Annual May Garden

There's not a lot going on in the blogging world that I inhabit.  Probably because many of the bloggers are gardeners, and our fingers are all too dirty to be using the keyboard.  I'm doing my best to wear my lovely pink gloves to keep my fingernails clean and my excema under control, but it doesn't always work.  As I do my morning walk through it all with my coffee, I almost always reach down and pull a few weeds.

However, I have almost everything in.  There are just a few seedlings still in trays waiting for me to find spots for them.  I'm bound to lose a brocolli to cutworms or find a hole that needs filling.

Because I mulch so heavily with my neighbours' leaves in the fall, the front garden doesn't look great in early spring.  The neighbours cut their lovely green grass weeks before the ice melts in the corners of my garden.  Beth thinks it looks like a landscape project, but tells her friends that it will look amazing by mid-June.  She's right.  The ugly leaves are only ugly for a short while though, and then the greens poke up through them and it all looks good. 

It looks great right now, even though most of the seeds haven't germinated yet and many of the seedlings are still tiny.  

Usually I mulch with about 16 bags of leaves and then rake a few bags off in the spring.  This year I only raked off one bag and decided to leave the rest there.  I do like the look of bare soil between the greens, but that really isn't something that happens in nature and my mulch should help keep the weeds down and improve the soil. 

Over the summer it will work its way into the soil.  Every year my soil feels better and better.  I don't know if it produces more, but the weeds are easier to pull out of the less-compacted soil.  Garlic likes the mulch, so I'm definitely not disturbing the garlic I planted in the fall until I dig a few up.  I'm in no rush because I still have about 10 bulbs in storage from last year. 

Although you can probably tell that it's the front beds that I love, the back yard is actually pretty productive.

Other than the rhubarb (already going to flower), delphiniums and small Evans cherry tree in the corner, this is all seeded so there's not much to see here yet.  But there will be!

The straw bales I planted into last year worked really well, so this year I'm growing some climbing things to go up wires around the old swing set.  I still want to paint the swing set this week and string the wires before the beans and cucumbers need to climb, but the idea is to create a sort of green tent.  This picture looks distorted somehow, but there is about 3 feet between the bales in the centre.  Alice envisions reading in her green tent later in the summer.

Grapes, although we've never gotten even one bunch off it yet

Beans are my favourite plant to watch sprout.  There's nothing...nothing..nothing...and then it sproings out of the ground dramatically while I'm at work.

And the next day it's two inches tall.

 Miracle plants!

The whole garden is a miracle.  On Beth's birthday in April, we still had snow. On Mother's Day there were not leaves on the trees or on the bare hedge.  Now it looks as if those leaves have always been there and the world was always green. 

Now that the garden is in, I think I'll try to fit a few sewing projects in.  Maybe I'll have something to report.  Maybe not.  How are your gardens doing?  Or are there other spring activities that I'm missing out on?

More on the gleaning

After you read blogs for a while you start to feel as if you know the blogger.  It's like reading a journal and you begin to know personal details about them even if you've never met.  I do realize that you only see a tiny snapshot of their lives and you only see what they want you to see.  It's not a full reality.

A couple of bloggers who I know this way are Julie vanRosendahl and Kevin Kossowan.  I can bring them into my conversations as if they are my friends.

Julie cooks the way I do with leftovers and using what's in season (although she does it with a fair bit of skill and it always looks beautiful in her pictures), and she shares similar Dutch traditions in her foods and in her stories about growing up.  Somehow we click.  No, actually she doesn't know me at all, but I know her.  Virtually.

Kevin is just awesome.  See, I'm already on a first name basis although he doesn't know me from Eve.  He gardens, he gleans, he forages, he speaks about eating locally, he makes sausage, he teaches at a local college about cooking (sustainably? locally? I'm not even sure).  I've heard him speak and I've read articles and his blog.  And he makes some really beautiful videos about all of these subjects.  I'm appearing in this one. (Click the cabbage - I don't know how to embed his video)

I've been pretty sick since last Friday.  Just with a weird cold that won't leave my throat.  Speaking has been the most difficult thing, and singing is out of the question.  My voice breaks in the oddest places.   However, until yesterday I didn't really get to relax my voice because we've had to continue the semblance of normality, with the kids off of school one day, the excitement of having the chicks in the house, and all of the regular activities that we had committed to. 

