I've had around 2,000 cherries from one tree in my allotment polytunnel this year - it is just incredible - I gave about 10 punnets (500 cherries) to my local food bank in Middleton, north Manchester to help struggling families - in a few years I will have around 40,000 cherries from the 4 trees in my tunnel when they get up to full cropping - it will be a nice side hustle for extra income - I will have to sell them at a farmers market. I love your videos Tanya.
Love to hear this man. I am in South Manchester, I'v just started renting a house since May and I am fortunate to be renting a house with a incredible garden. Plum trees, lots of herbs and flowers and a pond with precious frogs😊 I am planning on planting lots more plants and veggies!!
@lyndsey Anne I don't think that's true everywhere. One if my local food banks had fresh veg that was clearly grown in someone's allotment. I'm not trying to imply you're lying, just letting you and others know that maybe different food banks have different rules. Peace
Thank you for all the inspiration and recipes! 😄 I’ve never boiled the jars with jam, and I’ve never had an issue with mold during the 6 years I’ve made jam and preserves at home. On the other hand I do put the empty jar in the oven at 100 celsius for at least 10 minutes, and I boil the lid in a small pot for the same amout of time to disinfect them. When the jam is done I pour it straight in the fresh out of oven jars, and pop on the lids that I fished out of the hot water. There’s a nice pop when they vacuum seal as they cool down. I mostly reuse jars I’ve gotten from the store while grocery shopping 😊
Great video. My fav ferment is hot West African style sweet potato. Sweet potato super finely sliced in food processor, plus green capsicum (pepper), onion, garlic, fresh ginger, dried coriander seeds, dried tomatoes, and lots of ground cayenne pepper. It’s a family fav!
I had to smile at your very British way of saying many of the names of herbs, even how you say herb. In American the way you say it, using the "h" sound is a man's name. We say it with silent "h"... That's is just one example. Not critiquing at all. My 2nd mother was very British. I have seldom heard anyone speak with her beautiful accent. So listening to you is just lovely. Lost my 2nd mom, Beryl, back in late 1990's. (My own mother died of cancer when I was 13 in 1969, so that's why I call Beryl my 2nd mother😍). You are delightfully knowledgeable for one so young🤩. I am an Herbalist. But, I believe one can always learn more😁. Lol, we say Basil as bay-sill. You say it as bah- sill. Takes a moment for some of your prounciations of words to figure out what you mean in our American language. As you know, You all speak English. Americans do not. We speak AMERICAN not true English 😁. God Bless you young lady Sincerely Brook🙋🍏🍎 in Indiana, USA🇺🇸
We have a freezer full of fruit and veggies from our garden last summer (winter here in New Zealand now!) It's such a delight to eat homegrown and home processed foods. Thank you for sharing. I'm like you--not keen on canning--so we do whatever we can to store in different ways. We've just started fermenting and I'm looking forward to getting a huge fermenting crock--it's so addictive.
I actually had no issues with my seal for Jams when I mixed the fruit with apples!!! The acidity allowed me to get away with hot packing and flipping the jar for 10 mins to seal. My jam has been holding for about 4 or 5 months now.
Dehydrated apple slices are SO GOOD. After dehydrating them I vacuum seal them in a canning jar and store them in there. They look beautiful for gift-giving as well!
No one has ever died from eating fermented foods :) give it a go with a small batch and see what you think? A pint sized jar of radishes was how we started (aside from sauerkraut).
Fermenting is really easy. Very obvious, generally speaking, when something is wrong too (you can smell and taste it). It's probably the most accessible, because you don't have to completely sterilise the life out of your equipment (and by equipment, I really just mean a jar!) first, I just take mine out of the dishwasher or soapy water and give a quick rinse. Fermented beetroot is fantastic, as is kholrabi, cabbage. Butternut squash is also quite nice fermented, it gives an almost fizzy taste.
