Summer harvest is here — the tomatoes are ripening, squash is in endless supply, and you’re wondering what you’re going to do to keep up with the hoard of fresh vegetables that are growing in your garden.  Preserve the bounty that you put so much time and effort into!  That’s what you’re going to do.  Rather than sending highly nutritional food (that you’ve worked so hard to produce) to the compost pile simply because you have too much to eat, you can devote a little bit more time to preserve your harvest, and enjoy what you’ve grown for months to come.  Growing a surplus of food in the summer and preserving it creates food security for the winter months.  Doing it yourself creates the feeling of accomplishment, and the assurance of safety and quality.  Preserving food is a tradition that dates back centuries, but in the last half century has lost its appeal and necessity as modernized commerce and global food availability have made eating much easier (imagine trying to find a banana in January in Buffalo, 300 years ago…)  Canning, freezing, and dehydrating are excellent ways to preserve food — as well as the nutrients and flavor it holds.

Freezing Vegetables

Freezing your harvest (or part of your harvest, unless you have a really big freezer) is a very easy and effective way to preserve food.  A common preparation to freeze vegetables is blanching, but vegetables can be prepared to freeze in many ways (depends on the recipe).  Blanching works well for most vegetables, and is a technique used for canning as well.  Blanching removes bacteria and dirt, etc. from the surface of your veggies, and more importantly, stops the process of enzymes inside the vegetable that would cause it to toughen, lose flavor and nutrients, and change color.  Blanching is done by putting fresh, prepared vegetables into boiling water for a short amount of time (amount of time varies from vegetable to vegetable), and then immediately moving the produce to ice-cold water to stop the cooking process.  Typically, vegetables should be cooled in ice-water for the same amount of time that they were cooked in hot water, unless a recipe notes otherwise.  Guidelines for freezing and blanching are easily accessible online, and can also be found in cookbooks and books on preserving food.  Here are some guidelines for freezing beets, tomatoes, and zucchini:

Beets

Select young, tender beets, 2 – 3 inches across.  Wash carefully.  Cook in boiling water until tender,  from 60 – 90 minutes.  Cool in cold water, skins peel off easily.  Slice.  When cool, transfer to containers.  Label.  Freeze.  Keeps for 6 months.

Zucchini

Slice into 1-inch pieces, do not peel.  Saute in melted butter until barely tender.  Cool, pack into plastic containers, leaving headspace at the top.  Label.  Freeze.  Keeps for 3 months.

Tomatoes

Dip into boiling water 1 minute.  Remove, and dip into cold water for 1 minute.  Remove and peel.  Place on a tray and freeze for 30 minutes.  Place in plastic bags, remove air, seal and label.  Keeps up to 6 months.

There are many resources and guides for freezing vegetables from A to Z, whether online, or in a book.  Check out GardenGuides and PickYourOwn for online guides to preserving vegetables.  Extend your season, and eat your home-grown foods until they start growing again next year.  Please join us, as we are holding a Tomato Canning Workshop on September 1st @ 3pm in our gardens @ 320 Northampton.  If it rains, we will hold the workshop indoors @ 158 Eaton St.

Join Fancy & Delicious tomorrow, August 22nd, at 153 Eaton Street from 12-5 for our monthly bread workshop.

Arrive at noon if you want to knead and bake your own loaf of bread in our clay oven. There are still a few spots available. If you are not planning on baking, join us at any time in the afternoon to
enjoy some tea or coffee, and good company (the company is always good)!

There will be no special lesson or theme this month. All basic ingredients and supplies are provided, but if you want to experiment with any special flours or recipes, you should bring your own extras.
Instruction and guidance will be available for those who want it. The workshop is free, but we accept
donations to cover the cost of ingredients and to help keep the project alive!

Cheers,
Maura

–
Fancy and Delicious Baking Co.
153 Eaton St. Buffalo, NY 14208
fancyanddelicious.blogspot.com

The Strawberry Moon Celebration went so well that we have decided to do it again! Join us this Saturday at 8pm. We will teach you how to make beignets with a black raspberry sauce, taste test some Lake Effect Ice Cream, and watch a movie under the stars. Remember to bring a chair and a friend!!

