Preserving · Recipes

Quick Pickled Red Onions

I’ve pickled red onions often, using various methods, and I’ve always searched for ways to replicate the pickled onions served in cafes. While tasty, water bath canning them never produced the results I wanted. The onions were cooked and didn’t have the snap they needed. Then I played with this quick pickling method, and I think I cracked the code on having vibrant onions that still have the crunch but are not raw. Red onions with all the taste, but not the fiery essence that raw ones can have.

onions for sale

However, it should be noted that onions used to be ‘poverty food‘ and now are treading into bougie land. I was reading up that Mexico had issues with the white onion crop (and they grow most of them) and they are incredibly expensive this year. More troubling is when yellow onions are the same price as sweet onions.

Quick Pickled Red Onions

Ingredients:

  • 1 red onion, about 6 to 8 ounces
  • 1 cup rice vinegar, unseasoned
  • ½ tsp granulated sugar
  • ½ tsp salt, fine sea salt, or kosher (do not use table salt)
  • 1 clove of garlic, peeled and halved
  • 5 black peppercorns
  • 5 whole allspice berries
  • 1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 3 cups water

Directions:

Add ¾ cup of rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and seasonings (except for the garlic) to a clean pint mason jar. Put on the lid and shake gently until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Add in the garlic.

Meanwhile, bring the water to a boil.

Trim the onion on both ends and cut it in half. Remove and discard the outer layer. Thinly slice the onion.

Place the onion slices in a metal sieve, hold it over the sink, and slowly pour the boiled water over the onions to par-cook them. Shake the water off.

Pack into the mason jar, pressing down as needed.

If there is space, pour in the remaining vinegar to cover fully.

Put the lid on and gently roll the jar so everything is mixed.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least a day before enjoying. They get better as they pickle slowly in the refrigerator.

Notes:

Do not use table salt. Salt with iodine added can affect the color of preserved foods. Not always, but there is a real chance, so why take it?

And yes, you can use this same recipe to pickle shallots and any color of onion you crave.

Quick pickled red onions

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

Gardening 101: Learn The Basics

When you decide to start gardening, it can be overwhelming. Where does one start? How do you do it? We have many posts that can help you with each question, inspire, and help you learn. Wether you have a single pot on a deck, an urban backyard, or you are living rural with many growing areas.

Updated USDA Grow Zones

Know the average temperatures in your local area. They have changed in some places in recent years.

Make Your Own Seed Starting Mix

It’s far better and more affordable than buying tiny bags of seed starting mix.

Starting Seeds In Pots

Giving your future crops a hand up.

No Garden? Grow Dwarf Plants

It’s the easy way to have fresh veggies and fruit on a patio or deck.

Building A Garden Quickly

You can get a garden on the weekend.

Growing To Eat Versus Growing For Hobby

There is a real difference in how you will go at it, and how much space you need.

How To Buy The Best Seeds

There are so many options it can overwhelm you.

How Much To Plant?

This is one of the questions we get the most often asked. How much does a person need to plant, per person, based on whether or not you are eating for the summer or preserving for winter as well?

The Food Forest

Plant once, eat every year. Grow fruit and berries (and some vegetables) that come back yearly.

Using Reclaimed Logs To Build Beds

We have used this method a couple of times.

Grow Potatoes

Potatoes are one of the few crops that, even if they fail, you can use the failures to restart the growth cycle.

Garbage Can Taters

It’s a simple and effective method.

Building An Herbal Garden

Herbs are great for pollination, medicinal, and culinary.

5 Gallon Bucket Growing

A great method for pepper plants.

Growing Garlic

It’s the crop that flavors so much.

Planning A Fall Garden

In mid-summer, it is time to start planting fall crops.

Saving Seeds

How do you have next year’s seeds for free?

Making Seed Packets

How to create an easy paper envelope. Great for children to do.

Prepping For Early Frosts

If you want to extend your garden season, plan for it beforehand.

The Kinder Garden

Build a garden for your children.

Dealing With Microclimates

How to protect plants when it has a shorter season than a mile away does.

A Year Of Sileage Tarping

How to use sileage tarps to create fields ready to grow in.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

In The Garden: Rebuilding An In Ground Bed

This bed has changed a lot in the past five years. Kirk tilled it for me with the tractor in our second year here, in 2019. He had removed the evergreen trees that were sprinkled on the land down low in 2018, leaving many craters behind.

I covered it with farm fabric and set to work.

Its first year was as a trial bed for strawberry plants. Fenced off from the deer. The orchard was to the left.

Eventually, the two areas would become one, and I’d install full fencing 6 feet high.

Then, in 2020:

With our Pandemic Chickens, we bought a coop and installed it where there was fencing. My strawberry bed lasted till mid-summer and the birds became adults. They would live there until the end of summer of 2023.