Try to do open freezing as prefreezing to stop enzymes. Just prep the food you want to freeze, put on plastic tray and put in freezer for several hours or over night. Then pack and put in freezer for winter. That way you will also prevent any water freezing inside the bag. I do it all the time with all my food and bags stay clean, no precooking needed
I love what you do and I am inspired by you and have started my own herbs garden, although my yard is very tiny compare to yours. I grow patchouli, papaya, Japanese taro, cassia alata (very good as colon cleanser), some climbing plants like hoyas and blue pea flower... Thank you.
This is a great video. I can and have a garden, but would love to get into the other areas you’ve mentioned like fermenting and dehydrating. I just don’t have a whole lot of time. I literally have my hand in so many areas. I love all that you prepared and your presentation.
I dehydrated mushrooms the other day and it made the house smell AMAZING! Then I ground them into a powder. And..Awesome that you live in the same place as Davy Knowles!! ♥
I was very happy when you got to the fermenting wines part. I have done all of these methods for years, except the fermenting veg which I started this year. I bought something called an 'easy fermenter' lid, and while it limits my jar choice to a mason jar, boy does it make the process easier. No airlock, no burping, no bursting. I am using these lids to make mead and wines. I very much appreciate your suggestion about freezing infused oils! One way to use up fruit scraps after you've done all that preserving is to make them into vinegar. Cheers!
I made pineapple vinegar Even added sugar after a week or so, as no bubbling was happening Never has smelled vinegary or bubbled. I tested pH n it’s vinegar tho! I don’t get it. I tasted it n it’s not any kind of vinegar taste either. I strained it off into bottles after a month or kore. Do u know what’s going on? I’ve set it aside to use in cleaning.
@@YeshuaKingMessiah As long as it isn't moldy, it should be fine for use in cleaning or for using as a hair rinse. I am still new to understanding the fermentation process. There is some magical place where it goes from being ethanol to vinegar, and I have yet to understand this process. Sometimes they don't visibly bubble, but once you hold it up to a sunny window and look really closely, you might see activity.
Just found your channel...I want to be like you when I grow up!! Yes, I agree, nowt better than green tomato chutney! I just made some tomatillo salsa which comes a close second though. My favourite ferments are probably red cabbage with caraway seed and kohlrabi with fennel. I made them up. (The caraway seed addition is used due to Hungarian knowledge that caraway seed goes with cruciferous veg and reduces flatulence!!!).
Hi Brenda, every recipe will be different but I recommend that you buy an updated version of the Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. It's an asset for beginners and advanced preservers, alike! Get it in the USA here: amzn.to/4cDSZyr and in the UK here: amzn.to/3J4BDNG (As an Amazon affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases - thank you 💚)
For short term storage (up to one year), meats and soups can be cooked in the bottle by water bath canning it for 1 - 1.5 hours. I'm planning to try fermenting this year.
Please do not do this. So unsafe. Boiling water simply cannot get to the temperatures required to kill the pathogens that will grow in meat and low acid food. It does not matter if you boil it for two hours or two days. Eating food preserved like this could make you very sick or poisoned. It's like playing Russian roulette.
Love your videos and your garden (envying your polycrub!) and very interested to see all your preserving methods. One thing I would query, though .... the use of water bathing for jams, jellies and preserves. I've never heard of this throughout the forty odd years I've been preserving fruit. I've never had any go mouldy either (apart from the odd part-eaten one found at the back of the cupboard!). I just make sure the fruit is sound, and that all my jars are sterilised, (oven 120°C for half an hour) and the lids are submerged in a bowl with boiling water poured over them. Maybe it would be important in hot countries - I'm in Scotland! 😂
When it comes to high acid food preservation it's always best to water bath the preserving jars to first ensure a seal, and second to kill off any remaining microbes. The time between sterilising your jars and filling them presents plenty of opportunity for bacteria, yeasts, and fungi to get inside. From your hands, utensils, and the air itself.
