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Dehydrator

Food Dehydrator

Once you’ve grown food in your garden, one of the biggest challenges is finding a good way to preserve it. My two favorite ways are freezing and dehydrating. Since it’s spring, and I don’t have a lot growing in my garden to harvest at the moment, I decided to dehydrate a batch of ordinary mushrooms from the supermarket.

Here are the mushrooms before:

Mushrooms Before Dehydrating

And the same mushrooms after:

Mushrooms After Dehydrating

I used about 2.5Kg of medium sized (about 5cm in diameter) mushrooms, which yielded about 1 liter of dried mushrooms. I sliced each mushroom into 3 or 4 pieces.

For mushrooms there are two things in particular to watch out for, making sure they don’t rot while you are drying them and making sure they are completely dried out. Since mushrooms will rot in warm humid conditions, you need to keep the temperature of the dehydrator low at the beginning until the mushrooms dry out a bit, then you can turn it up. You should also use a brush to clean them rather than running water, so you have as little dampness in the dehydrator to begin with. Finally, you need to leave them in the dehydrator until they are crispy and brittle. Just drying them until they are leathery is not good enough. It’s a good idea to check them 24 hours after drying them, to make sure they are really dry all the way through.

When dehydrating any food, keep in mind that it will shrink a lot. Even after rehydrating it will not return to it’s full original size. Always be careful not to cut it into pieces that are too small.

While mushrooms don’t need any pre-treatment before drying, most foods do. Most vegetables need to be blanched in boiling water or steam. Most fruits need to be treated with ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Some foods need to be treated with sulphur. For those of you reading this who already freeze their own foods, the blanching required for freezing vegetables is usually the same as what’s required for dehydrating them. Pre-treatment instructions will almost certainly come with your dehydrator, and can also be found by searching the Internet.

Blanching takes a little personal judgement. Blanching instructions usually say to time it starting when the water returns to a full boil. Often they say to be sure to add the food to the boiling water slowly enough so that it keeps boiling. If for example you have a 2.5Kg sack of potatoes, you will have to add it very slowly to even the largest pot of water for the water to keep boiling. If you add them that slowly, the potatoes you put in first will be sufficiently blanched long before you have added the last of them. You just have to experiment in such situations. In general it’s better to add everything to the water in one go, and start timing when the water starts boiling again, even if it takes a while for this to happen.

Only dehydrate top quality foods. Whatever you put in the dehydrator should be blemish free, fresh and free of dirt.

As a rule, the way to rehydrate any vegetable is to soak in hot water for 30 minutes, then use as you would fresh vegetables. Some things don’t always need so long, and often dehydrated vegetables can be added directly when cooking things like soup. One of my favorite ways to use dehydrated vegetables is added directly to ramen (instant noodles).

Besides mushrooms, some things I dehydrated recently are:

Carrots: 4-5mm slices work best. No pre-treatment is necessary. Grating them also works, but remember they will shrink a lot, so try to grate them as coarsely as possible.

Celeriac: 4-5mm slices work best. Blanch for about 3 minutes in boiling water or steam. Allow ample time for rehydration.

Potatoes: 4-5 mm slices. Blanch for 5 minutes in boiling water. Allow ample time for rehydration.

Onions: 4-5mm slices. No pretreatment necessary.

Green Beans: Cleaned and cut like normal. Blanch 3 minutes. You may have to experiment to get the blanching time right, it’s easy to over cook them.

Apples: Core and slice. Soak in a mixture of 1/4 tsp ascorbic acid and 250ml water (1 cup) for a few minutes before dehydrating. Limited shelf life.

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Coffee

Coffee Roaster

Why roast your own coffee, and what does this have to do with heirloom gardening? Good question!

More than 95% of coffee in the world is consumed stale. Coffee stays fresh about 2 weeks after roasting and 3 days after grinding. Green coffee beans on the other hand will retain their quality for a few years at least. Since many of us don’t have easy access to good quality fresh roasted coffee, roasting your own is a good alternative. Roasting a batch of coffee takes about 15 minutes, and is easy to do once you get the hang of it.

