So right after my last post, I went outside, and cut about 40 big leaves off my kale plants–always from the lower part of the stems. In between making and eating breakfast and washing dishes, I washed the leaves in groups of ten (by variety), and chopped them up, then washed them again in a salad spinner, which they filled up.
After doing the first batch, which used a lot of water, I figured out that I should save the wash water and bring it out to the garden, where I put it on the kale plants! Then I spinned the kale pieces to dry them, and sautéed them in our big cast iron pan. I had to start with about half of the batch, then add the second half after the first had cooked down a bit. I had green curly kale, red or purple curly kale and a double batch of lacinato kale. After sautéing, I cooled them in a bowl in the refrigerator before putting in bags. On the recommendation of other online gardeners, I used a straw to pull out all the air in the bags.
I still have plenty outside on the plants, but now I have these in the freezer. Ten leaves only filled half a bag, at about 1/2 an inch thick. That would be about three or four servings in our house, so this is a total of 12-16 servings. This winter, I will see how they taste.
Today I almost finished soil work and guild plantings around each of the cherry trees–still 1/3 to do around the second tree. First I aerated the soil with our garden fork to a five foot radius around the tree. (The soil was already covered with mulch from last fall-wood chips, cut grass, sea weed, and dead leaves.) Then I put down newspaper or cardboard along the outer half of each circle, and covered it with compost. I planted the companion plants for each cherry tree guild. Guilds are plants that work together so that each does better than if they were planted alone. In this case, the primary focus is the health of the cherry tree.
Finding Our Way Home 