Alas, Our Fig Trees

My first blog post about our fig trees is dated June 18, 2009 (Uncovered). We didn't know we had them until we started cleaning up the place. The house was empty for several years before we bought it, so there was a lot of cleaning up to do. That's when I discovered several fig trees hidden in the brush. 

Over the years, I've canned, dehydrated, and given away lots of figs. I've baked with them and we've eaten lots fresh. Then a couple years ago, one of them died. The next year another died. And the next year another. Now, our last remaining original fig tree is going the same way.

The leaves curl, yellow, and drop. 

I've done some research into this and it could be any number of things: nutrient deficiencies, disease, pests. Could be too little rain or could be too much. 

Nothing I've done has helped, so I'm doubtful the few figs the tree did produce will ripen. That will mean no fig harvest this year; a sad loss, for sure. 

Happily, we have a new generation of saplings, growing on their own and looking healthy.

It will be years before they produce much, but at least they're there. Hopefully, they won't succumb to whatever got the others. 

Alas, Our Fig Trees © July 2024

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: August 2023

 Rainfall 

• 2nd: 0.02" 
• 3rd: 2.72"
• 7th: 0.35"
• 9th: 0.2"
• 10th: 1.07"
• 11th: 0.04"
• 12th: 0.44"
• 24th: 0.28"
• 27th: 0.23"
• 28th: 0.43"
• 29th: 0.45:
• 30th: 0.14"
• Total: 6.37 inches

Temperature

• range of nighttime lows: 62 to 75°F (17 to 24°C)
• range of daytime highs: 76 to 95°F (25 to 35°C)

Weather Notes

The weather service keeps trying to forecast us into scorching temperatures, but Mother Nature simply isn't cooperating. Of course, we live amongst trees and vegetation, so our temps will be considerably lower than in towns and cities, where concrete, asphalt, and blacktop absorb and retain heat. Even so, we still have humidity to deal with, so it feels hot as usual! What is unusual, is our continued overnight lows in the 60s. I don't ever recall nights like these; our summer lows are usually in the mid-70s. Getting down into the 60s really helps cool the house down and keep it more comfortable during the day.

Planted

• kale
• turnips
• carrots
• parsnips
• collard greens
• lettuce

Picking and Preserving

August is my busiest month. I spend the morning picking and the afternoon preserving.

Harvest bucket in early August

Harvest bucket in late August

It's the month for figs and pears, so these keep me busy.

We seem to have had an extra long run for the figs, which usually only last a week or two. They kept producing for more than three weeks this year. 

Fresh figs with kefir and granola

When the harvest is in full flush, I can pints of figs. When it trickles down to smaller numbers, I quarter and dehydrate them. Sadly, another of our fig trees is dying. That's the third one in as many years.

Amazingly, we have very little bird damage to our figs this year. I suspect it's because they're feasting on elderberries instead.

While I'm not getting a lot of elderberries, I did get enough to make another half-gallon of elderberry infused vinegar. 

We eat pears fresh and the rest go to make pear sauce. 

Dan's not keen on canned pear pieces, but we both like pear sauce, which I think is easier to do than chunks anyway. Most of the sauce is canned, but I'm going to dehydrate some too.

Fresh pear pie

I guess because of the rain and cooler temperatures, my cucumbers continue to look good.

These are my landrace cucumbers, second year. As it gets hotter they slow down a bit, but I've replenished our dill pickle supply and we continue to eat them in salads almost daily. 

Peppers are doing well.

As is the okra.

I had volunteer cherry tomatoes come up in the okra bed. They sort of lean on the okra plants, making them easier to pick. Both seem to be getting enough sun and are producing well.

Okra and tomato plants growing together.

I try not to plant too much okra, because one year I had so much I still had okra in the freezer when the new harvest came in. Frozen okra oven-fries nicely and makes a tasty vegetable, but we'd eaten so much of it over winter that the first fresh harvest wasn't as appealing as it usually is. I love the anticipation of those first seasonal tastes. 

Even so, I'm freezing some of the extra.

Ready for the freezer. I'll add more as I have extra.

The nice thing about okra, is that it can be frozen without blanching. I may try to can some with cherry tomatoes as an experiment too.

Speaking of cherry tomatoes, we have those in abundance. I only have half-a-dozen slicing tomato plants, but the cherry toms absolutely thrive. I've already shown you some of the pizza sauce I made, and I've been popping extras in the freezer for next year's batch. Also, I've started a couple of jars cherry tomatoes preserved in olive oil. I found the recipe in Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning and I tried a couple of pints last year, and we really liked it. 

