Monday, July 04, 2011

Always something to do Around a Garden


The garden is already producing. Yesterday, I picked quite a lot of chard and kale. Normally, both the chard and kale over winter here, but last year they were nipped off by an early frost. We had to go without last winter, so I decided to freeze some this year, just in case.


I was surprised that the cabbage butterflies haven't found the kale yet. Soon they will get into the crop and it will get pretty wormy until the early fall. Then it will be beautiful again. In the meantime, the chicken have learned to love kale.


I plant all the different coloured varieties of chard, although in the end, I prefer the the white stemmed variety. I find the orange and red, get a little tough.

I quickly blanched the chard and kale in boiling water, and then put it in a cold bath. I always start with ice water, but it ends up lukewarm.


Once they were cooled down, I gently squeezed the kale and chard into balls and placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in a freezer. After about 12 hours, I put them in a freezer bag.

The theory is that I can just take a bundle as I need them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chard Bombs!

leannej said...

Chard bombing!