Eventually, I moved the chickens out, and it became a nothing zone. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. I let it rest over fall and winter.

This spring, I decided that, with it being a chicken area, the soil would be very rich. So I weeded it and tilled it up, using a light tiller, to just open up the top inches of soil.

We laid out the fabric on the edges to suppress weeds and pinned it down amply.

I kept extending the fabric. We have a real issue with Stinging Nettle under the peach and pear trees. The chickens had pushed it down, but it returned once they were moved.

I added in 3 hog panels, with each one being held up with two T-posts. These will be used for growing cucumbers, beans, and such, which need about 3 feet of height to grow.

I still have plenty of rocks to move, to fill the walkways. In a month it will look so different.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

Grow Zone 8b: 2 Weeks Till Last Frost

It’s April 1st.

With the recent changes in the USDA Grow Zones, if one searches for the last frost date for grow zone 8b, one might get the results of April 1st. I’d say this, though, based on years of watching the weather: That’s a huge April Fool’s joke; you’re risk-taking.

Why so?

Weather can be fickle. While the days are warming up, the nights are still cool. And come mid-week, the weather is predicted to have a chillier day with rain. Rain is not your friend in early Spring. It can drown the seeds, move them and cause havoc if it is hard rain, and seedling have just sprouted.

It’s one thing to have plants outside hardening off (that is a good thing to do!), but the soil in the ground or a raised bed is still cold.

plant starts in pots

(And I have a lot of plant starts outside now, getting ready to go in the ground)

It needs the nighttime temperatures to be higher than 40°:

While yes, many seeds will germinate at 35°, if nighttime temperatures are higher, they will germinate and grow faster. You will be on less of a struggle bus. Waiting just two weeks will make it much better. As we enter mid-April, the rains get gentler and less often. If you can wait until nighttime temps are near 50°, without dips, your plants and seeds will love you so much more.

And by April 15th, we will be over 13 hours of daylight—every minute counts in activating plant growth.

Instead, take the next two weeks to work on your garden beds:

  • Weed
  • Till as needed (I use a very light hand tiller to break up clumps of grass and weeds that are then hand removed)
  • Shape the rows
  • Lay down weed fabric to suppress growth on the edges if needed
  • Do pruning that is needed for any plants that are taking over spaces
  • Start more seeds inside or in your greenhouse – do this often!

We spent the last two days working on this beast. It isn’t entirely done, but I am nearly there. The story on this bed is that it was once raw land. Kirk ran the tractor over it five years ago, breaking it open (it had evergreen trees on it) and removing stumps and a lot of big rocks. Then, it became a test bed for plants and a chicken coop for a couple of years. Then, it sat empty last year and got covered in weeds. After weeding, doing a light till on top, laying down fabric, and making lines….it will soon be ready to plant.

I am working on another large bed this week as well. The fence is fixed, and weed suppression is in place. The final is removing the weeds and shaping the rows.

And removing rocks. Constantly removing rocks as they float up.

All to keep me occupied so that I resist the urge to plant everything…..

PS: And remember this sage advice, don’t plant tomatoes and peppers outside till at least mid-May in the PNW. They need warmth!

~Sarah

Gardening · Herbalism · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

The Value Of White Sage Plants

White Sage (Salvia apiana) is a sacred plant native to Southern California and the northern part of Baja, Mexico. It craves an arid existence. Seeing it wild is pretty amazing, and well worth traveling to see it (no touching though, do not harvest wild).

I always try to grow at least one White Sage in our greenhouse. I picked up a new one as soon as the plants showed up at a local plant nursery this winter. I view it as an every-other-year purchase here in the chilly PNW. I get 2-3 years out of each plant before we get a deep freeze/or water-logging episode. It just happens. Thankfully I can replace them.

The local plant nursery got a lot in this year. At around $25 a plant, it’s a money maker for them.

My other White Sage, it is a few years old, and lives full time in the greenhouse.

A fresh cutting that I delivered to a friend who was in need of it. I never sell my White Sage; as an herbalist, I believe it must be given freely. To those who need it. Blessed with love.

When working in the greenhouse, I periodically take cuttings and let them dry inside. The pungent aroma clears the air, especially nice in winter on rare blue-sky days when it warms up inside.

Why You Should Grow It:

There is much angst over buying commercially dried White Sage, as much of it is taken illegally off public and private lands, leading to issues with the plants’ futures. By growing your own, you can know your supply is ethical. Provide for yourself.

Deer don’t like it. It is too intense with essential oils.

The large plants grow to between 4 and 5 feet tall and are covered in beautiful seasonal blooms; during bloom time, they put on arms that can grow 10 feet high. Bees cannot resist visiting, so it is a great plant that encourages more bees.

There are many medicinal uses for the leaves. It is consumed as a tea when needed.

It is used in sage smudging.

The seeds are edible. By both humans and birds (quail love them).

~Sarah