As for history, Brits arent given advice on modern preserving methods since there's no national department or universities that regulate home food preservation. It's a matter of tighten jar lids and hope for the best! The method was taught to Brits by American food scientists during WWII. The UK government brought consultants over to help during the big Dig for Victory campaign since practically no one preserved food in Britain at that time. That's the last time that methods have been updated in the UK.
My understanding is that as long as you sterilize everything and then get the hot jam into the jar quickly and make sure you get a vacuum seal, it should keep well.
Hi, love your content! I just ordered your book as well and am excited to receive it in some days🥰! I recently purchased a food dehydrator, and tried drying some flowers in it but they curl up and become super tiny and shriveled (even calendula) - yours doesn't look to be as shriveled, do you have any tips to make them dry a bit nicer? I use low heat setting on the dehydrator (30C)
Thank you, and I hope that you enjoy my book! As for the dehydrator, you can try placing the flowers face down with a little space between each so they're not touching. That helps keep the petals flat!
Very interesting ,I never realised how many ways you can store excess harvest. I just wondered if there was a way to store courgettes or use them in some kind of chutney.
I shred them, drain excess water from them, and then pop them into a measuring cup. I then up-end them on a wax paper lined baking tray and freeze them. I store the frozen courgette pucks in freezer bags until needed.
Ive been wanting to make a jam like the brand st dalfour. Its not too sweet and it uses grape juice instead of sugar. I hate using all that sugar with my fruit. If anyone knows how they make it and how its lasts without regular sugar please let me know.
They use date juice as well as grape juice and I'll bet that's where most of the sweetness comes from. It's possible to can low sugar preserves, though, as long as the acidity is high and the jars are water bathed. In this brand, they achieve the acidity with lemon juice.
U can use LM pectin instead Using juice “instead of” sugar is rly using fruit sugar instead of table sugar. Still sugar. Nothing magical about fruit to make sugar better in it as opposed to sugar in anything else. It all breaks down to glucose.
With fermenting, I guess there'd be a limit as to how much of those that you can eat because of the salt content? Are there low salt methods that work?
You touched on this ever so briefly but I am VERY curious. It was a wild willow herb that you mentioned somewhere at the beginning of the video….You said that you were inspired by the “permaculture magazine” to ferment it first and then dry. Can you point me to some of that information. I teach classes in fermentation plus I teach people who come to my home about dehydrating. We have LOADS of herbs and I would like to know more about this process
Very interesting process that's not typical of the average ferment. You pluck the rosebay willowherb leaves and roll each one tightly into its own roll. Pack a jar with them and seal. Leave in a warm, dim place for three days, then take the leaves out and dry them quickly. I used a food dehydrator. The dried leaves make an excellent tea 🍵 👌
Chemically speaking tea does not get fermented but oxidized. Most Herbs only take a couple hours in the sun if smashed and packed in ziploc bags as a thin layer. Only takes a day that way. My personal favorites so far are young birch leaves and especially wild strawberry leaves. Blackberry and raspberry are also great for fruit teas, their taste gets milder and more refined compared to just dried
I've preserved peeled garlic cloves in honey as long as they are covered by the honey - for over a year and it just gets better and better. The garlic is wonderful chopped into salad, eaten as is for health and great taste, and the honey is delicious for salads and just a spoonful a day is suppose to be very healthy. You mentioned botulism in food like garlic so is garlic in honey recommended to be refrigerated? or maybe heated? Honey over mullein or garlic taste wonderful but you got me worried now. HELP
Infusing garlic in honey, aka making fermented garlic, is perfectly safe :) It's when infusing garlic into oil that there's a chance of botulism. It's low-acid and low-sugar environments that are dangerous when trying to preserve fruit, veg, and herbs
Ancient Egyptians used honey to store food items in their funeral rites. Personally, I'd pass on a nibble, but apparently it was still viable 5 thousand years later.
You can water bath everything, this is how they did it, way back when. There were no pressure canners.And the Amish do it all the time, for many generations.