This year I'm going to preserve a couple of quarts. The recipe calls for cherry tomatoes, small onions, and fresh herbs (I used rosemary, thyme, and oregano). Everything is sprinkled with salt and a couple tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice, then covered with extra virgin olive oil. I vacuum seal the jar as well. 

These make a wonderful condiment or salad topper, complete with tomato and herb flavored oil and vinegar salad dressing right out of the jar!

My watermelons have been incredibly slow to do anything.

Baby watermelon

I hope we get some before first frost!

And here's a treat.

Asparagus!

I always thought asparagus was a spring thing, but I've been regularly cutting small handfuls this month. They make a great snack, addition to salad, or scrambled eggs. 

Speaking of salads, I usually show you one.

This is my version of taco salad, with chips instead of a taco bowl. Avocado makes it special, as does the sauce, which is ricotta cheese mixed with salsa. We've been eating these once a week.

Varmint

Earlier this month I had a problem with something eating the leaves off my sweet potato plants. Dan put out his live animal trap and trail camera one night, and caught this!

Raccoon in live animal trap.

That's pretty much it for my August garden. How about yours?

Garden Notes: August 2023 © Aug 2023

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: August 2022

 Rainfall

• 1st: 0.35"
• 3rd: 0.125"
• 4th: 1"
• 7th: 0.8"
• 11th: 0.9"
• 17th: 0.1"
• 19th: 0.5"
• 21st: 0.7"
• 26th: 0.1"
• Total: 4.575"

Temperature

• nighttime range: 68-75°F (20-24°C)
• daytime range: 78-94°F (25.5-34.5°C)

No complaints about August weather. We had good rainfall and generally cooler daily temperatures than July. We only saw 90s during the first and last weeks of the month. On the other hand, the higher humidity meant that it felt just as bad as the 90s! What really helps is when it gets down to below 70°F (21°C) at night because we can cool the house down, making it more tolerable during the day.

State of the garden

All I can say is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everything is overgrown and runaway so that it looks a mess. But almost everything in it is useful!

Here we have cherry tomatoes, watermelon, mangels, horseradish,
celery, lambs quarter, sweet potatoes, raspberries, cowpeas, landrace 
brassicas, morning glory, a couple of carrots, and a potato plant or two.

Hoophouse: The living shade you see is hopniss, cherry tomatoes, and morning glories.

Also a volunteer winter squash, cultivated grape, and Chinese yams.

My largest sweet potato squash so far.

Inside the hoophouse are winter squash, Malabar spinach, violets,
strawberries (back right bed) and cultivated burdock (back left bed.)

Hugelkultur: winter squash, turtle beans, cherry tomatoes,
chicory, clover, morning glories, lambs quarter, & sunchokes.

Hugelkultur closeup featuring squash and chicory.

African keyhole garden: sweet potatoes and a survivor kale.
The porch trellis is growing green beans and cherry tomatoes.

I planted kale in the keyhole bed about a year ago. This is one of
two plants that survived both our cold winter and hot summer.

Picking and Preserving

Bucket full of cherry tomatoes, a few okra, and one lone pepper.

The cherry tomatoes are still going gangbusters. I got bored with making and canning pizza sauce, so I'm switching to tomato juice and ketchup.

The cucumbers are done, so our salads, now, are cherry tomatoes and kale.

Tomato, kale, and black olive salad
with homemade ricotta ranch dressing.

The okra hasn't been very productive. 

Okra is a member of the hibiscus family.

I don't plant a lot, just enough to have oven-fried okra a couple times a week during growing season, with a little extra to freeze for a side dish during winter. It hasn't produced that much, although it's making a better effort now that our daily highs aren't so scorching and we're getting a little more rain.

August is fig month, and these are the largest figs we've ever seen on our trees.

They aren't all this size, but it's amazing to find them. Can't take any credit, though, because the fig trees are pretty much on their own! They are next to the goat barn, so perhaps they're getting some rich rain runoff.

Breakfast: fresh figs on peanut butter granola with
kefir. Sometimes we swap the figs for diced pears.

There were lots to can.

And dessert!

Fresh fig cake with vanilla goat milk ice cream.

Pear harvest started in late July. The heaviest harvest was a couple weeks ago.

Bucket of pears.

One year, I spent days in the kitchen canning chunked pears, but Dan wasn't very enthusiastic about them. So now, I just make pear sauce. It's easier and faster to do, and we both like it.

Cinnamon pear sauce.

As pear picking slows and the pearsauce jars fill, I switch to drying them. Ditto for figs.

 

The cores and peels are being made into vinegar.

Elderberry harvest starts in late August.

First of the elderberries.