The August Movie Night will be Friday, the 27th and we’ll make treats with fresh blueberries!

You are probably seeing more and more rain barrels popping up in gardens, driveways, and backyards — if you haven’t found one for yourself yet, look no further.

And if you do not yet know: rain barrels can make a huge impact on our local ecology by conserving rain water, slowing water runoff, and preventing pollution and debris from being carried into our waterways and municipal systems.  Installing a rain barrel allows you to catch clean, untreated water that has fallen from the sky and hold it there until you need it — taking a bit of the burden off your tapwater, and the municipalities that make it.  If everyone in the city did this, think of the difference that could be made!!!

You will most likely see rain barrels all over if you are out and about for Buffalo’s Garden Walk this weekend, so if you get jealous and have the urge to keep up with the Joneses (or just want to water your garden or wash your car), you can get yourself a rainbarrel from our store at 298 Northampton for just $30.

Please don’t get me wrong, we love the Garden Walk–I love anything that gets people out into the sidewalks and talking to one another about color and veggies and sunshine. And I realize that with 355 gardens on the Walk–it makes it difficult to map a larger area; however, there are many gardens east of Main Street that I think are worth visiting–namely those in our neighborhood:

• Our Rain Garden at the corner of Northampton & Michigan is very new! It was installed by National Grid employees as a corporate service project this past Earth Day 2010. The garden was designed by Matthew Dore of Buffalo Horticulture. Matt regraded the vacant double lot to guide rain water into the middle (like a shower drain) where a pergola was built surrounded by blueberry bushes. The lot also features a privacy fence using reclaimed flooring. The perennial flower beds have a backdrop of foundation stone.  Planters built from reclaimed hemlock floor joists double as seating along the sidewalk.
  Keep traveling down Northampton and
• You’ll discover a Bee Sanctuary which was once a vacant lot, but is now a warm blanket of yellow, amber, and bronze with summer wild flowers. (In the spring the lot was dotted with blues, pinks and purples). The wild flowers are native to the North East and are helping to fortify a sagging urban bee population.
• Our Children’s Vinery is truly unique!  It has an apple tree and six arbors supporting a variety of pole beans, melon, squash, tomatoes, eggplant and chard.  We have Mobile Victory Gardens donated by artist, Stella Maars which are growing herbs and pumpkins.  We’re just adding a teepee of morning glories.  We have experimental containers for growing potatoes and a strawberry patch which has delighted people of all ages!
• The Patchwork Garden is also a sight–50 different beds which neighbors, volunteers and groups have adopted!  Folks plant whatever they want in this community garden and they enjoy having a place to grow their own food and relax.  We host events like movie nights, cooking demos, art, performances and free gardening workshops in the garden.
• Just around the corner there is another style of community garden, The Cold Spring Community Garden on Southampton and Masten, managed by Dan Ash and Jessica Lang.  Their garden is a site where five houses once stood, but now there is an 8foot wall of tomatoes, several rows of vegetables and raspberry vines.  There are also fruit trees which will mature into a mixed bowl of cherries, plums, peaches, pears and apples!  Volunteers and neighbors work in the garden and are able to eat what they harvest.

Thousands of volunteer hours have gone into building these gardens and the whole reason is so people can come and enjoy them. We hope you’ll visit them soon.  Over the next 2years we hope that Northampton will showcase greenspace development and neighborhood stabilization.  It will be like a red carpet–only greener!  If you have questions or would like to get involved, please stop by our table at the Garden Walk/Talk this weekend!

Looking to Volunteer?  Like to garden?  Look no further!

Grassroots Gardens has put out the call for volunteers to help at a few community gardens around Buffalo — now is your chance to get involved and get your hands dirty!  Join us on the following workdays to make these community gardens more wonderful than they already are:

7/17: The Cottage District Community Garden is looking for some muscle and a few extra hands to help out with a project at their garden at 10AM on  Saturday, July 17th @ 60 York St (between Normal and Plymouth).  They’re looking for at least five people, but more is always merrier.

