In the Kitchen: First Kimchi

The Daikon radishes and Chinese cabbage were ready in the garden, indicating that it is high time for a batch of kimchi.  Luckily we also had some Trinidad spice peppers left over from before the first frost.  Here's what I put together:

1 head of Chinese cabbage, shredded

3 Daikon radishes, trimmed, washed and grated

1 turnip, topped, peeled and grated

2 carrots, peeled and grated (these were from the store.  I mostly added them for color)

1-inch ginger, peeled and minced

3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

8-9 mildly spicy (or HOT, if you prefer) peppers, de-seeded and finely sliced

sea salt

* * * *

Mix the vegetables all together in a large bowl.  Start sprinkling with salt.  Crush and squeeze the veggies with your clean hands, adding more salt and tasting as you go (the daikon is so spicy before it's fermented!).  Salt it so that it is slightly saltier than a salad.  The vegetables will begin to shrink down from the salt, and their juices will collect at the bottom.  When they have shrunk quite a bit, start packing them into clean mason jars, pressing them in firmly with a meat pounder, a wooden spoon, or your fist.  Squeeze them in so that the liquid rises to the top, covering the vegetables.  Leave about an inch of space before the top, cap the jars and leave out on the counter for 3-5 days.  I like to leave a tray or plate under them in case they overflow.  Makes about 2 quarts, depending on the size of the vegetables.

Two Gardens

Peek-a-boo!
I do hope this becomes more of a habit.
I thought I might write a little about the gardens--my winter garden, and my dreams for the summer garden--

Thanks to our friend Danny, we found a wonderful source of horse manure.  It's a horse-boarding place, there's tons and tons of it, and they are so happy for us to haul it away.  We also found some huge pieces of cardboard, so garden construction is underway.

Here it is-- the whole side of the garden--15 beds and all, not counting the corn and pumpkins.

This past week I was worrying I may have been over ambitious this year.  But we only have five more beds to build--two more loads of manure to haul away.

Last summer's garden was a smallish garden.  It only took up a quarter of the space, and I built three permaculture beds around the corn patch.  Everything did so well, but I ran out of room.  It changed my gardening philosophy in that I only planted a few plants of each thing and nurtured them along.  It was so shockingly productive that way.  Before I had been planting dozens of plants in hopes I'd get a handful of something out of them, but it was too big and there were too many to really care for them all.

This year I am only planting a few plants of each thing, but I really want to give everything the space it needs.  So that's why the garden is so big this year.

We had such a busy late summer/fall last year, that the winter garden was not really well done.  I actually ended up buying starts this year instead of trying my own starts.  I finally did get some nice kale to grow.

We have potatoes starting to peek out, and some of the carrots did sprout at last.

The onion patch is doing well this year.  I did two different kinds of beds with them, and it turns out the most back-breaking one to build did the very best.  Oh well.

I'm even getting a tiny bit of cabbage.  We also have a revolutionary hoop-house for cold protection.  I'll admit, this is the first year the winter garden didn't just freeze and get eaten by rabbits.  It's been kind of shocking, really.

Now that so many things have gone to seed, there's not too much growing there now, except the borage.  She is certainly queen of the garden at the moment, and I enjoy her beauty every day.  I even made an herb cream cheese spread from the leaves.

Younger Buckthorne is doing quite well.  He was jumping about playfully yesterday.  Firefly is due today, and May tomorrow, so there just might be a new baby goat at some point today.

Some winter garden musings

Oops.
I didn't try to make this the year of the monster turnip, and yet that's what it's become.  I guess it's better than last year when everything froze before we got more than a few radishes.  They got so large so fast, and once that had begun they were too intimidating to eat.  I tried giving them away, but alas.  This one was all corky inside.

We did get a handful of luscious golden peas before the last cold snap, which killed everything--sigh.  I think I'm just a better summer gardener.  Well, maybe I shouldn't say that yet.

This is merely to remind myself how lovely the Japanese Red Mustard was before it got frozen.  It's still alive and is slowly growing back, but it looks like compost.  I guess I'm feeling pessimistic today.  The tomato seedlings for the summer garden are just starting to sprout, so I don't really have any right to complain.

First Turnips

 The turnips I had planted back in September are now ready to pull.  This year I read about planting turnips and discovered they need a shocking amount of space between the plants, like 6-12."
All this time I had thought my turnips were pathetically tiny because the soil was so poor, but it was probably because I just planted them in a big blob and didn't bother to thin them.  I was very surprised to find big turnips in my garden this year.

 The Scarlet Ohno Revival turnips I had gotten seeds for from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange were pink inside.  They remind me of choggia beets.

Since we have quite so many greens right now, I decided to ferment the turnip greens for the animals.  I got out this amazing crock I inherited from my grandfather, who used it to make kraut.  It's probably almost a hundred years old, and I've never used it before.  It sat in our garage with tools in it for more than a decade. I had no idea what it was, but now I shudder to think that I might of cracked it in my careless ignorance.  Rose was happy to help salt and mash the greens to make a brine.  I used the sea 90 livestock salt.

Mirin even started to help, and things were getting pretty crowded at the end.

I put a plate on top to weigh the greens down.  We'll see how it turns out!!

A little tour of the winter garden

The winter garden is really taking off with the cool weather. The peas have pods, although none have made it home so far, they are so tasty and easy to just snip off and eat. The golden peas are just starting to produce and are very lovely. The beets, too, are looking more and more cheerful.

Winter gardens are all roots and greens it seems. In the above photo you can see the Harris Model Parsnips and the Egyptian Walking Onions, planted with cilantro and parsley, the carrot beds and some of the arugula to the left, past the pea trellis. I must say I wasn't counting on the arugula to be quite so large. And we have already been eating salads from it as much as we can. The trick with arugula salad is goat cheese, walnuts and a simple balsamic dressing.

Here is the Japanese Giant Red Mustard. It is almost as colorful as the cosmos. We had some in stir fry already. It went very well with the Extra Dwarf Pak Choy.

Here the cabbage is starting to make heads. This is the savoy cabbage:

The lettuce was slow to start, but is looking very nice now. I think it was just too warm this fall until now. This lettuce below is from a mixture of lettuce, but we are also growing Yugoslavian Butterhead, which I like a lot.