Tag Archives: Food Dehydration

Frozen garlic and some more dried tomatoes

So I’ve been pondering what to do with the garlic I dug up a few days ago. I’ve tried the braid it and hang it routine but for what ever reason (I am guessing temps and humidity) that doesn’t work so well here. After pulling out what I want to replant this fall I was still left with more garlic than we can eat before it goes bad. I hopped on Google and found a page from UC Davis. Since CA is known for growing garlic what better place to go look for info. For anyone interested there is a garlic festival every year where you can get garlic ice cream. I’ve never tried it but heard it isn’t as bad as it sounds.

The paper warned of keeping garlic in oil in the fridge. Being a low acid vege it is prone to all sorts of nasties. There was a blurb on freezing chopped/pureed garlic in oil. Hmmmm. That caught my interest. I am happy to say that I am now the proud owner of 5 wide mouth half pint jars of garlic/oil mix and I still have about half of the garlic I started with. It is supposed to stay scoopable in the freezer due to the oil allowing you to take out only what you need and keep the rest frozen. Will keep you posted.

In addition to working with the garlic I dehydrated another quart of tomatoes. That makes two. One more and I should be good for a year or two.

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Container Tomatoes

We have been picking tomatoes off this grouping for several weeks now. These Florida Basket and Patio F tomatoes were planted in a bag of soil back in early May and have been doing great. They are to the size now where they do need to be watered daily and I have fertilized a couple of times with some MG. I will definitely do this again next year.

grape_toms

A few feet away this grape tomato plant is loving it’s half barrel. There are also a couple of basil plants in there too. It has been very productive too. These two are right next to the house which makes it nice. Since I see them every time I come home they are getting more attention than they would out in the garden. The deer haven’t made it this far either.

dehydrated_toms

What to do with all of the tomatoes? One can only eat so many cherry tomatoes. Since I am not sure what the larger tomato harvest will be like… and since I recently ran out of the dehydrated toms I did 2 yrs ago I decided it was time to take advantage of the extras and dry them. The 1/4 inch slices went into the food dehydrator for about 12-15 hrs. 5 trays ended up with about 3 cups of toms.