Thread: Getting back to living off the land.....

I have an NZ made electric dehydrator. I just cut the figs into relatively thin portions and spread them out on the trays. I can't remember how long they took to dry last time. I have read that if you dry things above a certain temperature they will lose some nutritional value. But lately I've cranked up the heat to get the job done. I figure that I could eat supermarket confectionery after dinner.... or I could eat hastily dried fruit. No matter how quick I dry it, it still tastes pretty good and it is natural.

I will possibly dry some apples this year as well. One of my favourite dried fruits is pear. The flavour gets concentrated nicely. Unfortunately I don't have a pear tree.

I dry tomatoes. These are excellent to put on the pizzas we make during the year. And we might toss a few small bits into salads. Canned tomatoes are cheap, so it is a waste to use the dried ones in casseroles etc. I also make tomato sauce.

My tomato crop wasn't wonderful this year.... and once again the peppers didn't produce. I have a friend who got some decent peppers, but his were grown in a glasshouse .... even though, in my mind, they should flourish well outdoors in 'sunny Nelson'. But I've never grown a decent crop of peppers outdoors.

I am on a quest to find the open pollinated variety of tomato that does the best in my area. The first quality I seek is reliability... closely followed by flavour. I've grown many heirloom varieties. This year the best and earliest producer was Bloody Butcher. I've found psyllids on my tomatoes every season for about the last four years. And later in the season the stink beetles/vegetable bugs climb all over the fruit and I suspect they are often the reason that the quality of the fruit deteriorates around this time. So my current philosophy is to grow early varieties that will give me a crop before the psyllid and vege bugs arrive in big numbers.

I think the best variety of tomato I've grown is Stupice. They are a potato leafed type which aren't overly vigorous. They produce early with comparatively good crops. They can be a bit bland when eaten raw, but they are fantastic cooked or dried. I think I will go back to growing them next season. I save my own seeds and I keep the seed in the fridge where it seems to stay viable for several years. I look forward to planting my seeds in the first week of September. I place the seeds in a multi-folded wet paper towel which I keep in a plastic bag on top of my fridge. The seeds generally start to sprout in about three to five days. Before the sprouts get too long I plant them into pots which I keep under a plastic cloche. Starting the seeds in the paper lets me know ASAP whether I have good seeds or not. I also think I save a little growing time.

I'm always happy to share seeds if I have a surplus.