Yesterday I slept until 1:00, waking to help with lunches and getting ready for school, taking some time to water and move plants outside, and cancelling my activities.  By evening I was ready to do something a bit more active again.    The girls and I went outside to tackle some of this:

I mulched prettily heavily in the fall with leaves so it doesn't look great.  The bottom level of leaves has composted down a bit, leaving a layer of fairly heavily packed leaves and then dry ones on top.  We're uncovering lots of good stuff.  

The old strawberry patch is looking healthy.  The new one looks a bit sad, but it'll perk up.  The onions and shallots are still a surprise to me.  After raking away a layer of leaves we found these:

A full onion, bigger than any I harvested last fall!

More onions - I'll leave them alone and see what they do.

A clump of what I assume are shallots

I think I'll have to add more onions to these areas so that I know where to find them this fall.  They look great though.  Will the full onion turn to mush or will it continue to grow?  It's not showing signs of green so I might just harvest that one.

So today, although my voice still isn't good and I'm starting to tire already at 10:45 am, I'm pretending I'm not sick and trying to function as I normally would.  I've done laundry, tended to plants and chicks, bread is rising and I might tackle this area of the garden next before that cottoneaster hedge fully leafs out.

This is an area where I continually fight quack grass and I'd like to see my brick path again.  It's under there somewhere!

And then by 2:00 I'm sure I'll crash.  With my terrible voice, I'm free to attend book club this week without the guilt of missing choir.  I haven't read the book though!   I've got two days to read at least enough to know what they are talking about. 

My dry pantry

Besides garlic, I'm starting to run out of other tasty things.  Mainly in my herb selection, but canned tomatoes and carrots are dangerously low as well. 

When I say "dangerous", you realize that no one will be hurt by this.  Just my sensitive desire to provide from my own garden. 

This is my lovely herb and spice drawer.  

Please don't judge me.  I'd like to have this:

 

but I just aim to improve every year.  And I do.  Last fall I started labelling the tops of my jars in this drawer so I could actually tell what was in them without lifting them all out and reading a side label, or worse, smelling them to know what the green stuff was. 

See? Baby steps. 

These are two empty jars:  thyme and lemon balm.  I seeded lemon thyme this year hoping it will do better than my balm did.   It's so hard to know because the weather was so bad last year.  And is lemon balm a perennial?  If so, I should get it back again and hopefully bigger.  I'll have to look that up. 

I'm also totally out of oregano.  That's a pity because I could use a lot more of that and I don't see signs of life on the small oregano plant yet. 

I've been using the dehydrator more every year.  I got a free book from a book exchange room at the Jasper museum last month called "Dry It, You'll Like It".  I'm sure it was seen as a hippy book in the seventies, written by people living on the edge of normal, but I read it cover to cover.  Loads of good advice and a plan for a solar dehydrator.  I'll have to try some of their recipes and ideas.

One of the most useful dried item from last year turned out to be the dried leeks.  Well, the dried cherries, strawberries, plums and apples were probably the most loved and have been gone the longest, but I've been using leeks in loads of things.  Anytime I'm too lazy to chop an onion really.  And I still have lots left. 

And when I'm really pushed for time and don't think the leeks will rehydrate in the recipe quickly enough, Yvon brilliantly thought to whiz some up in the Magic Bullet.  Leek powder is perfect and I use it all the time.

And parsley and chives have been in our kitchen drawer every year for years now.  I don't know why exactly, but I've also always kept a bag of balloons in this drawer. You can see them in the picture.   It used to be very handy when the kids were little and easily distracted by a new toy while I was cooking, I guess.  One day they'll be too old for balloons but for now, they still know where to look for them. 

Back on topic though, I like growing parsley for some reason.  It even looks pretty as the green in a flowering basket, so I always have too much of it.  And the chives propogate themselves prettily through the flower garden.  I don't mind. 

My mint plant was tiny last year.  I thought anyone who grew mint had to much mint.  What did I do wrong?  I don't use a lot of mint in my cooking, but I still ran out.

