veg growing Newbies- Feb 2010! lets learn together!

pinkpig08

Hi all, not posted for a while. Have got some lovely radishes ready, we've been having lettuce too. And I FINALLY have some toms on my plants! Not many, but at least not the total loss I was expecting. Think I've managed to drown the carrots and turnips, lesson learned there. Peas and beans are growing nicely, as are spring onions.

BTW like the vidoes katholicos!

frazzbo

mrbadexample wrote: »

What colour were they to start with? :whistle:

Oops! well spotted :T

Get these on the scales, and into my competition thread!

Will do

Saw this in the paper this morning, my courgettes may be massive, but they'll not be able to beat this marrow:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/838368-giant-marrow-narrowly-fails-to-break-record

katholicos

thacky wrote: »

Yaaaay fame at last!! :j Seriously though,how efficient you are, all those jars of dried veg. I'm so impressed. I've been freezing my glut of runner beans today but, as you say, they take so much room up in the freezer. Are those Kilner jars that you are using? I suppose the produce could also be stored in freezer bags after dehydration.

Did you find your smaller (and cheaper) dehydrator worked well enough? Can't afford the more expensive type at the moment and I suppose I should start off in a more modest way anyway.

So thanks so much for all your help and information in this, katholicos, and hope you enjoyed the veg curry.

Thacky

Thacky, yes, the jars are mostly kilner jars and Le Parfait jars. Quite expensive but nice thick glass. I think it work perfectly fine to use freezer bags or ziplock tipe bags

The less expensive dehydrator worked very well indeed and i would recommend starting out with that for sure. What i found (which wasn't a problem really) was that i would have to turn the trays a half turn or so if things dried quicker one side...having said that, i think i overfilled the trays so it probably would have worked better if i had used it properly

katholicos

freezspirit wrote: »

I'm getting on the bandwagon now I'm really tempted to get a dehydrater and a vacuum food sealer system. First time growing pumkins and looks like I will have a few large ones.

Oh, a vacuum sealer, I would really like a decent one of those...don;t see that happening anytime soon though. I tried the JML one when it was on offer in Focus DIY but i didn't think much of it really. I want P-O-W-E-R and it didn;t really do it for me

katholicos

pinkpig08 wrote: »

Hi all, not posted for a while. Have got some lovely radishes ready, we've been having lettuce too. And I FINALLY have some toms on my plants! Not many, but at least not the total loss I was expecting. Think I've managed to drown the carrots and turnips, lesson learned there. Peas and beans are growing nicely, as are spring onions.

BTW like the vidoes katholicos!

Well done on your growing endeavours pinkpig !
Many thanks for the compliment.:)

katholicos

mrbadexample wrote: »

Geddin! :j

Thanks for that - very informative! :T I think this would be ideal for me as I've got very limited freezer space. Well, either this or I need to buy another freezer.

You're welcome. Perhaps you could go for the smaller dehydrator and see if you like it? I think it's about £30 or less. I'd like a bigger freezer too. Gosh i have a long wishlist...and it's all in the name of thrift and frugality

Lotus-eater

freezspirit wrote: »

I'm getting on the bandwagon now I'm really tempted to get a dehydrater and a vacuum food sealer system. First time growing pumkins and looks like I will have a few large ones.

Not sure if you mean you need to preserve the pumpkins? But if you do, you don't, they come with natures natural preservative, the skin.

freezspirit

Lotus-eater, I understand what you mean leaving the pumpkins in a cool dry place but when I move into my new bungalow I will have very limited storage space. But it now looks like I won't enjoy all the pumpkins as my mum has already offered them to family friends.

Can someone correct me on this you harvest pumpkins once they turn orange, only I have at the moment a really large green one and dad keeps threating to cut it now and calles it a marrow.

Lotus-eater

Well who's pumpkins are they, yours or your Mums?

It depends on the type of pumpkin, they are all different colours. Normally you leave them on until much later on in the year, right until the last minute, then you dry them off when its warm in the sun for a few days.
They are ripe when the skin is hard, they sound hollow when rapped, the stem is hard and dry, cut off with a few inches of stem still attached to the pumpkin.

It depends what you want to do with them, if you want to make soup, then make and freeze it. Dehydrating pumpkins........... I'll let you do that and get back to me on the results

thacky

katholicos wrote: »

Thacky, yes, the jars are mostly kilner jars and Le Parfait jars. Quite expensive but nice thick glass. I think it work perfectly fine to use freezer bags or ziplock tipe bags

The less expensive dehydrator worked very well indeed and i would recommend starting out with that for sure. What i found (which wasn't a problem really) was that i would have to turn the trays a half turn or so if things dried quicker one side...having said that, i think i overfilled the trays so it probably would have worked better if i had used it properly

Thanks katholicos - yes, I think I'll start off with the small one then and use ziplocks/freezer bags and see how it goes. Freezer is too small and full of beans! And I have £20 worth of Amazon vouchers (from doing surveys) so won't cost me much to start off. Your posts have been an eye opener for me as I didn't even realise dehydrating on this scale was possible. :beer::beer: