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.