Real Peppermint Schnapps

I can't believe how easy it was to create my own organic Peppermint Schnapps. I cruised Google for directions and within about 10 minutes found some extremely easy recipes. I've simply used them for some basic guidelines which I will provide in photos below.

The ingredients are simple: pick fresh leaves and add 80 proof vodka, simple huh? If you prefer a sweet tasting schnapps, you can add stevia leaves to each jar.

All you need to do is pick enough leaves to fill the jar (these are spaghetti sauce Ball jars) about 2/3 full and add vodka. Fill the jars to the top with vodka. Seal lid tightly and shake it a few times. Place each jar in a dark area, but make sure they are easy to get to because you must shake them at least once a day.

Let the jars sit for about two weeks (10 to 15 days), and shake daily. Then you're ready for the straining of the leaves.

Place a colander over a large sauce pan and pour out the contents. Only a few of the leaves will fall into the colander. I then get 2 paper towels and place these into the colander.

Shake the leaves into the paper towels and then get ready to squeeze the remaining liquid into the sauce pan.

It's not much, but I feel it's got more concentrated flavor, and why waste it?

I then use my handy-dandy jar funnel to pour the strained schnapps into clean jars. At this point, the Schnapps is very flavorful, but you really should age it for 6 months. The aging will mellow the Schnapps over time. Always store jars in a dark place such as a cubbard.

So there you have it; simple Schnapps - but don't stop at peppermint. I have also started orange mint and spearmint schnapps. I'm so glad to finally be using a lot of my mints from the garden. They would usually just get lightly picked each year with me drying about 10 sprigs of each in the rafters.

:)

August Gardens

Now that August is here, I will share some of the photos that were taken in late July. This has been a spectacular year for gardening. My only complaint is that the record heat means watering just about every night.

This photo was taken on August first and shows how I like to tie-up everything! If it has a vine, it gets tied-up! In the front, to the left, is an Ali Baba watermelon growing up a string. Behind that in the next row back is Waltham Butternut squash and Amish musk melons. And behind them, in the third row is Pippin squash and cucumbers - all tied-up and happily growing up their own string to the support wires about 7 feet above the garden.

And of course, the heirloom tomatoes are tied-up as well. I'm a little embarrassed at the weeds shown here. I lost the upper hand on this section of garden mostly due to constant fence construction that consumed nearly all of my free time each weekend. But I'm happy to report that all of that hard work has paid off, with no more attacks from the relentless ground hogs.

This is a Fish pepper with spectacular white and green leaves. I've read that these pepper plants are sometimes used in landscaping because they're a real eye-catcher. I've also read that these are hotter than Jalapeno peppers, so I'm eagerly awaiting their harvest. On a sad note, I lost about 60% of these plants to the extreme heat in early July.

I read about these peppers called Beaver Dam in the winter edition of The Heirloom Gardener (the same one I was featured in...) and just had to have them! I only had a handful that made it to the garden and of the 6 planted, 5 have made it.

So far each plant has given me 2 fantastic peppers. There are a few more that will mature in about a week from now. I'll keep track of yields, but if I only get 4-5 per plant, it's definitely worth it! These taste so good!

This was my first Beaver Dam pepper that I harvested on the evening of July 29th. This is a wonderful tasting pepper that has taste & seed characteristics of a bell pepper but is pleasantly hot (I would rate it as half as hot as a Jalapeno). Needless to say, I saved the seeds and marked as "first" to be grown next season.

This is the front garden with my Better Boy (6) and Trip-L-Crop (2) tomatoes climbing up 6 feet of caging. So far this experiment has been a great success. Please see older posts to get information about the book. The photo above was taken on August first (believe me, they're taller as I type this)!

And this was taken on July 17th - that's only 3 weeks apart, wow! Today, August 7th, 2010, There are hundreds of green, baseball sized tomatoes on the 8 plants. This method of gardening has changed everything. I will be using this method for all of my tomatoes in 2011.

:)

Garlic Harvest

The garlic was ready for harvesting on Saturday, July 17th this year. All that was needed was my trusty mini-shovel to gently pry-up the earth around each plant. All 46 cloves that were planted last October came-up this spring (note that 3 of them took a month longer than the rest) for 100% success. Garlic is the ONLY garden crop that does not get attacked by ground hogs, raccoons or insects making it the easiest thing to grow.

It may not look like a lot of garlic but there're 46 bulbs along the row which have been freshly dug out of the earth.

I set the garlic bulbs on the garden work table to be lightly washed with the hose before hanging to dry.

I tie 3 bulbs together with garden suet string and let them hang to dry until it is time to re-plant in October.

If you go back to my October, 2008 blog entry, you'll see how I began with only 5 bulbs from Seed Savers. Then in July 2009, I harvested 10 garlic bulbs which yielded 47 cloves.

In October of 2009, I planted 46 cloves... And now we wait until October, 2010.

I won't know how many cloves this harvest will yield until the day of planting (you're not supposed to break-up the bulbs until planting day) but I'm guessing that it will be in the neighborhood of 216 cloves.

This is what fascinates me about gardening; I start with a small number of plants and it builds-up exponentially over only a few years.

:)

July - A Hot Summer!

It has been a classic hot New England summer so far. The thunder showers are a welcome break to the 90 plus degree days. Typically, we only get an average of 2 to 4 days per summer of 90 degrees or more, but this year, the National Weather Service has reported that we've broken an all time record of days above 90 - since records were kept back in the 18th century!

This is a photo of a sun shower looking west up at the orchard. These big fat rain drops were photographed on June 24th.

This year I've had to focus on fence, fence and more fence. The ground hogs are relentless, but stupid. All I have to do is set up short plastic netting to keep them at bay. I also used some cord wood to run all along the base of each fence so they won't nose underneath to get in.

