A Self’ish Life 2

Last month I wrote a small general article on what we have been doing to become slightly self-sufficient or Self’ish. I read somewhere that the man who mends his shoes or clothes, takes a small step towards being self-sufficient, and it is up to an individual as to how far they wish to take it.

For us, as for many, money is an issue and if we can supplement the food on our table by growing our own vegetables, then that is a good start. We are growing a lot more this year, in the hope of having enough preserved to last over the winter. We have tried to provide our own meat, in the form of a hen or two, but have felt that this is not the way forward for us, and are resigned to buying it in. We will however, avoid the ‘cheap as chips’ chicken fillets on offer at the local supermarket, and hopefully pay a little more (less often) for meat with flavour and texture.

Preserving

At the end of the summer, when we have a glut of vegetables, the trick is to preserve some of the produce for use during the winter, and beyond. To be a self-sufficient gardener, you must be able to store this in a variety of ways.  Root crops, such as potatoes and carrots can be stored without processing, but with ‘green’ vegetables there must be found alternative methods. This can take the form of chutneys and pickles, or tomato sauces.

In essence there are six main ways of preserving food:

• Salting
• Freezing
• Pickling
• Bottling
• Making Jam/Preserves
• Drying

We will be bottling our excess tomatoes this year – with a bit of chili thrown in for good measure. This method relies on there being sufficient heat for the prescribed time to kill off any nasty bits that cause the food to go off. We have purchased a pressure cooker for this very reason, as this will greatly increase the success rate and are looking forward to trying it.

Pickling uses vinegar to increase the acidity of the produce and you do not therefore need prolonged boiling times with this method.  We made various chutneys last year – the highlight being the cucumber relish which features in this month’s food pages. A Google search for chutney recipes pulled up 787,000 results so I am sure that you can find a recipe for anything with which you are overwhelmed.

Freezing is not really an option for us, as we rely on solar power and cannot really run to the chest freezer that we would require. My mother was an adept at this and had a highly organised system of ins and outs. Sometimes however, in order to use up a product approaching it’s best before date she would inflict upon us a week of courgette and tomato sauce based dishes!

Drying herbs is simple to do, and provided all the moisture is out they will keep until the next year. We have yet to try sun-drying our tomatoes, but aim to build a solar drier this summer to see how it goes. Nothing too complicated, and which can be built from odd bits of wood and is simple to operate. We shall also experiment with drying fruit rather as well as making jam out of it. We still have four or five squash left from last year – we picked them and allowed them to dry off in the late autumn sun, before storing them in a dry, well-ventilated place. We lost the odd one, but overall they have been truly excellent.We will (hopefully) have an excess of runner beans, if the blasted wind allows, and will be salting them for the winter. Again this process draws out the moisture, and helps prevent any bacteria from forming.

We have also planted too many summer cabbages so will be trying to make sauerkraut this autumn. It remains to be seen whether we like the taste though.Jam making in our sweet-tooth family has proven popular.
We were given some orange jam this last year and it was fantastic, so we will be trying to emulate it ourselves. We do not have much fruit of our own thus far but have planted apples, several cherry, lemon and orange trees so that hopefully we will be able to rectify this.

Our understanding neighbour allows us to pick his figs so we will be exploring a fig jam of some sort later on. The main idea of preserving food is to keep alive the taste and flavour of the summer during the long winter months, and whilst a tomato sauce is not as good as eating the fruit off the plant, it can bring back memories of the sun during the dark and cold months of January and February. And better still, you know what has gone into it!

We have been trying to plant ‘little and often’ and this worked to a degree last year, in that we would plant out ten new lettuce seedlings (€0.03 each from our co-op) every week or ten days. This worked well until July, when they wilted under the fierce heat of the summer sun. We will have to add some shade for this summer. We were less successful with the tomatoes – planting a few every month during the spring. They all seemed to be ready at the same time, and our season was not really extended by that much. This year we will try again and plant out some further seedlings in June and July as well as the main crop we already have in at the moment, which are setting their flowers nicely as I write.

However with such a long growing season here, we shall try to remember to keep on planting and sowing in any patch recently vacated so we can enjoy the fruits of our labour well into the winter and beyond. Lettuce at Christmas never fails to amaze me, and we seemed to have perpetual spinach from November to April last year. The trick is to keep planting!

Wonder  Plant – Comfrey

In the previous article I mentioned my ‘wonder plant’ – Comfrey and a reader emailed in to ask where she could buy it from. I have not seen it here in Spain, where in Spanish it is called Consuelda, or Consolda in Catalan. I had to grow it from seed, purchased from the UK . At the moment it is thriving and every year it produces even more plants from last year’s roots. I have planted out even more seeds this year, but they appear very slow to germinate.

The variety I have is Russian Comfrey which is sterile and does not self-seed – the preferred method being separation or splitting the root crown into smaller pieces, with the best time to plant them being  in the Spring. It will give a harvest of leaves up to three times during the growing season in the Spring and Summer and then dies down again in the Autumn. Once you have a patch established, it is very difficult to eradicate it as even small pieces of the deep roots will re-grow.

After the first year (it is not a good idea to harvest until the plants are well established) we cut enough leaves to fill the bottom of a large 100 litre container, top it up with water and replace the lid. We allow it to ‘cook’ in the sun for three weeks and then I can dilute this liquid with two times the amount of water and turbo-charge my crops every once in a while. It is however quite strong, and a little goes a long way; if poured directly onto the leaves of young plants, it can scorch them.

The leaves can also be used in the compost heap as an activator – better and less smelly than male urine and if you have enough, it can be used as a mulch, although this seems quite wasteful to me. Best of all, this rich source of potassium draws its nutrients from deep down the soil and it is a natural and free fertiliser.

Until next month –  what are you waiting for –  get planting and start to enjoy the benefits of growing your own food, and stop relying on the supermarket produce.

You could become a little Self’Ish.

MY CALENDAR SAYS…

We have been given a calendar – I think it originated from El Perello, and every month it gives a few suggestions as to what the gardener/farmer should be doing

This month:Continue to plant out Aubergines, Peppers and Tomatoes. Harvest any beans, artichokes and peas left over from the earlier sowings. The first nesperos, cherries and peaches can also be picked now.

After the Old Moon, it will be the time to graft your almond trees – apparently the Old Moon is what we call the New moon in English.Old moon seems to make more sense to me!

Reader’s Tips

I have just received the following tip from a reader which is definitely worth a try!

After the plant produces the first truss of tomato flowers and they are ’set,’ the plant is a little tired because of the exertion. Mix one tablespoon of Epsom Salts in 5 Lt’s of water and give to 2 plants. The potassium in Epsom salts encourages extra root growth.  I used to grow them by the ton in good old Blighty. Toms just love potassium! and I just love a good tasting tom, not these bags of tasteless water you buy here masquerading as toms.

If any readers have any  queries about the above, any requests for any future articles, or tips and useful suggestions,  please email us at: selfish@chroniccat.com

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Posted by editor on 2010-06-01 Filed under Food, Home & Garden, June 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry