Category: Kitchen Garden

Gardening, Farming, Cooking, Recipes, Local Food, Everything that goes into meal production.

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Kitchen Garden

Varietal Applesauce

CC = Crimson Crisp; E = Earliblaze; RD = Red Delicious; Z = Zestar!

With the first big harvest from the Zestar! and Crimson Crisp trees, I decided to make applesauce from each variety. When I finished putting up 36 pints, I organized them to make this variety case. It will be interesting to see how the distinctive flavors mature over time. I never heard of anyone doing varietal applesauce, where each jar is the same variety of apple. So this may be unique to our household. That’s what a gardener can have when they work at it.

There is a daily, recurring task in my planner to “Make Applesauce.” Once I finish the planned amount, I will change it to “Make Cider Vinegar.” I’m still working off a pantry shelf full of apple butter so I don’t need more this year.

The first step was to pick and sort the apples, which I did a week or so ago. I sorted nine bushels of Red Delicious apples into saucers and juicers, and stacked them in crates next to the furnace. The race is on to process them before they go soft.

Apples awaiting processing.

Each day I take the tub that approximates one batch of applesauce, fill it up from the bins, and set it next to the stove. When I’m working on apples, the day starts with washing them as well as I can and air drying them on a towel. It is important to use a little elbow grease when cleaning them and make them a bit shiny. This removes the black spots that sometimes develop.

Next I cut them lengthwise in quarters and cut out the seeds. At this stage, it is important to remove as little of the core as possible since that is where pectin forms. We want pectin as a thickener. While I’m at it, I cut any bad spots and compost them.

I used to leave the seeds in, yet over time, I decided not to cook them and potentially release amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside composed of cyanide and sugar. A little cyanide can kill a human, however, it is unlikely enough cyanide is present if seeds are not crushed. Removing the seeds before cooking is overly cautious, but nothing in terms of flavor or workflow is lost by doing so.

When it is apple season there is always a form of apple juice around. I put about 12 ounces in the bottom of the cooking vessel to prevent scorching and create steam to cook the whole pot. Water is released from the flesh while cooking and it turns into a thick, delicious apple drink which I separate and store in the refrigerator.

Apples trimmed, cored, and ready to cook.

How long to cook the apples? Like anything enough but not too much. I stir the pot once and then when the apples on top begin to soften I turn the heat off and let them sit on the stove for at least an hour. This finishes the cooking without losing all of the goodness. It also allows them to reabsorb some of the apple juice.

Next, I use a large stainless steel cone strainer to separate the apples from the liquid. I put all of apples from the pot in there and cover it with a plate for at least an hour, sometimes more. Because I use applesauce mostly for recipes and baking, I don’t need a lot of moisture in it. If a person wanted to eat applesauce from a dish, or use it as baby food, the moisture level could be adjusted. I put my strainer in a large Rubbermaid pitcher to catch the liquid. It makes it easy to pour it into a Mason jar.

After the liquid is drained, I put small quantities in a different cone strainer and with a pestle, press the flesh out through the tiny perforations. I keep adding small amounts until it has all been pressed and what is left in the strainer is dry skins. This process saves the time of peeling apples. Sometimes I want chunky applesauce, so I peel the apples before cooking and then use a potato masher to break them up in the cooking pot.

The final step is to place the sauce in clean Mason jars with a new lid and water bath can them. When they have been canned, I loosen the ring, and if there is evidence of leakage before sealing, I wash it off so the ring doesn’t get corroded. If I run short of rings, I’ll store the jars with lid only. There has never been a problem.

My process is intended to make enough applesauce for two years, in between big harvests of the Red Delicious tree. I might adjust that if the other trees produce more apples.

I didn’t mention, but should, I take time to clean the kitchen and do dishes before getting started. I enjoy watching wildlife eat fallen apples through the window behind the sink and consider what a blessing having apple trees can be.

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Kitchen Garden

The Moon is Still Out

Trail walking on Sept. 9, 2025. The moon is still out.

Walking on the state park trail before dawn is the latest iteration of my use of the trail. When I go out early I am hoping to catch some glorious photographs of a colorful sky. Recent days have been rather quotidian. At least the moon is still out at that hour. Yesterday I settled for wildflowers.

Wildflowers on the state park trail on Sept. 10, 2025.

