Harvest

This morning my family went to Osler and I went out into my yard.  After an early morning grocery shop, I really felt like all I wanted to do was just sit around, but I ignored the feeling because I knew it wasn't a good one for me.  My friend Jodi does the same thing when she heads into her sewing room even though she doesn't want to.

I spent the morning picking produce in my garden, and pruning and picking in the front.  It was great.  I picked the following:

• two ice cream pails tomatoes
• two ice cream pails cucumbers
• one large zuchinni
• two kohlrabi (one purple, one regular)
• 1 cup of strawberries
• 8 sunflower heads, ready to dry
• some fresh apples for nibbling
• 9 corn on the cob
• one ice cream pail of beans (purple, yellow and green)

Sounds like a good a good harvest, right?  It was, the best harvest was me. As I was pruning and watering,  I could feel by feelings of being tired and overwhelmed with all the summer craziness drain away.  After cooking for so many all summer, I felt like I'd never want to cook anything again, and now I am happily in my kitchen making Kashmiri potatoes, mango and pepper tofu and concord grapes for my lunch, and I'm delighted to be doing it.

Ah, time self in the yard.  Nothing like it to fill up this introvert after an exciting, people-filled summer and the first week of school.  This afternoon, I think I'll read a book and have a hot bath.

Lessons for next year

This year in the garden has taught me some good things for next year.  In some areas, it went very well.  I have had lots of beans all year long.  My beet crop will be good and my second planting of peas (especially in full sun under the sprinkler) did really well and gave me peas until August 15th. My peas and squashes did well together, and when the peas came out, it gave the squash the perfect room. The basil supply is ideal for Mike's obsession, as are the three mint plants for my family drinking ice tea. The apples are a few more than we need, so if we don't have a lot of guests, I should give some away. One row of chard and repeated plantings of spinach is shady beds is the exact amount we need in summer months

Notes for next year:

• Plant twice as many pickling cucumbers as slicers
• Plant 1/3 Cherry and Pear tomatoes, and the rest in Early Girl and Romas
• It is fine if carrots are a bit patchy. Water a lot in the spring. Carrot tapes are dumb
• Cut the flower off of the garlic for bigger bulbs. Plant Saskatchewan Garlic in Oct.
• Small pumpkins are best
• Zucchini will do fine with half sun
• Planting beets next to peas gives beets room to grow when peas come out
• Buy dense mesh for the cabbage moths and pin it in lots of places
• Plant more Romain at the end of June and in the second week of August

Today I was out in my garden dead heading flowers and weeding a bit (this is my second attempt in August, when I rarely weed as plants are well established), and I was thinking that  I am delighted with the amount of produce given the hail.  We have enough tomatoes this week to eat them all week and make large pizzas.  I hope we have enough in the end for salsa. It is nice to have learned so much about planting that I actually get nearly twice as much as I did when I moved into this house.

Today is Mike and I's anniversary - we've been married 17 years. I can remember how excited we were to have a "garden feast" a week before the wedding out of our second garden at 518 Albert Ave.  It was small potatoes, dill weed, and beans.  I can so easily put that to shame now, but the lessons I learned planting those first gardens only get refined over the years of gardening and marriage.  They are simple things, like tending to little issues means you don't have disasters, or when there is a disaster, hard work and focusing on the positive helps you pull together to get it solved. Like my garden, my marriage can do so much more now that we have more expertise and experience, but it still has issues that set things back.  After hail on the garden this week and the failure to order windows, I am reminded that focusing on the harvest you do get helps you to keep loving your garden.

Destruction

Destruction struck my garden on the 15th while I was relaxing at a movie with my sister Greta.  We left the movie chatting to step out into a bit of hail. We had driven less than 500 meters before it was hard to see.  On the way home we had to pull over because visibility was terrible, and I took an alternate route to avoid flash floods. I couldn't even hear Greta shouting, the hails was so loud on the van roof.

