Still about the Fruit

In July, I wrote about how it is all about the fruit in my yard right now.  Well, it is three weeks later, and it is still all about the fruit.  And also the house painting.  But mostly the fruit.

After we finished painting the house this afternoon, we took a well deserved break.  I spent time in the hammock, and Mike sat beside me in the shade playing guitar.  Cue my bad habit - one that my mother and I share. Really it is a trait that might be good or might be bad, depending.

I am looking at the yard and thinking about how happy I am.  Then I see another apple fall off the tree, apparently as the result of nothing in particular. 20 minutes later I am handing Mike a massive wicker basket of apples after having picked four other ice cream containers full.  We already have three large ziplocs frozen down and have made apple sauce once.  Next our relaxing time is used with making apple sauce, drying apples in the dryer, and baking fruit compote. I have barely picked 1/4 of our apples to date so this insanity will happen over and over.

Today we rearranged the freezer to prepare for more apples and the cherries we will pick soon.  So Mike knew what he was saying when he innocently suggested that perhaps some of the apples could fall without us doing much beyond tossing them into the ferns. He had already canned 5 quarts of apple sauce when he commented, but I still gave him a black look.  No one gets between a James girl and potential fruit without collateral damage.

I felt this same way visiting Teela last week, even when it wasn't my garden and even when it was just tomatoes, which do not count as real fruit in the James girl lexicon.  She has a large garden in Virginia, and it has a number of volunteer cherry tomatoes. Teela doesn't like to limit the choices of anyone (which includes tomatoes), so she let them live while she weeded out not fruit bearing weeds. As a result, she has a lot of tomatoes.  We picked at least 4 cups of cherry tomatoes every time we went to her garden (every second day).  She doesn't eat tomatoes and Peff was out of the town.  The kids eat a few.  Teela also had her own beef steak tomatoes as well, many of which get slashed by crows and need to used right away to prevent rotting.  I was obsessed with how all those tomatoes could be used no tomatoes were wasted.  Even when there were clearly too many and I don't love them.  I know it is not quite sane...

Mike is in for a long couple years. Especially when the kids leave home but all the fruit keeps producing more. It will still be about the fruit.

On the upside, we've all been enjoying wonderful garden based meals everyday since I got home and Mike is happy to be off bachelor food (which appears to be veggie hot dogs, pizza and a variety of non-meals like crackers.  He has already had tomato/basil pasta, lentil soup with fresh tomatoes, fresh salsa and bruschetta, apple pie and roasted new root veggies like potatoes, carrots and beets with chard. It will be long years, but with good food.  Really that's what James girls are all about.  We have many projects, but you eat well.

It is all about the Fruit

As any good James Girl knows, summer is all about the fruit. James girls love virtually all forms of fresh food, but nothing beats summer fruit for the flavour, colour and sheer amount of natural sugar. It has been very hot and dry here all summer, and there are a record 601 forest fires burning as of yesterday. This means the fruit is ripening quickly in desperation to get consumed - James Girls are happy oblige.

When Leo was little, she used to sneak outside and eat all the strawberries before anyone else got any. Strawberries are always our first fruit beyond rhubarb, and we are usually eating them from mid-June to early July. Our strawberries finished last week, and this time Leo ate only her share.

Saskatoons are the next fruit that ripens, and I can't say she was as well behaved about them. We've been eating them for about the last 9 days, and Leo has had a few cups each day. She is an awesome help with the picking, though.

Anwyn has reluctantly helped picking raspberries, the picking of which is the bane of my girls' existence. There is always heavy negotiation about who will have to pick next. We have to pick every second day in the height of the season, and today it was 37 degrees celsius, so lots more fruit has ripened. We'll definitely need to pick tomorrow, and we just picked six cups yesterday.

Our next fruit to ripen is cherries. We have two trees, and the back one ripens first. The cherries on it are already ripe, but still getting sweeter. Mike is the arbiter of when we can pick cherries, as they are his favourite. I have threatened to dig out the front tree, which kept suckering (growing baby trees in the lawn off of its roots) but not producing fruit. This year, in agreed upon year of its death, it has finally produced to save its own life.

Our final fruit (I don't count tomatoes) is apples, which we'll eat in August, so now is the prime fruit time. I have been eating berries, making trifle and pie, canning stewed rhubarb (okay that was Mike) and freezing down lots of the new crop. We've also been enjoying omnipresent fruit salad and smoothies. You'd think with all the fruit, I wouldn't buy any at the store, but James girls like lots of variety....

Even as it is all about the fruit, it is also about the flowers and veggies. We are currently harvesting early tomatoes, cucumber, sugar snap peas and more lettuce and herbs than one family can eat. Mike has made pesto twice. For those of you who like the flower pictures, there are a few new favourites.

Mike coloured Iris.