There was a time when all coffee was grown in the shade of trees. Because of the climate required for coffee, this usually meant it was grown in rainforests. This turned out to be a win-win situation for both farmers and the rainforests, because growing coffee did little damage to the environment and was economically sustainable. Since coffee is the most valuable commodity in the world after oil, it was easy for the farmer to make a fair profit. Farmers could also operate independently, because the original coffee plants were old varieties, free from intellectual property rights and needed little in the way of chemical sprays or fertilizers. Growing coffee resulted in near 100% profit for the farmers, and in a bad year the worst that happened was they didn’t make any money.

Then everything changed. Along came a new variety of coffee, an F1 hybrid, that could tolerate direct sunlight. In addition the yields of this type of coffee were much higher than the older varieties. Since this new type of coffee was a patented hybrid, it meant the farmers had to purchase the seeds instead of saving their own. In addition the plants required full sun, so couldn’t be grown in the shade of trees anymore, and it required the use of chemical sprays and fertilizers which were also patented.

For the coffee farmers, it was an opportunity to make more money, or so it seemed. By growing this new type of coffee, with possibly double or triple yields when compared with their older varieties of coffee, their higher profits more than made up for the additional costs. For many farmers the need for direct sunlight was also an easy problem to solve, by simply cutting their rainforests down.

Suddenly the world’s coffee markets became flooded with this new kind of coffee. Prices fell, and the increased yields were no longer enough to make up for the extra costs of the new coffee. Suddenly farmers found themselves not only unable to make a living wage growing coffee, but having to pay royalties on their seeds, pesticides and fertilizers just to keep their farms alive. The only farmers who could survive were the ones who could expand fast enough to grow even more, and flood the already saturated world markets with still more coffee. Suddenly there was no going back to the old ways of growing coffee.

Yes, it’s true. You can make a difference by buying Fair Trade coffee, but that only addresses part of the problem. By roasting your own coffee it is a little easier to buy shade grown coffee as direct as possible from coffee plantations or cooperatives. If you are on holiday in a coffee growing region of the world, you can buy the coffee at it’s source knowing it will last several years after you bring it home. Being able to roast your own coffee offers more possibilities to buy coffee over the Internet, from the right kinds of places.

If you have easy access to fresh roasted socially responsible coffee, having a coffee roaster may not change much. If not, and you drink a lot of coffee, it might be worth considering. If for no other reason, drinking fresh coffee instead of stale coffee makes a big difference!

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Past and Pending Trials

In the comment discussion of my previous post, it occurred to me I never explained that most of what I do in my garden are trial plantings.

I have been gardening the same bit of land now for 2+ years. The first year I didn’t know what would grow there, so I planted a bit of everything. What grew well were beans, peas, cole plants, beets and chard, carrots, leaks, celeriac (celery root) and garlic.

The next year, I did more trials with things like turnips, rutabagas, wheat, and spelt. I also did expanded plantings of some of the things that had done well the previous year. I planted about 30 different cole plants, 5 different carrots, 28 different kinds of garlic and related plants, 10+ kinds of beets, 10+ kinds of swiss chard, and so on. What did well were the garlic (but it’s not yet harvested), the purple cauliflower and red brussel sprouts I posted about before, several carrots and peas.

At this stage many things are not clear. Many things that did well the first year, didn’t do well the second like the cole plants and beets. I also had problems getting my wheat seed to germinate. Many of these things can be attributed to weather, weed infestations, planting depth or distance problems, watering issues, soil fertility, pest or other problems. Some of these things are just not clear what went right or wrong. In any event, more future trials will probably shed some light on these things.

There are many goals in these trials. What grows well in my garden, what tastes good, what has pest and disease resistance, what has high yields, what fits well in rotation schemes with other plants, from which plants is seed saving practical and so on.

Often there are goals unrelated to the type of plant that can change the outcome, such as a new mulching or weed control technique. Although it’s not usually on purpose, I frequently end up with a complex set of variables in a trial. There is almost never a clear outcome to a trial.

In any given planting trial, I am happy if 50% of what I plant grows into something interesting. In the end the idea is to figure out what works best for me, then do expanded plantings and seed saving from these crops. What doesn’t do well is just discarded.

Since seed saving often means protecting plants from cross pollinating, it’s often easier to either plant many varieties in a trial or plant one variety for seed saving, but not both in the same year.

