Making garden pesto

Today I made pesto from some of the basil growing in my yard. The aroma from the basil and garlic was amazing and I can still smell it on my hands. This year was my first year planting garlic and I did not realize the cold winter was a necessity for huge bulbs. As a result my garlic did not get very big and I wont have cloves to plant in the ground for next year. For next year I have already ordered two types of garlic which should arrive in time for me to plant them in the fall. Even though the garlic was small it still had a strong taste and it made the pesto slightly spicy!


Instead of chopping up the basil I just used scissors. I find it is much easier to use scissors as opposed to a knife. All of these cloves came from one garlic bulb, they were a bit small but had a big taste!



I crushed up the pine nuts and garlic using a mortar and pestal...I need a bigger mortar and pestal it was a pain using this small one because I kept on pushing the pine nuts out onto the counter. I used a blender to crush everything together....someday I will have a proper food processor.


When I was done I put the sauce in mason jars and placed them in the freezer. Pesto sauce has to be frozen and it is not recommended to can and preserve them. I learned this from the "National Center for Home Food Preservation". They state that, "Herbs and oils are both low-acid and together could support the growth of the disease-causing Clostridium botulinum bacteria." Since Pesto is an uncooked sauce and is basically just basil and oil it falls into this category of extreme low-acid. Clostridium botulinum is rod shaped and produces the neurtoxin, botulinum neurotoxin types A-G. This causes flacid muscular paralysis seen in botulism and is used as the main paralytic agent in botox treatments.

Pesto sauce is recommended to be frozen and can be stored this way all winter. I have read other ideas like putting the pesto in ice cube trays and then storing the cubes in a freezer bag this way it is easy to handle when you want to defrost the pesto. I may try that next time with my other batch of basil I will cut next week and see which way I prefer.

Blossoms

Here are a few of the blossoms from my herbs and veggies. I didn't include pumpkin because I had already taken a few pictures of them in a earlier post.


ONION: This blossom is one of my favorites although it isn't very fragrant I still love all of the little white flowers. I also like how the stem is a bit twisted giving the blossom a unique look in a floral arrangement. I pick these when they are just starting to bloom so that more energy can go into the onion. I put them in water and it will finish blooming in the water.

DILL: looks like a yellow cloud.

PARSLEY


EGGPLANT: This is a very unique purple flower. The flower is about the size of a silver dollar.

onion from seed

These are some of the onions that I started from a set (bulbs not seeds). I harvested them when the greens had laid down and I could see the top of the onion sticking out of the ground. They are full of flavor but are tiny, I'm wondering if I planted them to close together or if it was just the quality of my soil. Next year I want to try and start them from seed but I am scared, I heard it was hard to start onions from seed, is this true? Should I try it and see what happens? I guess I could try and if it didn't work out I could go buy another set.

I bought my last set from Sam's club but this time I will buy a set from my local nursery.

No buzy beez

I have had a lot of success with my pumpkin, long neck squash, and zucchini. The plants are healthy and there are plenty of blossoms. There is one problem though...I don't have any bees!!!! One day I was checking my pumpkins and I noticed that the baby pumpkins were shriveling up and dying before they got bigger than an inch around. I saw my squash doing the same thing. I did a little research and realized it was because the female blossoms were not being fertilized.

My alternative was too hand pollinate. Every morning I go to my bee-less backyard and check for new female and male blossoms.
MALE FLOWER

FEMALE FLOWER

The female flower also has a tiny fruit underneath it which you can't see in this picture.

To hand pollinate I carefully take the petals off of the male flower so as not to spill any of the visible pollen inside. Then I get as much of the male flower's pollen into the female flower.

I have just started this so hopefully it works I will let you know if it does.

Another thing I have done was open the side gate to my vegetable garden that leads to the front yard. In my front yard I have a wild flower garden which attracts a lot of bees. My theory is that if the bees see the flower's on my pumpkin plants then they will enter the side yard. I don't really know if that works or not because I really don't know how bees operate but it seems the bees just didn't know the veggie garden was there.

My husband suggested I kidnap a bee and take it to the veggie garden. Once in the veggie garden I release the bee so that he sees the pumpkin flowers and then goes back to the hive to report to the other bees. Sounds funny but hey that might work, I will use that as a last resort though I don't want to traumatize any bees haha

My pumpkin plants have got to be the most successful plant thus far. I have so many blossoms each one a beautiful yellow star shape. I'm curious to see how many pumpkins I will get. Right now two of my plants are starting to grow out of the planter boxes and onto the ground. My third one I'm afraid does not know what to do with itself. I'm afraid I did plant them a bit too close together. I found that it is impossible to learn everything from reading gardener books, it is best to experiment and learn from your mistakes. (Although a little research never hurt anyone!) This year I planted my onions too close together and although they will still taste good their size will suffer.

I dug up some more grass a couple of weeks ago and created what I call the berry garden. So far I have three raspberry plants which will be paired with some blackberry plants. Behind the berry bushes I have a crop of corn. I planted the corn pretty late this year but I saw a flat with ten corn sprouts for three dollars so I figured, "what have I got to lose?" Since I planted the corn it has doubled in size! I hope they are able to reach full maturity before the frost. Next year I plan on planting corn again in this area with three different pumpkin plants growing between the corn and the berry bushes. I know, my obsession with pumpkins is a bit over the top but all the different varieties are just too tempting I've got to try them all!


My Tomatoes are starting to grow. I have had a couple of ripe tomatoes off of my yellow pear heirloom. The other variety is a Roma tomato. My celebrity tomato has had plenty of blossoms but the fruit has not started growing yet. All of my tomato plants are about 4 feet tall now. The only one I'm worried about is my green zebra striped heirloom. This tomato plant is huge but it has not produced any blossoms. This tomato is in a container and is apart from the other tomatoes so maybe it has something to do with the soil. I've tried adding tomato food but no luck so far, suggestions anyone?