Swiss chard and kale were also very good dried.  I throw them in most tomato sauces (pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, chili) and the kids never complain.  In fact, if I crumble it small enough they probably think it's just parsley.  I'm hoping a lot of the nutrition is preserved in the drying process because I do count it as a veggie portion in their meals.  I'm totally out of the dried kale and have been for some time.  Again, the lack of heat last summer did us no favours. 

Things I won't dry again are carrots, peppers, green beans and zucchini.  Although the kids like the zucchini chips when they were fresh, no one would eat them after a few months.  Either the novelty wore off or the texture changed.  The other vegetables just didn't taste great or have great texture when rehydrated.  I did try to use them in soups and stews, but wasn't impressed.  As long as I have freezers, that's what I'll do with those veggies. 

Thinking about the leek powder though, maybe I can still blend up the unwanted vegetables and make cream soups.  Maybe that's something to try before I throw them out. 

What do you dry?

Allium shortfall

I bought my first garlic bulb at the grocery store today since last August.  I know I didn't have a great crop last year, but it always pleased me to scoop garlic out of the jar knowing that it came from my own garden. It lasted from late August until just now.  That means if I want to provide all of our own garlic, I need to plant 30% more, and technically enough to plant for the following year as well.

Last August this was my garlic yield.  Tiny bulbs, but I didn't think it was terrible for a very cold summer.  What do I have to compare it with really?  Garlic is new to me.

How do most people store garlic for winter use?  I figured my bulbs were way too tiny to properly dry and braid, so I chose another method that I've now read is apparently a health hazard.  Oops.  None of us have died yet, and I won't promise not to do it again because it was really nice to have everything pre-diced.  I'm just not recommending the method to anyone else.  Don't do what I do.  This is not a teaching blog.  It's just me babbling.

Did you know that bulk garlic will make you cry just like onions do?  Now you know, so maybe this is a teaching blog after all. 

Or not.

So this is what I did that you should not do.  I chopped it all up, covered it with olive oil,and put it in the fridge.   

This is my garlic today, planted last fall.  It's healthily poking up throught the thick layer of leaf mulch which I stole from my neighbours.   

I won't be self-sufficient this year either, but I'm hoping for garlic scapes as a first harvest during the early summer. I'd love to try cooking with them. I didn't get any last year so I must have misunderstood the type I needed to plant.

And this is another allium (maybe shallots?) that I planted last year and forgot to harvest. 

I didn't even have this row of shallots marked on my garden plan last year, so I don't know exactly what happened there.  In any case, they don't seem to have suffered for their winter in the leaves.  Last week I also found a perfect little onion in my flower bed as I searched for emerging tulips.  I fried it up for supper and it seemed to have improved after it's months of freezing temperatures.   There appears to be a flaw in my gardening records. 

I'm going to try planting in rows a bit this year and maybe this sort of thing won't happen quite so much.  Last summer I attempted to companion-plant a bit, surrounding cabbages and brocolli with onions because onions are supposed to deter cabbage moths.  I still got a lot of cabbage moths (and caterpillers), and finding the onions was like a failed treasure hunt. 

I'll just think of the random onions now as bonus groceries rather than a failed experiment.  

Overwintering Geraniums

There are many ways to overwinter geraniums.  I've now only tried two methods, and I don't think you'll find my lazy approach on Youtube or any instructable sites.  I've dug them out of the garden and planted them indoors, keeping them alive in a somewhat sunny window.  As spring approaches, I usually will take some cutting from the mother plant and start them in their own pots, making one plant into a few.  This is an approach that you might actually find as a tried-and-true method.

 I had a few really healthy geraniums by the time frost hit last fall, so I decided to take some cuttings.  I planted two of them and one is blooming now. 

In spite of all my gardening and indoor seed starting, I'm terrible at keep houseplants alive, so this method is perhaps not the plants best chance of survival around here. 

So I tried something new this year.  I had taken more cuttings that never quite got into pots.  They hung out in a mason jar of water all winter.  I had good intentions, but once gardening season is done, I'm usually done too.  I left them in the jar and they produced healthy roots and stayed alive.