When dealing with heirloom vegetables, you are always dealing with huge numbers of varieties. For example there are thought to be 4000 different kinds of tomatoes! That’s 100 tomatoes a year for 40 years without ever planting the same one twice. It’s the same with almost all types of heirloom fruits and vegetables. There is no point wasting your time with anything that doesn’t work well for you, but at the same time half the fun is continuing to try different varieties or retrying varieties that you think deserve a second chance. When you find the right variety, you can then work on improving it by roguing out undesirable traits and not saving seeds from those plants.

So, what’s coming next for this year? In progress I have a garlic and related plant trial, and I plan to expand this with even more varieties. I have several kinds of peas, beans, carrots, beets, chard, corn (maize) and other things either planned or already planted. I’ll post pictures of whatever does well.

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Purple of Sicily Cauliflower

After growing all last summer, then through the winter, these heads of cauliflower appeared the other day:

Purple of Sicily Cauliflower

It’s truly one of the prettiest cole plants I grew this past year.

It looks similar to purple sprouting broccoli, that I have been reading about on several UK blogs, but I am quite certain this is another plant. Among other things this has one large main head, and few if any side shoots.

When cooked it turns green, tastes really nice and is a lot like broccoli.

The plants were really hardy. They survived the winter without problems. While my other cole plants had problems with root maggots, these didn’t seem to. No problems with birds or other animals. I’m sure I picked off a few caterpillars, but nothing unusual.

I planted 4 plants, and got 4 perfect heads of cauliflower. This almost never happens, and was a very pleasant surprise.

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Container Composting

If you have limited space for composting, or are only composting a relatively small amount of waste, this may be the perfect solution for you. If you are new to composting, this is also a good way to get started.

It is possible to construct your own composting container, but I won’t get into this here. By searching the Internet you should be able to find plans for this. Commercial composters are not expensive, perhaps $50, and are usually well designed. It can never hurt to have a composter that is a little bigger than you need, so be careful not to buy one that is too small. Some cities often offer discounted composters, as a way of encouraging people to recycle their household waste. Here is a picture of the one I use:

Composting Container

Some composters have moving parts, and are designed to stir the compost, but this is not necessary. The basic idea behind my composter is waste is put into the top, decomposes, then can be dug out of the bottom. Some of the cheaper composters don’t have the little door at the bottom. All composters of this type are open at the bottom, so when your compost is ready, all you have to do is lift the plastic composter off the top. I find it useful to completely empty the composter every year so having a door that let’s me dig a little bit at a time out is useful, but not very important. The little door can also be a nusance, because inevitably it will fall off or break.

The composter will hold much more than it looks like, because as you add waste it will decompose, leaving more space for more waste. Think of it like a bottomless garbage can. With a bit of luck, you may be able to fit in 10 times more waste than the actual capacity of the composter.

If you have the space, it can be useful to have two composters. This is so one of them has a chance to sit and decompose, while you are adding fresh material to the other one.

In Composting and Mulching I talked about what to put in your compost. You can add both yard waste and household waste, but many people that have a composter like this live in a city and use it only for their household waste. It’s perfect for this. Just keep an extra container in your kitchen to hold your compostable kitchen waste. You may want to line it with a paper bag to make cleaning easier, and the paper bag can just be tossed into the composter with the rest of the waste. By composting your waste in this way you can often reduce what you put into the landfill by more than 50%. There is not usually a lot of nitrogen in household waste, which can slow the composter down. If you want the composter to go faster, you can add small amounts of cow manure to increase the nitrogen content. Since fresh cow manure can burn the roots of young plants, be sure not to add any near to the time you will actually use your compost.

Composting in a container is usually faster than composting in an open pile. My compost is normally ready for use within a year. I will often use the compost a little bit before it’s really ready, and simply pick out the pieces of not yet decomposed waste and put them back in the composter.

Compost depends on micro-organisms, that in the beginning can take several months to establish themselves. In order to get these established more quickly, you may wish to find a way to add them yourself. The easiest way to do this is to hold back a couple of shovel fulls of compost from your previous batch, and add it to your next. Of course if you are starting at the beginning, you have to find another way. These micro-organisms are in store bought compost, as well as manure. There is also no reason why you can’t just wait a few months for the micro-organisms to establish themselves. You can also buy inoculant (compost accelerator) in the garden center, but I think this is kind of a waste of money considering there are other sources. In any event, inoculant won’t make the composter go any faster once the micro-organisms are already present.