Variegated tea rose, bought with Jodi
 

One of 22 bee picture this month. Thanks Mike 

So Much Dynamic Fun

Backyard bed in bloom

I love everything about gardening except the weeding. I love the fresh food, the planting, the picking, and the preserving.  But mostly, I love the evolving design.  I think that I could have been an interior designer in another life, but that sort of design is so static. My garden changes every day this time of year.  I had two busy days without much yard time on Monday and Tuesday, and today I went for a look around and everything is different. Let me show you my favourite parts of the design right now.

In the Front

View from the front step in May

Before the yard really gets going, you can just see the bones. This is my front yard in May. There are rock paths and sprinkled rocks throughout the yard.  These are the elements that will anchor the design.

As the spring progresses and the plants grow, the front yard goes in waves of colour from yellow, to yellow and red, to yellow and purple, to yellow and orange.  Yellow anchors the colours just like the rocks anchor the design.  For comparison, here are some June pictures of the front yard's colour and design.

Stone steps with greenery

Thyme between the stone steps

Orange tulips from the yellow red colour palette

The rocks that looked so barren a month ago are now floating in composition of green and rotating colour. 

The front yard also has rhubarb and fruit like saskatoons to add to the colour and texture. These same plants, along with the cherry tree and climbing vines, add height and variety.

Rhubarb flowering

Saskatoons

The Backyard

My back yard is a mix of vegetable gardens and perennial design.  It has a less vibrant (Mike thinks much less interesting) colour pallet that I find tranquil. It has purples, pinks, whites, blues and yellows as its base.  This time of year, the stars in the back are iris, flox and lilac. Take a look at the April pictures,  May pictures and June pictures to see the overall progression. Like the back there is great height in the green walls, little garden rooms and rock providing bones.

Grape on back fence

Allium, clematis and iris in bloom

A sea of anemones

New Haskap's star in planting weekend

The May long weekend, the traditional planting time of Saskatchewan gardeners came a week early with year, with lows well below seasonal.  As a result, I held off my planting as long as possible for all my bedding plants, and many annual flowers are still the greenhouse keeping warm.  Mike and I covered things last night and the night before.

On Saturday, Leora and I mapped out the beds and began planting. I usually have a detailed plan with crop rotations built in, but I am getting so used to it that no really writing was necessary for me. Of course, work on a team, it is helpful to record your plan in a way others can access. Leora was very patient, as was Mike, when he and Anwyn got home in time to help with the bedding plants on the Monday.

After a one year hiatus due to potato bugs, potatoes are back.  Mike complained they got too little territory, although his tomatoes currently use 1/2 of the total space and have their own personal hot house. Also on pest control, the brassicas (think kohlrabi, cabbage etc) are well sheltered under fleece.  As soon we had my bedding plants out to put in the ground, the first cabbage moth came by. Arrgg!  Hopefully the shelter is enough.

The beds are looking great, with grape hyacinths, tulips and crocuses heavily featured. We are eating lots of asparagus and chives, and start on mint, rhubarb and basil soon. I am happily puttering about, waiting for the rain of elm seeds that begins my weeding season.

One of the exciting new additions is haskap berries. We haven't grown them before, but James says they are great. The U of S breeding program describes the good ones as a mix between raspberries and blueberries, and the bad ones as tasting like tonic water. Hopefully we have the good ones. This brings the list of fruit grown in the yard up to:

• raspberries
• strawberries
• apples
• cherries
• saskatoons
• haskaps

A historical retrospective of the last 5 years of May long weekend planting indicates this weekend is almost always spent the same way in this family.

2010

2011

2012, after the great die off when Darwyn was born

2013

2014, my most depressing spring of snow

Nippy Long Weekend Saved by Second Greenhouse

We traditionally plant on the May long weekend, but the projected -3 low for Saturday and Sunday looks likely to
deter us.  The greenhouse is chock full of bedding plants, as is the grow table in the basement.  I will likely put in some seeds, because the frost won't be an issue for them.  The other potential is the second greenhouse.

Second greenhouse, you say?  Yup.

Mike's aunt gave us her old plastic and metal green house, and we'll be using it in the garden itself this year for some of our tomatoes.  Mike has been using it to enjoy the early sunshine while it was parked in the sandbox. Parked in the garden, it should warm the tomatoes the way it has warmed Mike. Now, if only we could find a way to warm the bees for our fruit trees...




We use other structures in the garden, too. We have an early row cover to keep our corn warm (I plant half inside the house 2 weeks early so we have about a month long period of ripe corn in August).  We also use a cloth type covering to protect the cabbages and kohlrabi from Cabbage Moths. Neither will provide enough protect for tender seedlings in -3, though.

All in all, I can't complain too much about the cold.  The snow has been off the ground for over a month, unlike last year at this time.  Check out last year's planting day blog to feel the pain. Also, we are eating our first asparagus, so harvest mid-May takes the chill off the night-time lows.