My lawn was carpeted in hail and flooded (Leo forgot two rain barrels open) when I got home. My pillow was also damp as my bedroom window was open.  However, the biggest devastation was my yard - I actually ran on a thick carpet of hail to close the rain barrel. In the morning, the hail was gone but the destruction remained.

Leaves were scattered everywhere and all the leaves still on plants had holes in them.  The hail was about pea to marble sized, and a few days later, so many of leaves are damaged that there is yellow all over my yard.  It looks like fall.  Liz says there was no hail at her house which is only 3km away, so it appears to have been fairly localized.

Here are some images from my garden - they aren't to Mike's standard since he was happily climbing mountains while I took them.

Max's play tent - blown across the half of the yard and luckily caught by the apple tree. The tunnel and the other tent were blown to the back of the garden.

 

My shredded corn and one of Max's other tents.

 Many tomatoes were knocked off the plants and a lot of tomato branches were broken. Even the tomatoes that stayed on were not great.

A sample of the rhubarb crushed by hail.  The rhubarb and the remaining apples were pulverized. I froze both for use this month and baked some of the 10 gallon pail of apples, which were covered in little round bruises.

The hardest part of the whole thing was loosing so much of the garden right as it is producing. We are currently eating:

• rhubarb
• apples
• spagetti squash
• pumpkin
• beans (three types)
• the last of the peas (yesterday)
• baby carrots and beats
• kholrabi
• two types of cucumbers
• six types of peppers
• three types of tomatoes
• all herbs (I froze a large ziploc of mint the day before the hail)
• chard, spinach and beet greens
• potatoes
• corn

On the upside, my average of 5 guests all summer long has actually resulted in less that winter grocery bills (ones for just my family) because the garden is producing so well. View all hail pictures.

Making time

Yesterday, Mike and Heidi left for Calgary (Mike is going to climb mountains with Dave in Canmore). Greta, Gus and Max arrived the day before, and Dad a bit before that.  Peff left the day before that, but Teela, Merlin and Viola are still here. Needless to say, I feel delighted to see everyone, but way too busy. Too busy for yoga, too busy to read, and too busy for gardening.  It's obviously as issue, but the garden waits for no one, so I had the feeling of getting behind in addition to having low resources.

I was really frustrated with both girls yesterday as they keep leaving work or forgetting things when we have guests. They are apologetic, but they don't quite get it together. I took Leo to party in Briarwood after frantically making her contribution with her when Teela's family and my girls were late getting back to lunch.  It was literally a 15 minute turn around.  I drove all clenched, got home and ate junk food because I was exhausted (I haven't done that it months) and then snapped at Anwyn for the work she had not done when  I reminded her to in the morning.  By 2:45, I had dropped my second sad daughter off at a birthday party, and I had an hour at home alone before I had to pick Leo up. I'd like to say I can just tell my girls to do less with friends, but we have company for six weeks straight, then a week off as school starts before Jodi and Brad arrive. I'd be asking them to have no life of their own all summer long.

After both girls were gone, I didn't go outside in that hour before I had to pick Leo up. I organized the house mess and watched a bad movie, but it was silent, and I could slowly feel myself unclenching.  When I drove to pick up Leo, I looked at the green fields on my way, kept my windows open and thought about my yard. By the time I picked her up, I was ready to be out in it, and to relax.

Leo came out and chatted with me while I puttered about the front yard pulling weeds, pruning and picking. Mostly I just talked to my daughter and looked at my plant.  It felt great, like I was slowly being recharged.

Leo and I had a great evening together and I was asleep by 9.  I have picked peas, my first pumpkin, green peppers, baby orange peppers, herbs, beans (4 types), cucumbers, apples and tomatoes. But mostly I picked myself back up and enjoyed some time in my yard. There is nothing like the natural world for helping you make time and space in your mind.

• View picks from the first week of August
• View picks from the second week of August

Garlic, Pickles, Pesto and - Raspberries?

Today I puttered about picking cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peas - all the usual, and then I got inspired. Mike loves it when I get inspired. Today I was inspired for Mike to make pickles, pesto and raspberry cheesecake with some of the things I picked.