Laura and I finally planted them this week and they look pretty good.  They may have forgotten what soil felt like, but they knew what to do when their roots finally had some access.  This is one I hope will survive.  Laura has adopted it as her own. 

Because it's so cute!!

I hope it lives.  That is one tiny pot!

Diversity

We all love taking pictures in this house and we are now all armed with cameras.  Each camera has it's different strength, but so does each photographer.  I love how different our tastes or approaches are.  My camera has the best macro option, so Laura snags it sometimes.  It's one of her favourite settings.

I've been busily planting up all of my seedlings for the garden.  Every year I do more and more as my garden expands, as my mother-in-law has stopped seeding tomato plants for me and I try not to buy so many nursery plants.  Because I'm running out of room under my basement lights and am starting to learn which seedlings prefer a bit of heat, I've finally brought a big light and table into the living room this year. 

I like to take pictures of the big picture, the overall look.  The way I actually see the plants under the lights. 

These are mostly my Mediteranean plants. Basil, tomato, eggplant (something new for me this year) and peppers.  They can all do with a bit of warmer air.

Laura loves the beauty of the individual plant or leaf.

Parsley

Snapdragon

Squash (which may have been an early mistake)

Fennel

Red pepper that wouldn't germinate downstairs

Basil

Is it diversity that makes the world go 'round?  Or love?  I can't remember which.  Maybe it's the love of diversity that makes the world go 'round.  In any case, I love finding pictures on my camera that I didn't put there.  They usually show a perspective I might not have seen otherwise. 

Processing blahs

I've still got apples in the basement going bad (I hate wasting food!) and tomatoes in bins and in the freezer that I'd prefer to be in jars. 

However, I'm feeling done.  I don't feel like boiling the big canner up again.  I think I'm just going to use them as they are and if some go bad, so be it.  I've got the processing blahs.

On the other hand, I'm hoping to try making sausage again tomorrow with a friend.  That's a totally different process though, and I'm excited to do that.  I now own 25% of a sausage stuffer, so I hope to get better at it and do it more often. It will probably get it's own post later.

When I was complaining to a friend about my lack of tomatoes this year...No, that's not quite right.  I was complaining that I had a lot of small tomatoes that would never fill 50 pints and that's what I figure we use in a year.    Anyway, the subject of cooking came up.  She couldn't imagine how I would use all those tomatoes. 

"What do you cook that uses so many tomatoes?" She asked.

"Umm,  chilli, spagahetti, stew... I don't know exactly.  I just know they get used and we like them."

I don't think well on my feet.  We don't eat that much chilli.  I just have clear visions of opening jar after jar of tomatoes over the winter and dumping them in "stuff".  What is that "stuff" though? 

This week I decided to get back to menu planning and dutifully wrote out my meals for the week before shopping.  It made shopping easier and I don't think about food all day wondering what I'm making each night.

Lasagna, taco salad with salsa, a lentil stew, chicken quesadillas (with salsa again) and hamburgers.  Hmmm, tomatoes with five of the meals.  Question answered.  I love to put tomatoes in everything.

I'm down to this bin (and the bottom is now visible) and one more like it.  They are ripening faster than I'd like this year, but they won't go to waste.  Instead of painfully peeling, boiling and processing them, I'm just using them fresh.  Clean them, stick them in the Magic Bullet and put in the fridge until I need them, saving some for fresh salsa, hamburgers and eggs.  I don't cook fancy schmancy stuff, so I don't mind the seeds and the peels aren't noticable to mean once whizzed in the Bullet.

On the other hand, I probably do have to do something more deliberate with those apples or just admit defeat and throw them out.  Last year the kids "went off" applesauce, but it seems to be a popular lunch choice again this year.  That means dragging out the processor.  Poo.  I just can't wrap my head around the idea of throwing them in the compost bin.  Life would be easier if I could.

My "other" garden

So, this year I had access to part of a garden down the block from my house. 

Although I was late getting it in (while waiting for approval to use it), weeds took over while we went away on vacation, and it was tougher to keep up with it because it wasn't under my nose the way my own yard is, there were some successes with this plot.  For one thing, I had no bugs or pests at all the way I did at my own house. 

