From the kitchen to the garden: apple cider vinegar
Apple cider vinegar is not only for the kitchen, it is also extremely useful when creating amendments for your garden. Before you reach for that bottle from your pantry, if you have an apple tree (or crab apple), operate ground apples to make your own! Once you have infused the apple cider vinegar, you can prepare the vinegar extract for your garden.
Below is an excerpt The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Improvements by Nigel Palmer. It has been adapted for operate on the Internet.
Making apple cider vinegar
Almost anyone can make bad wine. Vinegar is simply a bad batch of wine. Homeowners find many uses for apple cider vinegar, and making your own is very straightforward. For garden improvements, Apple cider vinegar can be used to extract minerals from shells, bones, or other local materials. Its acidity breaks down minerals. Making apple cider vinegar from apples that would otherwise be thrown away ends the waste cycle in a satisfying way. Drops from a tree in your yard or local field work great. Many senior apple trees that have been ignored and left unattended still produce immense amounts of fruit. If you pick apples from a farm, remember that the fruit may contain residues of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Many of these chemicals are not water-soluble and cannot simply be washed off with water. Do you want to introduce them to your growing environment?
Depending on the ambient temperature, apples ferment into vinegar from 2 to 3 months. During this time, they should be kept away from sunlight, in a well-ventilated room and out of disturbance. If you plan to prepare a immense batch, you can place the container in a suitable place for brewing before adding the apples and water. When the pH drops to 5 or less, the liquid will be vinegar and can be poured off. Once I have a batch of apples ready to ferment, I usually forget about them until one day I pass by the pot and wonder how things are going. I discover that months have passed and the contents are ready to be decanted.
Photo from The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Improvements
Ingredients
- Unsprayed apples
- Glass jar or pot
- Good water
- Slab or flat rock (optional)
- A tidy piece of fabric
- A board immense enough to cover the top of the bucket
- pH Paper Strainer
Procedure
Step 1 Collect unsprayed apples if available. There is no need to wash apples, as biology on the surface of the fruit is desired. Don’t operate rotten apples.
Step 2 Cut the apples into quarters and place them in a pot or jar so that the container is half to two-thirds full. Any container scale will do.
Step 3 Add enough good water to cover the apples. If you want, place a plate over the apples and place a jar filled with water on it as a weight to keep the apples submerged. To begin with, the plate should be tidy to avoid contamination of the vinegar. Another option is to operate a flat rock. Boil the stone first and wait for it to cold before touching the apples. The purpose of the weight is to prevent the apples from floating to the surface of the liquid. The floats can be removed if necessary. Using a weight is also optional; fermentation will occur even if completely neglected. I found that even if I didn’t operate the cover, a mother would form over time. The mother is the gelatinous SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) that forms on the surface of some fermentations.
Step 4 Place a cloth on top of the container and a board on top of the fabric to prevent rainwater and bugs from entering. Label the container with the contents and date. If you haven’t already done so, place the container out of the sun in a place where it won’t need to be moved for a few months.
Step 5 Soon the apples will begin to ferment and release a wonderful scent. After about a month, the fermentation will change. At this point the pH will drop to about 4 to 5 and it can be decanted, but the mother will not have formed on the surface yet. The resulting liquid will be murky, not the reddish color of apple cider vinegar. If the weight is in place, remove it at this time.
Step 6 Fermentation can be left for another month or more, during which time a mother should have formed on the surface of the liquid in the container.
Step 7 If necessary, operate pH paper to monitor the pH of the liquid under the mother. Simply immerse a strip of paper in the liquid and compare the color of the strip with the indicator table on the pH paper package.
Step 8 When time permits or when you are reminded, strain the liquid into glass jars and close tightly for storage. Be sure to label the container with the date, fermentation length and ingredients. Apples can be added to the compost pile, completing a sustainable cycle.
Uses
You can operate homemade vinegar for any garden changes that require apple cider vinegar. Making your own vinegar further reduces the running costs, as well as the waste and transportation costs associated with producing apple cider vinegar on a commercial scale. Using locally available apples that might otherwise rot on the ground, and rainwater that will flow into the ground anyway, is the essence of a sustainable process. This may seem like a diminutive thing, but it is part of a broader philosophical approach to all agricultural processes.