I used the first of them to flavor my canned figs and pearsauce. I also freeze them for jelly making this winter, and will make a couple batches of elderberry wine. This year I want to try an elderberry pear wine. I've experimented with adding other fruits for subtle flavor (of which some are more likable than others).

And a few parting shots.

Buckwheat planted as a cover crop in my newest swale bed.
Only a few plants came up, so this will be my seed crop.

Marigolds and a winter squash blossom.

Our first Orange Glo watermelon of the summer.

I picked the watermelon just the other day. They were planted late, and only after my cantaloupe plants all died. I'm not sure what happened to them. They were doing well until our hot dry spell. I watered them faithfully, but they weren't happy and that was that. The watermelons have done much better and we're just starting to enjoy them.

So there are the pictures to go along with my Summer Mantra blog post. I liked hearing about what you all have been up to in your gardens, so keep the comments coming. 😀

Garden Notes: August 2022 © August 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Winter Project List: Indoor Stuff

Even though winter is the slow-paced season, there's still plenty to keep us busy. I've shown you our outdoor projects, but because they are "weather permitting," the indoor project list is the to-do source when it's too cold, rainy, snowy, icy, muddy, or otherwise yucky outside. Last week, I defrosted a big bag of bones for making broth and my frozen figs for making jam.

The bone broth is pretty straightforward (my how-to here). It just requires planning ahead because the process spans four or five days.

I made and canned almost 2 gallons of bone broth for soups and gravy.

Figs make a pretty bland jam, so I like to mix them with other fruits for some tasty combinations. After defrosting, I had enough to make two batches.

I used half of the figs for a fig/dried apricot jam.

With the other half, I used fresh cranberries for cranberry-fig jam.

I've also gotten a start on spring cleaning and decluttering. Once garden weather gets here, there won't be adequate time for that.

My creative endeavor is my online photography course. It's fun, and of course, it's useful for blogging and project documentation.

My research project is learning about amateur radio. 

As you can see, I have plenty of interesting things to keep me busy! So, how about you? Are you working mostly indoors or out? Are you making headway on your project list? Or are you taking it easy this cold-weather season?

Winter Project List: Indoor Stuff © Feb. 2022 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Canned Fig Coffee Cake

I had a jar of figs that didn't seal the other day, so I wanted to try something new with it. I dehydrate some figs, but I can most of them. Mostly, we eat the canned figs as breakfast fruit, but I'm always looking to increase diet diversity, especially with our homegrown foods. Coffee cake came to mind, you know, the kind with the crumb topping. Here's the recipe for my records.

Canned Fig Coffee Cake

Cake

• 1½ cups (188 gm) of flour (I mixed whole wheat and unbleached white)
• ½ cup (100 gm) sugar
• 2 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup (57 gm) soft butter
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup (175 ml) liquid* (see below)
• 1 pint canned figs (could use fresh.)

Topping

• ⅓ cup (53 gm) brown sugar, packed
• ¼ (30 gm) unbleached flour
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 3 tbsp firm butter

*Drain figs and set aside. Reserve and measure liquid. Top it off with enough milk or whey to make ¾ cup total liquid.

Make topping by mixing all ingredients until crumbly. Set aside.

Blend all ingredients except figs and topping. Fold in figs and pour batter into a greased square baking dish. Sprinkle topping over batter. Bake at 375°F (190°C) for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm.

It's nice to have something else to make with canned figs!

Canned Fig Coffee Cake © August 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Better Than Fig Newtons

Every year I can a lot of figs, but I dehydrate some too. I'm not much in the habit of using my dried foods and decided I need to remedy that. The other day, I researched recipes for homemade fig newtons that used dried figs. I ended up combining three recipes and the results were excellent! Here it is, so I can make it again.

Better Than Fig Newtons

Fig Filling:

• 2 cups dried figs
• 1¾ cup apple juice
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• ¼ cup sugar

Mix in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and let sit until most of the liquid is absorbed and the figs are moist and plump.

Crust:

• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• ½  cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 large egg

Cream butter and sugar, add egg and dry ingredients. Pat half of the dough into a greased 8" x 12" baking dish. Roll out the other half into an 8" x 12" rectangle. Spread fig mixture over bottom crust. Place top crust on top. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown. When cool, slice into squares.

Recipe Notes:

• Orange juice is the "secret ingredient" that gives these that fig newton flavor.
• Of course, you can substitute a different juice or use water to rehydrate the figs.
• You can substitute your choice of flour.
• And sweetener! Use what you like. 

We really liked these. I cut way back on the sweetener in the recipes because 1) so many cookie recipes are too sweet for our liking, and 2) the figs and fruit juices are already sweet. This was perfect. 

Better Than Fig Newtons © March 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com