7/31: Also, on Saturday, July 31st at 10AM the Community Garden at 20 Orton Place will need as many volunteers as they can get–they are going to be taking down / moving materials and replanting the gardens.

Come help out!!!!

We get a steady supply of veggie waste from Lex CoOp for our ReDOO compost pile and now we’re getting some coffee grounds from Spot, BUT in order to keep our compost from stinking up the neighborhood we need to keep the right proportion of green and brown filtering layers. That’s where YOU come in.
If you have:

• shredded paper–please don’t bring of stacks of newspapers unless you’re volunteering to shred too–they don’t break down as quickly unshredded
  
• wood chips or sawdust (not from painted or treated wood)
• bagged lawn clippings (as long as it’s not treated with chemicals= no pesticides or weed killer or fertilizers please)

If you have material to drop off, please contact us at the office 716-885-4131 and ask for Brad or Caesandra. The first time you drop off we will show you to the pile and explain the directions and then you’ll be able to come whenever you have material to drop off.

It’s important that people do not just leave bags, pails or piles of material at the curb or in front of the piles. We do not want people to mistake the compost as a garbage heap and risk upsetting our neighborhood. We also don’t want the place to look like we’re dumping garbage around because then other people will just dump real garbage everywhere!
Until the City gets a real compost system in place, like they have in other municipalities, this can be an alternative to dumping organic material into the waste stream.  We use the material to augment the soil in the veggie gardens.

We have a compost

By the way, in the fall we’ll be needing lots of leaves…

Are you an early riser? or does your workshift end in the wee hours of the morning? The heat wave is going to wreck our investment in the garden if we can’t keep up with watering.
It’s important that we water every day, but the problem is that it should really happen early in the morning.  If you’d like to help us water the gardens, you can meet us at 8am at 158 Eaton.  If you’re available earlier, the gardens always have full water barrels–the watering cans are nearby you’re welcome to water the beds, flowers, rows and anything else that looks like it’s supposed to be green, colorful or edible.
Watering Tips:
Water in the morning when it’s cool
Avoid getting water on the plant leaves–keep the water spout/spray under the leaves or closer to the ground
Never water during the peak heat/sun hours or you will scorch roots and steam the leaves
Avoid watering most plants at night so water doesn’t pool overnight and leave your plants susceptible to fungal growths

Here’s a link to some green/gray watering tips.

Did you know there is a community garden on the roof of the Broadway Market?

Image taken by Chris Byrd for Broadway Fillmore Alive

Check out these images from Broadway Fillmore Alive and this video from the Buffalo News.

The garden plots atop the Market were made available to the public for free. Community members are growing fruits, vegetables, and flowers in raised beds that were built by WNY Americorps. The plots are blossoming quite nicely, especially since they have top notch exposure to sun and rain.

To celebrate this innovative gardening adventure, the Market is throwing a little shindig. Join rooftop gardeners and market goers for a relaxing evening among the church steeples – Wednesday June 30, 5pm. It’s bring your own beverage and a dish to pass. They will provide the hot dogs and hamburgers.

If you can’t make it Wednesday, stop by anytime during regular shopping hours. The garden is open to the public – just ask a security guard how to get up there! There are benches for resting and even a few tables for snacking.

Learn how to build that rain barrel that you’ve always wanted!

Stop by Buffalo ReUse on July 7th @ 4pm for a free workshop demonstrating how to prepare and assemble a rain barrel from a 55 gallon (food grade) barrel.  If you’d like, for $25 you can build your own rain barrel after the demonstration to take home with you.  And if you don’t want to build one but still want a barrel to harvest rain from your roof, you can buy one that’s ready to go at the ReSource on 298 Northampton for $25 as well.

What: Build-a-Barrel Wkshp

When: July 7th @ 4pm

Where: 158 Eaton St, Buffalo

Why: Because it’s fun!

The process of creating a rain barrel from a plastic drum is easy, doesn’t take much time, and needs only a few supplies.  At the workshop you will see the materials that go into assembling a barrel, and the process we use to put ours together.  We will have already-assembled rain barrels available for sale, and we will have the materials ready if you want to put your own together (so you know for next time, or if you want to show a friend).  Hope to see you there!