Our 55th high school class reunion is later this month and among other things, I agreed to bring a dessert. The planning group had a lengthy conversation about sheet cakes last year. The consensus was that a sheet cake would not be eaten. I have to bring 24 of something that can be held in hand. Thinking of a small cookie as someone else is bringing bars. Also considering something without sugar to be more diabetic friendly for my cohort of septuagenarians. The research sources will be my red, hand-written cookbook and four church cookbooks from the parish where I attended grade school. Nothing against the fancy pastry cookbooks sitting on my shelves. It is a reunion and a tribal recipe might go over. The first recipe to which I turned was for sugar cookies. I have nine bushels of apples picked and ready for the kitchen, so maybe something with those. There is time.

While I type, the last batch of tomato sauce is being water-bath canned. With what is leftover from previous years in whole tomatoes, the 24 pints I made should serve until next year. It is hard to believe how quickly tomato season is ending. I’ll make one last pass through the rows and that is likely it.

I decided to make eight quarts of applesauce (to make a case of the four leftover from 2023) and to finish one case of pints plus one more case. Total of 36 pints plus 12 quarts to last two years until the next Red Delicious harvest. It should be plenty. After that, I get out the juicer and make juice for cider vinegar. The quantity is never exact, and I just returned from counting six mostly empty half-gallon jars. I leave a little vinegar with the mother in each of the jars for a starter. I have five bushels of cider apples, plus more on the tree, so there will be plenty.

The food part of summer is winding to a close. I need to trim the garlic and put it into storage. I want to get the garlic for next year’s crop in the ground in early October. Once that is done, gardening season will be over for the year.

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Kitchen Garden

Hints of Autumn

Trail walking before dawn.

Ambient temperatures were in the high 40s as I made my way along the state park trail. The chilly air stimulated bare skin exposed by my short sleeve t-shirt. Even though it was before 6 a.m. three others were out running. Two had lights and one did not. When younger, I used to run five miles each morning in moonlight, so I never carry a light. I memorized the trail and know where the one tree root crosses so I don’t trip on it in the dark. Darkness dissipated as Earth rotated, bringing us into the light.

The weather has been perfect for about a week. It is the kind of summer weather we seek. Thursday the high temperature was below 70 degrees.

The garden is winding down, with only one or two varieties of tomatoes left ripening. There are also hot peppers which will produce until the first hard frost. Leafy green vegetables continue to grow but the freezer and refrigerator have enough to last until next year. I pick what we need to eat fresh and leave the rest. Apples are aplenty. I will end up leaving a lot on the tree for wildlife. Autumn is not here, yet we can sense it is close.

I made enchiladas for dinner on Thursday. I modified my standard ingredients, substituting fresh tomato sauce for the canned I use in winter. There are still garlic scapes in the refrigerator, so I used those too. It is an easy meal for after a long day of working with apples.

The garden garlic has been racked in the garage for three weeks and is ready for trimming and storage. I’m not in a hurry to get that done. Using a small fan to blow on it helped them dry more quickly and thoroughly.

I have five bins holding a bushel and a half of apples, sorted by juicers and saucers, downstairs near the furnace. I plan to fill the other three bins and then turn to sauce first, followed by juicing. We don’t eat much applesauce, mostly using it to substitute for an egg in vegan corn muffins. Once a year we make an applesauce cake. The refrigerator drawer can take a few more of the best apples for storage. This year has been a mad rush in the garden.

When I tear down the squash patch I expect to find a winter squash or two. That operation was ill-advised in that I couldn’t get to the vines and lost track.

The acorns on the Bur Oak trees are full sized. I expect squirrels will make quick work of them.

Such is my life in Big Grove Township. We live our best lives here… as best we can.

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Kitchen Garden

Deep in Apple Season

Low hanging fruit.

Apple season begins in earnest as Red Delicious ripen. I’ll pick the best few dozen for storage and make cider vinegar and applesauce with the rest until my allocation of pantry space is filled. I didn’t know it at the time, yet this is why I planted apple trees.

The Red Delicious harvest began Tuesday and it won’t take long to fill all eight of my tubs with fruit. After that, kitchen work begins as I race the clock to meet goals before the rest of them fall from the tree.

The most challenging work is running three or four bushels through my small juicer. It is worth the effort to have apple cider vinegar. I also jar a couple of quarts of fresh apple juice.

The other four trees have finished. By far, the best flavored apple was first to ripen: Zestar! I canned pints of applesauce from most of the harvest. Crimson Crisp and Earliblaze filled the time gap until Red Delicious ripened. I labeled each jar of applesauce with the variety of apple. The best of each variety was washed and placed in a refrigerator drawer for storage. I should have fresh apples at least until January.

