It’s Sauerkraut Season

 

Here in Northeast Florida, it is cabbage season. All around me are fields full of bright green, dark green, and purple cabbages. They are in such an abundance that I do not bother to grow any myself. I do, however, buy them from the local produce stand (The County Line) and make delicious, lacto-fermented Sauerkraut.

Making lacto-fermented Sauerkraut is super easy. Basically, you just let the cabbage and brine sit for a week. Here’s the details:

1. You will need a large container to pound the cabbage in, a container for fermenting (I’ll discuss this later), a potato masher, sea salt, spices (optional, but I like celery and caraway seed and black sesame seed).
2. Shred or thinly slice a couple of heads of cabbage. It can be any cabbage you like. I prefer to use the beautifully colored red cabbage and the crunchy savoy cabbage for my sauerkrauts.
3. As you add the sliced/shredded cabbage to the large container, lightly salt each layer and give it a good pounding with the potato masher.
4. Continue layering, salting (and spicing if using) and pounding until you run out of cabbage.                           
5. Let the cabbage sit in the container for several hours. Give it a good pounding every 15-30 minutes. You are looking for the cabbage to start expressing its water. You want to get as much water out of the cabbage as possible.
6. At the end of the day or when you feel you have a good brine started, begin to pack the wet cabbage into your pickling container. I use The Picklemeister glass fermentation jar. This is a great contraption. It has a gallon capacity  and a fitted airlock so you don’t have to worry about contamination. You can use a regular jar and cover it with cheese cloth, but you will need to remove the scum from the top of the surface every couple of days. With the Picklemeister, this is not necessary.
7. As you add the cabbage to your fermenter, make sure you mash it down very tightly. Hopefully, there will be enough natural brine to cover the top of the cabbage in the fermenter. If not, add a cup or two of saltwater solution (1tablespoon per 2 cups of water should be sufficient) to the cabbage.
8. Weigh the cabbage down so that it is fully covered by the brine. If you are using an air-locked fermenter, cover it and add the airlock now.
9. Next, you just wait. Give the cabbage a taste every day or so to track how the fermentation is going. Here in Florida, where it is fairly warm, it usually only takes 5-7 days to reach a fully mature sauerkraut.
10. Once you reach a taste that works for you, move the sauerkraut to the refrigerator. This will keep the bacteria from continuing to work and making the kraut too sour. As long as the cabbage remains under the brine the kraut will remain delicious and full of beneficial lactobacillus. You may also can the sauerkraut at this point to keep it shelf stable, but this will kill off the beneficial bacteria.

I hope you give this easy fermentation craft a try. It will turn even a hot dog into a mouthwatering meal!

We Have Sproutage!

I came home from work on Friday night (1/6/12) to find that I had sprouts springing up from most of my newspaper seed pots. The rapini, both cabbages, and leeks all had tiny green shoots poking through the soil. Three days later, I still don't having anything happening in the tomato or Natal Plum pots, but I think they might just be a little behind. The weather has been unseasonably warm lately. There is a high of 78 degrees today. I'm not sure how that is affecting germination, but as always, I'm hoping for the best.

Sprouts!

The tomato and pepper plants from last summer are loving the warm temperatures. I kept thinking I needed to tear out the tomato plant and start fresh in spring, but now it is covered in little yellow blossoms. And the pepper plants have been going to town! I have red stuffing peppers and jalapenos growing, and I think some purple beauty peppers are getting ready to form as well. I am going to try to keep these go-getters through the winter so we can enjoy some winter/early spring tomatoes and peppers.

One word of caution on the paper seed pots: they are delicate. I checked on the tray of pots on Saturday morning to find that one of my cats had tramped through there.  One of the pots that got stepped on was split down the side. You can see it in the forefront of the picture. If you have curious critters or small children, this might be something to consider when deciding to use the paper pot method. But I just stood the pots back up, re-shaped them a bit, and everything seems no worse for the wear. 

Time to start seeds?

I took up gardening on a small scale last year. I had many failures, but I also learned a lot from the experience. One of the things I decided to do differently this year is to start the seeds sooner. Here, in Florida, we have a very long growing season, and I missed out on growing some of the cooler-weather vegetable varieties because I didn't start the seeds soon enough. Not so in 2012, I vowed.

So despite the temperature dropping at a steeper rate than it has all season, I decided to get a jump on a few of the cool-seasons veggies. Last year I used the Burpee seed-starting trays to start the seeds. The trays worked very well, but I found that it became difficult to find the trays after the first month of Spring. Instead of being dependent on Burpee this year, I purchased a paper seed pot making tool.

http://www.reuseit.com/store/doityourself-plant-potmaker-from-newspaper-p-3092.html

Yesterday afternoon, as the cold, windy weather was starting to blow in, I made 18 paper pots out of some newsprint junk mail. Not only is the pot-maker made of wood, and therefore completely recyclable, but it also helps the home gardener recycle some of the paper in her home. It's a win-win! I have also read that these paper pots are better for the growth of the seedling, since it doesn't restrict the roots the way the seed starter mesh soil pods can do.

The act of planting seeds on the coldest day of the year seems like an act of extreme hope. It's hard to believe that those tiny, dry seeds will open and grow into plants that can feed us all season. Therefore, I think it's a perfect way to bless the new year.

My Seed Pots

I sowed seeds for leeks, Nero di Toscana cabbage, Coer De Boeuf Des Vertus cabbage, Black Giant Tomatoes, Rapini Broccoli, and Natal Plums. The Natal Plums are a total experiment. I discovered this plant on an urban foraging class of Green Deane's (www.eattheweeds.com). It is a thorny bush type of plant that produces wonderfully scented white blossoms and delicious, sweet/tart flavored, fig-sized "plums" all year long. I picked a dried fruit off of the plant during the class and brought it home with me to harvest the seeds. My fingers are crossed that I can get a couple of these going in my yard. Visions of Natal Plum preserves and dried plums have captured my imagination.

Natal Plum

Everything except the tomatoes and Natal plums are cold-tolerant, so I'm hoping to have them producing before the afternoons get warm. The tomatoes I will keep indoors for as long as possible. I just want to get a few of them started early so that I can get the most out of them all spring and summer long.

If anyone from the South has any advice or recommendations for a newbie just starting to garden in Florida, I would welcome it in the comments of this blog. I scour the internet for helpful tidbits, but most gardening advice doesn't pertain to the extreme South. Thanks for the help, and I'll post an update soon.