Last night, the weirdest thing happened when I was vacuum sealing the jars from the freeze dryer. I had them all in the vacuum pot and as soon as I turned it on, I heard a weird noise. It sounded like I hadn’t put the lid on tight and it settled but I knew that hadn’t happened. I let it finish the 3 minute vacuum/sealing process and when I took the lid off, there was loose dried cheese everywhere. One of the quart jars . . the sides had separated from the bottom. Either the jar was defective or had a small crack. It happened the instant I turned the vacuum pump on so it wasn’t like there was too much pressure so I’m thinking there was a crack in the jar and I hadn’t noticed it. I threw all the cheese out . . there could have been tiny pieces of glass in there. Thankfully, it was just one jar but still . . that was a lot of cheese. I’ve been vacuum sealing jars in that pot for probably 8 years and that’s been a lot of jars. Never had that happen!
This morning I cut more basil, some sage, rosemary and sweet potatoes and have the freeze dryer going again.
My goal is to put up enough sweet potato leaves that we can have them once a week through the year. That’s a lot of leaves, a lot of jars and a lot of space so . . we’ll see how that goes.
There’s probably no way to put up enough basil to get us through the year but I’m hoping to keep it growing in the greenhouse this winter. Every two or three weeks, I plant another tray of basil. So far, none of them have died or gone to seed. I think there are 5 trays of it now. I use the long windowbox plants planters and am having better luck with that than I’ve ever had with basil before. I leave them in full sun til the seeds sprout and are about 1″ tall. Then I move them to a spot that gets full sun but has a little protection from the afternoon sun. After they’re about 3″ tall, I move them to a spot that gets filtered morning sun and that’s it. They seem to be loving that area.
I’m not a big fan of sage. Unless Chad wants some, that may be all I save this year. Rosemary . . another one of those plants I could never save enough of but it will be just fine in the greenhouse so I’m not too concerned about putting up enough of that to get me through.