Seed starting, the early birds. Hoping we’re 8 weeks from last frost.
Eggplant Japanese White Egg, Eggplant Kazakhstan, Eggplant Ping Tung, Listada di Gandia Eggplant, Black Beauty Eggplant, Celery Tendercrisp.
Turned over two more beds today. Back is killing me.
Pruned 17 fruit trees and our weeping cherries. My Portuguese friend stopped by and told me I was doing it all wrong. His wife disagreed. I’ll go with her.
52 degrees and sunny. Bugs are emerging.
Making homemade sauerkraut is an easy and delicious way to preserve those cabbage heads before the frost hits.
In this recipe, we use a white head of cabbage, Egyptian onions, caraway seeds and sea salt. We tend to ‘eye it’ instead of using exact amounts, but essentially you want to use about 1 tablespoon of salt for every 1.5 lbs of cabbage.
Chop up the cabbage, and keep layering it in the crock pot along with the other ingredients, salting each layer as you go. The salt will draw the water from the cabbage, effectively making its own brine to ferment in. After you have filled the crock pot, put weight on the top of the cabbage to force the water out. We use an upside down plate with a large mason jar full of water on top.
After two weeks of fermenting, the sauerkraut is ready to be canned. After canning, we typically hot bath the jars for 20 minutes in boiling water to sanitize and seal them.
