Krik's Picks

When I first launched this blog, one of my first posts was about my parents’ garden. That particular post was about their tomatoes. I said that I’d write later about their apples. So now, five years later, here it is. Mom & Dad have a lot of apple trees on their farm. They always have a lot to harvest. My brothers and my sister always plan trips to the farm in September to help pick apples. We went last Sunday. Actually, my son and his daughter went on Friday. (She’s five years old. I started Krik’s Picks when she was born. She’s my oldest grandchild.) My wife and daughter-in-law came on Sunday with the two grandsons. We picked a lot of apples. They have several different varieties, and we didn’t even take some of each. We mostly took Regent , Prairie Spy , Red Delicious , and a few of a yellow apple variety that dad couldn’t remember the name. On the counters in our kitchen, we now have eight bags of apples. We’ll give some as gifts. I’ll make several batches of applesauc...

The forecast says possible frost in Minnesota this week. So when I got home from work tonight, after dinner, I harvested my basil. My dilemma is that I always miscalculate how much basil to use during the growing season. I’m afraid that if I cut too much too early, I won’t have any left at the end of the season. Then I get to the first frost forecast and lament that I’ve still got so much in the garden, and feel like I should have used more earlier in the summer. One year, I decided to chance it. I left my basil in the garden despite the forecast of ‘possible’ frost. Well, it froze, and I wasn’t able to salvage very much of my crop. So now my strategy is this. I cut the stems with large deep green leaves, but leave the lower stems. They usually have some new sprouts. If the forecast is wrong and it doesn’t freeze, I can harvest some late-yield basil for use until the killing freeze comes. So, what do I do with the basil that I harvest? Freeze it, of course. I used to make pesto a...