I grew corn!  The cobs were small, but every corn stalk produced one cob.  Other than watering it, the corn was super low maintenance, very tasty and we fed between 5 and 7 people from it five times and froze two meals.  Not spectacular maybe, but more than I've ever managed.  And eating corn half an hour after picking it is just the best.  Of all the veggies I grow, corn is the most effected by freshness.  As soon as you pick it, the sugars in the corn change and it's really quite noticable. 

The potatoes were crappy, but I was warned in advance that potatoes were grown there in the past and were very scabby.  I had a few seed potatoes given to me though, so I threw them in anyway.  They weren't all that scabby, but there were very few of them.  I think that a neighbourhood kid raided them once too, leaving a few potatoes laying on top of the soil. 

The leeks were planted really, really late.  An afterthought, really, but they weren't bad either.  Again, really low maintenance.  We ate a meal of peas as well. 

The star of the show were the rows of carrots.  I'm absolutely terrible at thinning carrots.  I think the weeds worked in my favour here. 

We couldn't really see the carrots among the weeds after our holiday, so the girls and I just pulled a lot until we could see what we were doing.  Once the row emerged, we hoed between the rows and kept hand-pulling the weeds within. 

It worked.  I harvested quite a few meals and they were larger than the carrots in my own garden. 

I didn't mean to make this an inventory of my freezer, but it does help me to remember what worked and what didn't.  I'll read this post again next year and know how that plot produced. 

The renter in the house is a lady with plans and ambition but less follow through than a garden requires.  That meant she planted a lot but weeded only once, had an awesome strawberry patch but never once picked them, planted tomatoes but again never picked any of them, and had some awesome cabbages, but just when they were at their peak and should have been picked, she allowed the slugs to totally eat them. 

And she never cut her small patch of lawn. 

I personally didn't care during the summer what she did with her area of the garden.  It was a pity that her stuff all was wasted, but it didn't effect my own area. 

But then the neighbour told me that she was recommending that the home owner get rid of the garden and plant grass.  She had picked the strawberries a few times and mowed the lawn every time it bothered her.  She figured it would be easier for the renter to mow than maintain a garden. 

But grass?  The rented doesn't cut grass as it is.  I gave the neighbour a meal of carrots and asked her to reconsider.  I can't see how there is anything to be gained by planting an unused lawn.  It won't be cut again, and just create more work.  I selflessly volunteered to garden the plot again (you caught that, right?) and I sure hope they don't plant grass.   With permission to garden there again, I can properly plan what to plant and make sure I start enough seed and get it all in a few weeks earlier.  We'll see what happens next spring.  I really liked the extra produce and the actually even liked the long farm-like rows. 

I think I'll write the renter a little note of thanks and slip it in her mailbox tomorrow and hope for the best.

Too little too late

 Unless I'm with close friends or with the hippies of the new millenium, I usually lay pretty low about the ladies in our yard. However, today they deserve a post of their own and my readership of 2 is likely sympathetic to the backyard chicken.

For the last few months, the ladies haven't been producing very well.  Usually one a day between the two of them.  That's not terrible, but for a family of five it still means a regular supply needs to be purchased from elsewhere.  We've been happily eating from a farming friend of Rosa's, but we always prefer our own.  Our ladies have freedom over the backyard, eating weeds and bugs and mice (if they are quick).  That makes for darker, tastier yolks and the eggs are really big as well.  Well over the extra-large egg standard.

In the spring I've keep them cooped to give my garden seedlings a chance to grow to a defensible size, but then they are out again.  I think the problem with the lack of eggs started in August.  Some days there was nothing.   Well, they are getting old.  Production is expected to decrease, right?  But it did seem weird. 

One day, in the prickly squash plants, I found an egg.  Who knew how old it was.  I floated it in water, comparing it to a fresh egg and it definitely floated differently.  Out it went. 

So, I fully expected to find a hoard of old eggs in the garden somewhere once I cleaned it out and the leaves died back.  Nothing.  The back garden is totally cleared and I found nothing. 

