Useful Gifts to Make From the Garden
By: Jean Anne Feldeisen
Tags: Food, Homemade Food, Gardening, Cooking, Gift Ideas

Useful Gifts to Make From the Garden

Now is the time to get started

photo courtesy of the author

This year, when there are so many restrictions on spending time with friends, a small gift can help make up for the missing hugs and shared time around the same table. We exchange gifts, do elbow bumps and still are really grateful to have friends that will meet us in the driveway for these strange rituals.

Homemade Pleasures

Isn’t is a special pleasure to receive a gift that someone has made for you. I have always valued homemade, individually created gifts above all others. In years past, I used to try to make them for everyone.

As my list of gift recipients grew, this became a sort of madness leading to a lot of self-imposed pressure on myself as the holiday approached, and sometimes guilty ”I owe yous” that are never completed. I changed that plan years ago.

Now, I am contented to make a few handmade gifts each year. Last year I knitted wool mittens for the young women on my list. That was fun, but I started knitting them in the spring, so there was no rush at holiday time. It gave me a childish sense of excitement, looking forward to giving them out, each in different colors and with a unique pattern.

Photo courtesy of the author

Gardens provide extra opportunities

Besides feeding us during the season and allowing us to can, freeze, dry or otherwise preserve food for the winter and spring, our garden provides the raw material for many different kinds of gifts. Value added products extend the benefit of the garden well beyond the first frost.

Herbal gifts

For the past ten years, my husband and I have been in the habit of making gifts for family and friends from things we find in our yard and gardens. It started out slowly, drying and bottling oregano for our own use. As the oregano patch flourished, we started giving some away. Then we dried even more, bottling it and labeling it to put in stockings at Christmas.

Salty gifts

One year we learned from a friend to make garlic salt. With an enormous garlic crop every year, we latched onto this idea. It was a way to salvage the end of the year’s crop before it all sprouted and deteriorated. We usually have quite a bit left over in the spring. Now, we plan on it, saving some to make the year’s supply of garlic salt. It has a lot of fans and jars of it regularly go to our massage therapist and hairdresser and several friends.

One year, faced with a whole ten foot row of gorgeous bright green celery in the garden I decided to make salt with the leaves. I followed the formula for garlic salt (see below). It was a beautiful pale green and I even found a little green container to keep it in on the table.

From there, it was just a short creative leap to trying other kinds of herbs in salt, then making my own herb blends. While you can buy these salts in the store, ours taste so much fresher and stronger-flavored that I always prefer them.

Other things

Here are some other things I’ve tried over the years

Cranberry Cordial (needs a month to mellow) or other homemade liqueurs and cordials.

Jams, pickles, relishes, chutneys, jellies from summer fruits and vegetables (This year we made dilly beans to give away), There are many ideas in books and online for these kinds of preserved things and you could add your own special touch to many of them.

Other ideas might be simply drying a mixture of herbs for tea. I like to mix lemon balm and spearmint for a lemony mint tea.

mint that you dry yourself and use that winter as an herb in cooking is much more flavorful than any you will find commercially. That would make a nice gift.

Sewn things like little pillows stuffed with lavender or balsam to use as sachets.

Dried flowers for bouquets or decorations

I have purposely not talked about all the things you could bake or cook to give as gifts. Most of these things are best made up as you need them. With the exception of fruitcake (yes I make fruitcake most every year and probably will as long as my mother still asks for it)

Begin early

All of these ideas are for projects that you can begin in the spring (garlic) or summer and store in bulk until there is time to find cute little jars and make labels and tie them up with ribbons for the holidays.

It is a relief to know that you have a stock of small but pleasurable gifts to hand out as needed over the holidays, or to add to a gift box or basket. They are a little extra pleasure that will remind your friend of you after you leave.

Don’t wait for a holiday

We tend to give our useful salts away all the time. A small jar of garlic salt goes to the massage therapist or the hairdresser with my husband. We often take a small bag of garlic bulbs or a jar of jam or pickled something or other when visiting a friend.

In this time of Covid 19 and quarantine, when there are so many restrictions on spending time with friends, a small handmade gift can help make up for the missing hugs and shared time around the same table. Now, we exchange gifts, do elbow bumps and still are really grateful to have friends that will meet us in the driveway for these strange rituals.

If you have the time, it is fun to try to find things outdoors in garden or field that could be turned into something beautiful or useful. I still pick things up, play with weeds and berries and stones as I did as a kid. I bring home rocks and wild flowers or sticks that catch my eye. The possibilities for creating with natural things are endless and there are doubtless many creative and informative books available on the subject. This story is just a nudge in that direction.

How to make garlic salt

Separate, then peel a cup of garlic cloves. Chop them fine in the bowl of the food processor. Add two cups of kosher salt and pulse to blend. Now you want to dry this mixture. I use a large cookie sheet with a lip and spread the mixture out thinly. In a gas oven with a pilot light, it will dry overnight. Otherwise, you may need to get the oven warm on it’s lowest setting then turn off. The next day, or whenever the mixture is completely dry, scrape the salt and garlic mixture off the sheet, then back into the food processor to pulse to the desired fineness.

Herb salts

Herb salts can be made the same way. Cutting the herbs up as fine as possible allows them to dry faster. In the case of celery leaves, I dried them in the oven before combining with salt so they would break up more easily. The salt pulls moisture out as well. Put your mixture back into the oven as long as needed to dry completely or salt will cake up.

Photo courtesy of the author

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Jean Anne Feldeisen is a writer, cook. and cookbook reader. She writes about cooking, food, books and aging well. Jean has been reading and writing poetry since age 5. The memoir Dear Milly is her first book. She is seventy plus years old and just getting sta