Peppermint is abundant this year, as is the orange mint and spearmint. I am making my own homemade organic peppermint schnapps this year as well as with the other mints. This process is also photographed and will be posted in a future posting.

And don't forget the oregano! This variety is called Greek Mountain Oregano and it is doing fantastic this year! It is very strong (which I like) and it even burns a little if you eat a sprig of fresh leaves all at once! Yummmmmmmm!

Back to the groundhog/woodchuck/whistle pig/furry bastard... This is what happens to an unprotected garden, in this case my beloved zucchini plants. See how they chomp-off the the leaves? This happened back on June 24th, but since the garden was fenced-in, the plants managed to recover and are yielding great zucchinis.

Here's a photo of F.B. outside of my porch door. I've noted that they like to come out and graze just before a thunder storm. And if it's raining all night, forget it. They will dine on tomato plants all night long.

Here's a closer look at the pig. The photos are click-able with your mouse for a larger view if you'd like.

This is the garden that I have out front where the zucchini is. On June 26th, I dug holes and put in posts for a chicken wire fence which has worked very well.

This is how exposed the front garden was before the fence - yikes! I can't believe that I didn't fence it in sooner!

Here's what the front garden looked like about a month later on July 15th. The tomatoes are over 4 feet tall and I'm getting ready to add the 2nd set of cages to make them taller.

Here's a close up of my first zucchini harvested on July 17th at 9 inches long - perfect for steaming.

This is another look at the plastic fencing in the big garden with the cord wood for a base.

But I don't just use plastic fencing in the big garden, I also use electric fence too!

On June 26th, I decided to run 3 electric fence lines the entire length of the big garden (100 ft x 30 ft) just to add extra security because I also have raccoons that roam through as well.

After June 26th, the big garden was electrified and I could finally get back to transplanting the tomatoes and peppers.

Much more to come!

:)

June - A Warm Welcome to Summer

Below are photos from the last days of May on Memorial Day Weekend, right through June 19th. Even as I type this, the gardens are transforming into a lush green jungle of vegetables.

I'm happy to report that 99% of seeds planted have germinated - even some older ones saved from 2007.

Here is a photo of my Zucchini Squash sprouting about 3 weeks ago. I can't put into words what a sight like this means to a gardener. All I can say is if you are a gardener, you already know what I mean.

On Memorial Day Weekend the pepper plants were moved out of the house and I finally was able to shut off the last of the fluorescent lights.

For the next month (until the end of June) these peppers will be in the 80 to 90 degree heat of the greenhouse.

But first, I transplanted each pepper into larger 3 or 4 inch peat pots. It was a humble set up on the driveway, but everything was at my fingertips - no bending over or working on my knees.

One hour later and Poof! All peppers were transplanted and ready for the greenhouse.

For the most part, peppers should not be set out at the same time as tomatoes. They need warmer temperatures to thrive.

Since this has been a warmer than usual spring, I chose to gamble and set out some peppers anyway. Note my 12" spacer stick and the container of garden sulfur. Peppers like to "hold hands" meaning they like to be closely spaced with their leaves touching each other in the rows. Also, a tablespoon of sulfur should be placed an inch below the peat pot when setting out in the garden. When the roots form and reach the acidic sulfur, the leaves will turn to a deep dark robust green.

This is the great tomato experiment that I am doing out front. If everything goes well, these 8 tomato plants should get tall enough to stop traffic! I highly recommend reading the book below; How To Grow World Record Tomatoes by Charles H. Wilber. You can click on the book photo below to buy it on Amazon.com.
Meanwhile, one of the most important lessons that I learned in the above book was to amend the soil with compost.

This year I've come up with a new version of my super secret tomato food and the ingredients are shown in the photo below.

Don't forget the wood ashes and egg shells! I will put a couple of tablespoons of this mixture in every hole when I set out each tomato plant.

I also make sure to add the Scott's Manure & Hummus to the top of every raised row. I work it in with a small hand rake before I plant. This goes for everything, not just tomatoes.

There's my 12" spacer stick again. I've found that 12 inches of space between my tomatoes works fine.

The first tomatoes were set out on Memorial Day weekend which was late this year, May 29 through the 31st.

I've got enough problems with groundhogs so I don't need to lose any tomatoes to a measly cut worm. I reuse these plastic soda and juice bottle every year.

Yes, that's right. There are speakers (only one pictured here) way out in the gardens. I do all my gardening to 70s music on Sirius XM radio - no commercials! It's all 70s, all the time at East Becket Gardens.

The last of the tomatoes were set out on June 13th - all 136 of them - 31 varieties. Lets hope for the best.

The sunflowers had a great start. However, the groundhog ended up wiping out this section of the gardens. I planted about 200 seeds in hopes of thinning them for the best plants. Now there are only about 10 left thanks to the whistle pig.

On the positive side, here are two photos which illustrate success with the cabbage and potatoes in the east garden. The photo above was taken of June 5th.

The photo above is of the same garden only two weeks later on June 13th. I hilled-up the potatoes and added precious manure & hummus to the top. A week later I will add hay mulch when they are flowering.

Here's a few flower buds on one of the potato plants. This variety is called Red Pontiac, which was one of my grandfather's favorite potatoes to grow.

Let's not forget about the house plants. This is a rare Clivia in bloom. I set it outside for a week so the bees and other pollinators could work their magic. I will save the seeds and start more Clivia plants. It takes about 5 to 7 years for a plant to produce its first bloom.

And what a spectacular bloom it is! Definitely worth the wait.

Lets hope that June continues to be warm and pleasant. These fair weather clouds are always nice to see. Don't forget to look up and stare at the clouds for a while. That's what the plants in your gardens do all day...

:)