This activity signals the end of summer. 2025 has been a great one for garden produce. Maybe once all the work is done I can kick back and take it easy for a couple of days. I’m not there yet.

First wheelbarrow full of apples.
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Kitchen Garden

Pears Are In

Before
After

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A gardener learns to take bits of fruit and vegetables and make something of them. These pears came from the tree outside our kitchen, a tree that has been producing almost every year since it was planted in 2003. Most of the fruit goes to wildlife, yet I picked this bowl full to make sure we took advantage of the sweetness inherent in them while we can. They did not disappoint.

Here is a post written in 2014 during pear harvest. I feel much the same way today:

Pear Harvest

Our pear tree is very tall. So tall the highest fruit can’t be reached without a ladder and a picker. Even then, some will be left on the tree.

That’s okay because the shelf life or pears is very short, and we have all the pear butter we can use already in the pantry from last year. We’ll bask in the glory of fresh, organically grown pears for a week or so, and give a lot away during that time.

The money spent to purchase this tree was paid back years ago. Just this year, I paid attention to how to harvest them, and found this information from Stark Brothers to be useful. If left on the tree, pears ripen from the inside out and taste mealy. Don’t want that.

This one tree has been the perfect producer for us. Not too many pears, and not too few.

It turns out I’m okay with eating pears for a few short weeks when they come in, and have little craving for them the rest of the year. One more way to sustain ourselves throughout the year with local food without eating the same thing over and over.

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Kitchen Garden

It’s Tomato Time

Tomato harvest Aug. 19, 2025.

Garden tomatoes are a highlight of the Iowa growing season. Growing them is a skill I learned and modified so there are enough for household needs, plenty to give to friends and family, and a generous donation to local food pantries.

There really is nothing like eating a garden fresh tomato a short distance from where it grew from seed and ripened.

For six weeks or so, we live in bliss.

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Kitchen Garden

Arrival in a Thunderstorm

Sunset after a two-hour thunderstorm.

We have visitors from the east this weekend. On Friday they drove through an Iowa summer thunderstorm in an open-bed pickup truck laden with boxes of household goods for storage. The load was well tarped and secured. Some of the boxes got a few drops of rain, but mostly the first principle of transport came into effect: secure your load properly to avoid problems. We hardly used the tall stack of towels I got out to dry the boxes.

The lightning and thunder were exceptional. Enough of it to make a show. Not too much to worry. A few lightning bolts hit close to home, yet for the most part the storm did its work and moved through the area without incident. It saved me from worry about watering the garden.

These August days are busy in the kitchen garden. Apples, pears and vegetables are abundant and both the garden and kitchen are full of them. I enter either place, and suddenly, four hours filled with work rush by. Being engaged in the conversion of nature to foodstuffs seems righteous. Neither “farmer” nor “gardener” nor “cook” are the right words to describe this. It is an amalgam of living in the present, tradition, education, and experience. I don’t feel any specific descriptor is needed.

We cleaned off the dining room table to sit and talk. I made a simple repast of cut garden vegetables, fruit, cheese, and crackers for the visitors. We talked about what we would accomplish this weekend, not thinking too much about the future or the past. As the United States has its authoritarian moment, such discussions define us… help us cope… make us better people.

It is an escape from the storm that has already moved on and left us living.

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Kitchen Garden

Final 2025 Garlic Report

2025 Garlic just in from the field.

This year, I produced 103 head of garlic from 103 cloves planted in March. Without doubt, a person can plant garlic in the spring and get a decent crop. I plan to return to fall planting later this year.

There were four or five wet stalks that pulled off, yet the rest of it looked as it should. If anything, there were more smaller heads. That is likely due to the shortened growing season. There are plenty of large heads to seed next year’s crop.

I racked them up in no time.

2025 garlic racked and in the garage.

Because of the moisture from recent rain, I set up a small fan to circulate air around them while they dry. Once they feel less “wet” I will put away the fan and let them cure without it. It usually takes about three weeks.

Small fan to circulate air between the racked garlic plants.

Growing my own garlic has been life-changing. There is no going back.

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Kitchen Garden

Apple Management

Crimson Crisp apples from the garden, Aug. 12, 2025.

These two Crimson Crisp apples fell from the tree during Tuesday morning’s thunderstorms. They looked undamaged so I picked them up and ate one of them for an afternoon snack. “Delicious,” he punned. They need to be picked. Apples are beginning to back up in the kitchen, so I better get going with the process.