Yesterday, I heard quiet clucking in the unused sand box area.  Under a table (part of Alice's kitchen setup for mud cakes and dirt soup) I found this.  Clearly Alice has moved beyond dirt soup this summer.  She could have been making real, edible, scrambled eggs instead.

Seven eggs!  Two fresh, and five will be whacked with a shovel in the compost and immediately buried. 

Anyway, the title of the post is "Too little too late".  Due to age, low productivity, dwindling numbers, and an expected hard winter ahead, this is their last day with us.  They are moving to their retirement home in the country this afternoon and I hope they get along with their new friends.  It will certainly be warmer in a more heavily populated coop and they won't be judged for their lack of productivity.  I just hope their country cousins don't make fun of their city-slicker ways.   Will they recognize a hawk or a coyote?  Do they have the instict to run for cover? 

Good luck, Heeny Monteeny and Jambon!  We'll miss you around here, but I think you'll be happy.  And now we can be sloppy about gate latches.

Hurry up and wait

It's not that I've got nothing to do, but waiting makes me restless.

Waiting for:

• pears to ripen in their box (35 lbs of them in my living room)
• tomatoes to ripen in their boxes or on the vines
• beans to dry up a bit on the vines
• carrots and beets to use as much sun and moisture as they can in the ground
• corn to soak up more sun and moisture
• leeks, kale and chard can just sit pretty for as long as they like
• ditto for the few cabbages that survived
• brussel sprouts to maybe do something

It feels like I should be canning.  I should be blanching and freezing.  It's September.  Isn't that harvest time? 

I could just pick and dig it all up now.  I could put the whole garden to rest.

But I don't want to waste the growing weather we've been getting. Still no frost on the horizon and temperatures in the mid-high teens for next week again.  Some things are just so late this year, it seems.  The sun was a little late this year.

What I do have ready to go is basil.  Rosa's basil again, because once again I shaded my basil too much.   Oh, how I'm thankful for Rosa's excess!   I didn't pair basil with tomatoes this year (I learned not to do that last year), but I planted it together with the parsley.   My herb circle.  The parley grew like mad.  The basil did not.  Could not.  Sigh...  Next year I'll plant it in a neat patch all together.   Tune in next year to see how that works. 

So, my next "putting up" project is pesto.  A quick job that hopefully I can do with the kid's help after school.   That will make me feel productive and less restless. 

A miriad of distractions

The weather is gorgeous.  The annual Indian Summer that still comes as a surprise every year.  While I watch daily for the frost warnings and pray for additional heat to finish up my corn and dry my beans out a bit, we finally get some heat. 

I had a few things to celebrate.

1. The fact that all three girls were in school.  For a full day.  No early outs.  No sickness.  No field trips that I had to chaperone.  (Does that count as only one thing?) 
2. The heat.
3. The fact that I'm finally feeling well enough to cut the grass and do more the bare minimum to survive.  This morning I had a bath just because I wanted one, rather than thinking the steam might clear my sinus, relieve my headache or needing to rest my eyes. 
4. The heat. 

So, I thought I'd sit in the garden. The garden always looks better just after the lawn is cut.

I sat reading my book in the sun, sipping my coffee.  It was a lovely moment. 

The sun was shining through the flowers.  But I couldn't just read my book.  I had to look up.  It started with the wasp that wanted to test my coffee. 

 Then I watched the cabbage moths playing tag.  And a big fat bumblebee slowly buzzed past and explored the last of the blooms.   The longer I looked, the more flying things I noticed in the air.  It was fun to watch them, but I wasn't getting much reading done. 

And then I started to see the things that needed to be done in the garden and the defects in a fall garden.

The squash plants are all mildewy and the actual squash need a lot more time to grow to a reasonable size.  I did get lots of patapans and one....just one...acorn squash.

And when should I pick the artichokes?  Am I already too late? 

Obviously I was wandering around the garden by this point.  My coffee was on the ground by the chair and my book forgotten.   

My first plant of brussel sprouts opened wide instead of forming tight sprouts, but maybe this later plant will form properly.  If it has time. 

And my pole beans need to dry a bit on the vine, but they are looking lush and the beans themselves are not ready. 

I've always been terrible at relaxing in my own garden.  I do hope that I have more time to try again this week.