I started by cutting off the rotten end of the squash. I removed about a half-inch margin of healthy-looking skin in case the rot had progressed farther through the flesh than what showed on the surface.
The Blue Hubbard Squash Review
I bought my 27 pound pod-people squash for $1.50. This resulted from a 25% discount offered when the seller discovered one end of the squash had started to rot. I had heard that Blue Hubbard is great for pies… but that seems to go for every winter squash I haven’t tried.
While the photographs and their captions tell the story of how to prepare squash for freezing, I didn’t freeze all of the Blue Hubbard. After cooking it, I scooped a sample to taste and was quite pleased. My Blue Hubbard was sweet and very flavorful; it has a much “squashier” flavor than the neck pumpkin. You could serve Blue Hubbard in place of butternut, and few people would notice.
The cut squash was gorgeous. I love the rich pastel orange that fades into pastel green near the rind. When I pressed on the flesh, it gave easily and fluid squirted from it, indicating rot. When I removed another inch of material, the flesh was firm.
I cut the remaining healthy Blue Hubbard squash lengthwise into thirds and picked out all the seeds to plant next year (I hope to give some away or swap with some of my readers). Then I used a spoon to scrape the stringy guts away from the flesh. I’ve no doubt you can eat this stuff, but I’ve never read anything encouraging me to do so.
I had to cut the sections of squash into smaller pieces to get them to fit into one of my largest cook pots. I stood the pieces on edge, and arranged them with air spaces between them. Then I added a few inches of water and covered the pot. It took about 45 minutes for the flesh to become soft all the way through on every piece. I used tongs to remove the squash from the pot, and then I scraped the cooked flesh away from the rind. Even cooked, the subtle pastel colors show in the squash on the spoon in the right-most photo.
Each scoop of cooked squash went into my blender (place the scoops directly into freezer containers if you intend to serve the squash as a vegetable… pureed squash is best for use in baking and soup bases). There was so much squash that I had to run the blender several times. I used the puree setting and made sure there were no chunks remaining in any load. Once I’d filled my largest bowl with pureed squash, I distributed the puree into freezer bags in 16 ounce batches; one bag is the appropriate amount for making a pumpkin pie. I wrote the date on each bag and set them all in the freezer… I’ll be able to make pumpkin pie, bread, cake, soup, and ravioli throughout the year.
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | Tags: blue hubbard squash, freeze squash, freeze vegetables, plant squash, pumpkin, squash, winter squash | 9 Comments »
Exploring Neck Pumpkin at Your Small Kitchen Garden
There’s my big boy neck pumpkin on my large cutting board next to my biggest chef’s knife in front of my KitchenAid stand mixer. (Trying to provide a sense of scale.)
While my small kitchen garden lies dormant for the coming winter, I’ve been exploring winter squash. Always a fan of butternut squash, I planted several hills of it this year, and harvested about 25 pounds of fruits. Some were as small as grapefruits while others were about as large as quart jars. For my family, a one-quart butternut squash lasts for two or three meals.
I visit a farmers’ market nearly every Wednesday, and flea market produce vendors on most Sundays. Every autumn, I see a delightful variety of winter squashes. However, happy with my homegrown butternuts, I’ve never explored these others. Until this year.
In my last post, I described a Blue Hubbard squash, the full 27 pounds of which I purchased for $1.50. That post included a photo of a neck pumpkin that weighed in at a hefty 20 pounds. After two weeks of delays, I finally dissected the neck pumpkin. This is one very impressive squash!
I washed the neck pumpkin thoroughly before I started carving so as not to contaminate the squash’s innards with soil that might have remained from the farm where it grew. I cut sections starting at the neck end, and finally cut the bulbous seed chamber in two. A neck pumpkin is almost solid meat.
Gourds from the Amish
The neck pumpkin goes by many names, among them Pennsylvania Crookneck Squash (according to Cornell University’s web site). They are very common in central Pennsylvania—Amish country—and apparently not so common outside of this area.
Neck pumpkins I’ve seen have been as small as a large butternut squash, and even larger than the 20 pound fruit I bought at the farmers’ market three weeks ago.
I understand that neck pumpkin is ideal for making pumpkin pie. Given its resemblance to butternut squash, I imagined it might also be fine for eating as a side dish… and for cooking up in baked goods and other foods that call for pumpkin as an ingredient.
A simple vegetable peeler easily removes the skin from the neck pumpkin. Of course, such a peeler has trouble on very large expanses of skin; curves of the pumpkin interfere with the ends of the peeler. Cutting the neck pumpkin into small sections would reduce the problems of paring it. With the skin removed, I used my largest chef’s knife to cut the sections into one-inch cubes.
Neck Pumpkin Preparation
The photos in this blog post reveal the steps I took to prepare my neck pumpkin for consumption. Actually, I cooked only a half cup of the squash so I could taste it… the rest I canned in quart jars. The canning operation itself, I explain in my other blog, Your Home Kitchen Garden.
Preparing and storing winter squash offers many options: you can steam, boil, bake, roast, and even dry squash. Use a crock pot, a microwave oven, a stove pot, a conventional oven, a grill… it doesn’t matter. However you cook squash, it gets soft and mashable. For a chunkier side dish, peel and cube it before cooking. To save effort, leave the skin on until after cooking… but by the time you scrape the squash out of its skin, you’re likely to have mashed it up quite a bit.
As with cleaning a pumpkin that I’m about to carve into a jack-o-lantern, I used a spoon to scrape the seeds and their anchoring fibers from the squash’s seed cavity. I set the seeds aside to dry; I’ll be growing neck pumpkins from them in my small kitchen garden next year.
For canning, you create one-inch cubes of raw squash which you blanch for only a few minutes before putting them in jars and cooking in a pressure canner. You can use freshly cubed squash in any squash dish… cook peeled and cubed squash any way you want. Most simply, cover some with water in a pot and cook until soft. Pour off the water, mash the squash with a potato masher, and stir in butter and brown sugar to taste.
If you want to can some squash, please enjoy my squash dissection photos, and then head over to Your Home Kitchen Garden for a step-by-step canning review. This one, 20 pound neck pumpkin filled seven quart jars and left about two cups of pumpkin cubes that I used to make bread.
More about neck pumpkins and som excellent ways to use them:
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Brown Long Neck « Wood Ridge – Country living in the northern … – October 25, 2009. Another heirloom: the Brown Long Neck pumpkin. This crook-neck pumpkin makes an excellent pumpkin bread or pie. The Brown Long Neck is the pumpkin used by our regional Amish for their markets’ baked goods. LongNeck …
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Neck Pumpkins, White Greasy Beans, and Blue-Podded Peas « Digging RI – Another of this year’s experiments is Neck Pumpkin. You have to see this baby to believe it… Looks like a butternut squash on steroids, doesn’t it? I got this seed from the very nice, very generous Daniel Gasteiger, …
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One last taste of winter squash | Front Porch Farm – That spring sunshine has been tantalizing me with its promises of warmth. I’ve been digging in the flower beds, poking in my herb garden. But come.
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Roasted Butternut Squash Puree with Ginger | Andrea Meyers – I’ve been roasting squash all during the month of November, and every time I use up all the squash in my kitchen, more seems to magically appear. Well,
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butternut ravioli – as you know, i have, over the last few months, lost my taste for food. i’m sure for many pregnant women, those who dread cooking or find it difficult, this would not be the end of the world. but, i have to tell you, for a girl who loves …
Posted in home kitchen garden, plant vegetables, small kitchen garden | Tags: harvest, neck pumpkin, plant squash, pumpkin, squash, winter squash | 7 Comments »
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