Stories of my father’s people were about apples. The women worked in an apple canning plant and grew multiple trees on their properties. My great aunt Carrie said she ate apples every day of her life. She passed on a simple recipe for fried apples. Of course the men worked mining coal. Father was lucky to escape such a future when he was a teenager.

I wrote before about my father and apples here. This is the salient memory from that post:

Father taught me to eat apples after a trip on River Drive to buy a bushel.

It seemed unusual to secure so many at once, but he knew someone, and with a limited weekly income from the meat packing plant, the family took what help he could find.

Dad used a knife to cut away bad spots and avoid eating worms. I remember him rocking in a chair eating apples with a paring knife after dinner. He didn’t call them “knife apples.” I coined that term when describing the fruit from our trees. (Knife Apples, Paul Deaton, Oct. 10, 2014).

When we moved to Big Grove Township, I planted six apple trees at the time of my mother-in-law’s death. Three of those remain, one Red Delicious, and two Earliblaze. They are all reaching the end of their lives, but as long as they produce, I don’t cut them down. Recently I planted one Zestar! and one Crimson Crisp in a different spot in the yard. This year is the first all four varieties are producing.

Now that I have a producing orchard, what next?

I grew out of the idea of processing every possible apple into something. Apples now get divided into three major categories. The best ones are tucked away in a refrigerator drawer for eating with a knife. Most of those do not have visible imperfections. The seconds are saved for making three major products: Apple butter (usually 12 pints per major harvest); apple sauce (a dozen quarts and two dozen pints); and apple cider vinegar to fill all my containers. I need about 3-4 gallons this year. When the vinegar jars are filled, I usually reserve a quart or two of fresh apple juice for drinking from the refrigerator. Any other apples are comprised of fallen fruit and the least desirable of what I pick (small or too many imperfections). These go in a pile near the lilac bushes on the property line. They usually sit there decomposing from now until winter, yet in the spring they have all been eaten by wildlife who need winter food.

I used to make dried apples in a dehydrator, but just don’t eat them. Once they get used up from last time, that will be the end. In short, I process to make what I make and anything else goes to wildlife. Extra apples are not usually shared. It takes a certain type of outlook to turn a gnarly apple into applesauce or vinegar. Wildlife don’t complain and eat everything I put out for them.

The main challenge in apple management is getting everything done before they start going bad. That’s where I currently am. The Zestar! have been processed, there are two containers of Earliblaze in the kitchen waiting for processing and a lot on the trees, I’ll pick Crimson Crisp today or tomorrow, and Red Delicious, which is my workhorse apple, are still ripening and won’t be ready for another month or so. Apple management is a process of continuous improvement. Re-defining and knowing what I want is important to keeping my sanity in this busy time of the garden year. Apples are worth the work.

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Kitchen Garden

Garlic Harvest and Garden Stuff

Garlic harvest in 2021.

I spent part of Monday prepping the garage to receive two racks of freshly picked garlic plants for curing. In 2024, the harvest was July 12, so with spring planting this year, I’m running a month behind. The garlic plants look a bit weird — multiple flowers per head, small scapes — so I don’t know what I will get. Hopefully there will be enough good cloves to replant in the fall, with the rest to be used in the kitchen regardless of size. I have a dozen head of garlic left from 2024. Later this week I will grind them in the blender with some olive oil to store in the refrigerator until I use them up. My cooking life was forever changed when Susan Jutz taught me to grow garlic.

I made a batch of applesauce with Earliblaze apples and it was not as good as the batch made with Zestar! apples. If I get ambitious, I might cut down one or both of the Earliblaze trees and replace it with another Zestar! tree. I don’t see that happening this fall.

There does not look to be an abundance of tomatoes for canning. With 70 cages, there are plenty to eat fresh and cook with. Just last week I made a batch of chili using San Marzano tomatoes and it was distinctively better. This shows cooking with fresh tomatoes makes a big difference in taste. The tomato harvest is beginning to accelerate so we’ll see where it takes us.

Squash and cucumbers are pretty well done. A few green beans remain to be picked. Leafy green vegetables are aplenty, although the refrigerator and freezer are stocked with enough to last until next season. Hot peppers have just begun to come in. There will be some more eggplant and bell peppers. That is about it.

This is a snapshot of where things are in the garden. It has been a great year.