Garlic Scape Pesto

It's my first year growing garlic.  I planted two varieties - a hardneck, Duganski - and a softneck, Susanville.  I put 70 cloves in the ground in October and I'm just a few weeks away from harvest, or so the scapes tell me.  Once the scapes develop, harvest is usually 4-8 weeks away.  From what I had read, I thought only the hardneck varieties were likely to produce scapes, but my softnecks have sent up the flower stalk as well.  Fine by me.  I knew they were edible, but wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with them.  They first appeared about 3 weeks ago and I'd been cutting one off here and there and adding it to my salad greens that have also been coming in.  I had seen a couple recipes for garlic scape pesto and it seemed like I should have enough scapes, so I decided to give it a try.

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup rough chopped garlic scapes
A heavy 1/4 cup pine nuts and/or walnuts (I used some of each)
Juice from 1/2 a lemon, plus some zest
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 - 1/2 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Lightly toast the nuts in a dry pan over low heat.  Allow to cool for a few.  Combine toasted nuts, scapes, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a food processor and blend well.  Drizzle in olive oil while continuing to blend.  Transfer to a bowl and stir in the Parmesan.

I actually forgot that you usually stir the cheese in after.  I blended it all in the food processor.

I imagine this will last in the refrigerator for at least a couple of weeks

Use as you would your regular basil pesto....with salmon or in pasta.  Beware - you can do some serious vampire warding off after eating this stuff!

Lunch!

    

Pectin or Pect-out?

The strawberries are coming in much better this year!  I've already harvested more in the first picking than I did all of last season...and of greater quality and size.  I think the winter mulching and consistent watering have helped immensely.  Here's my first little harvest:

So juicy and flavorful!

Our 20 or so plants provide us with enough for fresh snacking, but not enough to can jam.  So it was off to the Farmer's Market to hunt down some additional harvest.  The girls and I went a couple weekends ago, but didn't arrive until 11am for the market that opened at 8am.  Sold Out!  The berries were all gone within the first hour or so I was told.  I was intent on landing some fruit because last year I was not quite as determined, never came across any, and regretted it the whole season.  So last weekend I took a solo trip back to the same market, arriving no later than 8:30am.  Score!

12 pints from a great, beyond organic/biodynamic local farm

 I promptly turned them into sweet ruby gold...

Had planned on using the old fashioned no-added-pectin method of just boiling them down for half a day.  I usually lean toward food in it's purest form and adding anything "extra" rubs me wrong.  But as I looked into it more, the downsides to not using additional pectin were further loss of nutrients and less end product, all due to the long cooking time.  And of course, the possibility that the jam would not set.  So I went ahead and used powdered pectin.  Turned out great!

Which method do you prefer - added pectin or not?

Three Sisters

I'm trying out the Three Sisters method of companion planting this year.  It's an old Native American technique whereby corn, beans and squash are planted in close proximity.  The (pole) beans run up the corn stalks providing extra support for each and the squash vine around low to shade out the weeds.  I sowed the corn at the end of April, giving them a bit of a head start, with the goal being about 4" high before the beans and squash went in the ground at the end of May.   I didn't create mounds, as is typical, because my soil type does not jive with mounds.  I tried it last year with my pumpkins and the water just ran off as if they were coated in Rain-X.  Nothing soaked in.  It wasn't until a couple weeks later, upon seeing no sprouts that I realized what was going on and flattened out the mounds.

To accomplish the Three Sisters, I planted 4 corn seeds, 6" apart in a diamond.  Then 4 beans in each corner.  That's one "mound".  Alternating with the corn/bean plots are the squash mounds, with roughly 2-3 plants each.   I had a 10' x 10' space to work with so ended up with 7 corn/bean mounds and 8 squash mounds.

1 variety of corn:
     Golden Bantam

2 varieties of pole beans:
     Kentucky Wonder
     Purple Podded

10 varieties of squash:
     Howden Pumpkin
     Long Pie Pumpkin
     Black Beauty Zucchini
     Gray Zucchini
     Rogosa Violina Gioia Butternut
     Golden Hubbard
     Lemon
     Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato
     Buen Gusto De Horno
     Greek Sweet Red

My seed order from Baker Creek Heirlooms contained a few bonuses.  They must figure anyone ordering over $100 worth of seed has got it pretty bad.  Two of them were the Lemon and Sweet Potato squash.  I couldn't *not* try them, so with only 8 mounds, I had to double up a couple.

I had a little extra space on the shadier end of the bed (left side of photo), so as an afterthought I threw in some old organic potatoes I had sprouting in the basement.  I had held on to them just in case I found room somewhere.  They are doing quite spectacular.

Cardboard and straw mulch application in between rows until the squash vines can start meandering and taking over weed suppression duty.

Everyone seems to be happy and getting along quite well so far.

That Took Some Real Balls