We have everything we need right now for pickles. Mike likes to add lots of different colors in each jar, so it is rarely just our cucumbers, dill and garlic. Today we also did purple and yellow beans, carrots, chili peppers and jalapeno peppers in each of the three jars.  To get to three jars, I typically pick some cucumbers throughout the week, and every ten days or so in full production, we have enough for pickles.  I keep the picked cucumbers in the fridge between canning inspiration, but I am careful to make sure they are not washed or damp so they keep better as they wait to be canned. 

I found picking the garlic today interesting. I had never grown garlic successfully, and I am still not sure it was quite ready. I read a Canadian garlic site  from Boundary Garlic Farm, and learned that when you are on the second loop of the scape you can harvest the garlic. Mine also had seed pouches called bulbils. Next year if I cut those off, the plant will spend more time making the bulb bigger according to everything I read, and the Saskatchewan government emphasizes the importance of this in Northern climates.  I think I'll plant quite a bit more garlic this fall, as it seems to be doing well and we eat a lot of it during the year.

I cut back the greenhouse basil, which yielded a two picking baskets of basil. I had to plant it in February for it to have 4 leaves a plant by March 20th, when I transplanted the seedlings into little pots. It is a lot effort to get a big enough crop in Saskatchewan, but Mike loves it so much that we always plant lots. It always makes me happy when I pick a lot in July and August. Today we made four times our regular amount of pesto, so we used 4 cups of loosely packed basil leaves and froze the rest. We'll freeze small containers of pesto for use throughout the year.

For lunch we had the leftover sushi (roles and scattered) from last night, along with some spring rolls, cherries and sugar snap peas. I love eating this time of year because everything tastes so great out of the garden and it is so nice to be picking and cooking together. The food is healthy and not fattening (except for the cheesecakes like the raspberry one Mike is making right now).

We had picked some raspberries before lunch and  I froze 12 cups of raspberries in small ziplocs.  Anna asked what the best method is.  As Mike mentioned to her, traditionally, raspberries are frozen individually on a tray. This way each berry keeps it's shape, and they don't stick together as much in the bag.  I used to do this, but when you thaw the berry, it always becomes mushy. Plus, I inevitably turn it into a sauce or blend it into something. Mike and I concluded about 5 years ago that freezing each berry is way too much work. Now we put about 2 cups in each ziploc, as that is the amount we usually use when cooking. It doesn't mater if they stick together, because you are defrosting the whole bag.

It has been a fun day with our produce, but I think I am not feeling inspired for Mike to do some dry walling to prep for my painting, so I think my growing related inspiration is coming to an end.

Apple sauce

Mike finally agreed some apples are ready, and today we picked some. I still have 1 bag of frozen apples I'll need to use, and we picked 4 ice cream pails worth today, which is maybe one quarter of what is on the tree. Mike is going to make some into sauce, and I'll make some into pie.  The rest we'll likely freeze for cooking over the winter or eat fresh. My nephew Merlin (the biggest apple lover I have ever met) will likely get a bunch of them if he is interested, but he was not so happy about the first one I offered.

Making apple sauce is pretty easy. First you rough chop the apples, then you cook them in a bit of water (essentially steam) for 20 minutes.   We have a food mill, so we just put the apples through that after they are cooked to remove the seeds, stems and peel. Then we sweeten them to taste for apple sauce and can them. On hot days, we often cook on the BBQ's side burner, but today the high is only 23, so we can cook and can inside. The basic ratio is 12 pounds of apples to 3 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar. You also add about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. We skipped the sugar this time, as we use this puree for an oil substitute in baking.  We did add cinnamon, though. Mike keeps trying to can in the pressure caner which never seems to work out, so while the sauce tastes great, he still isn't happy with it.

In addition to a food mill, the other great tool we use is an apple peeler.  It works best with eating size apples (which ours are), because it cores and peels. We got ours used at a garage sale, but I like so much I'd buy it new at Lee Valley.