And So It Begins … And Ends (Kinda)

So the garden was planted over the May Long Weekend.  It was the third year in a row we were out planting the garden as the chuckwagon trucks rolled by.

This year instead of rushing to get everything planted we took our time and spread the planting over two days.   I still have my seedlings to transplant and now that the fence is up they should be in the ground tomorrow.

I think we went a little crazy with what we planted, it everything grows well we could have an over abundance of fresh vegetables – nothing to complain about that’s for sure!!

This is what we planted:

                                  Sunflowers (45 ft)

                                  Potatoes – Yukon Gold & Norland (approximately 60 of each)

                                  Peas – Green Arrow (50 ft)

                                  Peas – Sugar Sprint (15 ft)

                                  Soy Bean – Beer Friend (5 ft)

                                  Spinach – Tyee (36 ft)

                                  Beets – Detroit Red (36 ft)

                                  Beets – Touchstone Golden (18 ft)

                                  Beets – Chioggia (Candy Cane) (18 ft)

                                  Beans – Yellow, Gold Rush (72 ft)

                                  Swiss Chard – Silverado (36 ft)

                                  Carrots – Bolero (72 ft)

                                  Turnip – Purple Prince & Laurentian (18 ft of each)

                                  Onions – White, Yellow, Red (10 ft of each)

                                  Green Onions (5 ft)

                                  Shallots (5 ft)

                                  Dill (10 ft)

                                  Garlic (10 ft)

                                  Squash – Small Wonder (Spaghetti), Papaya Pear (2 plants of each)

                                  Zucchini – Golden Dawn III (2 plants)

                                  Zucchini – Elegance (6 plants)

Still to transplant: tomatoes (18), celery (6), broccoli (6), cauliflower (4), cabbage (2)

Goodness that seems like a lot… did I mention my garden is bigger than some people’s houses – it’s approximately 1800 square feet!!!

Similar to last year, the day after we were done planting we received two days of heavy rain followed by a thunder storm on the third day.  The rain was the first in a long time and it allowed us to get about 1400 L of water in storage; which was a good thing because its been so hot and dry the past few days we’ve already been watering.

On Sunday we noticed the turnips (purple prince), spinach and potatoes were starting to make an appearance.  Today we notice a single pea (green arrow) and bean and that almost the entire row of beets (detroit red) are also gracing us with their presence.  We’re supposed to get some lite rain over night so hopefully that will give everything else a little boost!

So that being said, the beginning of garden season has started; and I think the end of blogging is near. Last year I enjoyed blogging about my garden but by the end of the season it started to feel like something I was obligated to do.  Anyone who has a blog can truly understand how time consuming it can be and right now I would rather spend my time doing other things.  From time to time if I stumble across something interesting that I feel the need to share I will but the multiple postings per week will stop…. And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind later!

So thank you to everything who followed my blog, keep in touch and Happy Gardening!!

I'm Still Here!!!

A few weeks ago marked the beginning of summer for me – it was the first time since last year that I did something outside, and it was wonderful.  To be out of house and doing something outside instead of being a lump on the couch felt refreshing and exhilarating.

I tackled one of the flower beds removing last years plants and pulled a few weeds – yes, there are weeds already.  As I cleared the dead plants I was reminded why I love perennials.  Hiding amongst the dead leaves and stems were numerous little buds pushing through the earth; and now, two weeks later they are flourishing.  I love my perennials because they never let me down, every year they reappear and make things oh so easy for me.

I must admit, I haven’t really given this year’s garden much thought yet.  We always seem to be busy with something and have had a few things comes up that required our full attention so garden planning, and blogging, have taken the back seat.

One thing I did do over the winter was stumble across a wonderful garden book.  It’s called “NO GUFF VEGETABLE GARDENING” and is a book I would recommend to any gardener.  It’s a fun book that is easy to read and is full of useful ideas and suggestions.

I’m still having a hard time believing it’s a week into May already.  Over the weekend I actually took the time to try and plan the garden layout.  In previous years I would have done this several times already.

Over the weekend the temperature was in the high teens and it was tempting to start planting but I know it’s too early.  On the long weekend we’ll tackle the garden and start planting – I’m starting to get excited.  And I promise once the seeds are in the ground you’ll be hearing more from me.

Seed Vitality & Longevity

When I started to make my seed wish list for the garden I began to wonder if the seeds I had in storage were still good; I tend to over shop for seeds and have a surplus from the previous year’s garden, some of which would be entering their third year.  I figured I could risk using the old seed or throw them out and get new.  As I wasn’t too keen on having to purchase new, I decided to do some research - off to the inter-web I went.

Very quickly I discovered there are many website that discuss seed longevity.  By reviewing many different lists, I drew the conclusion that most seeds are good for 3 to 4 years, with a few exceptions.  This got me thinking, are seeds like that container of yogurt or sour cream in the fridge that lasts well past its best before date, or are they like raw chicken left uncooked – something you don’t want to touch?  And then I stumbled across a blog that talked about testing seeds.  Perfect!

So here is it, how to test if your seeds are good:

1)      Choose 10 seeds from the package of seeds you wish to test. 

Ten is a good amount to use because it allows you to easily extrapolate your finding to the rest of the seed package.  Ex: If only one seed germinates, you have 10% chance the rest of the seeds will.

2)      Take a damp paper towel, fold in it half, and place your ten seeds on half of it. Fold the paper towel again so that the seeds are sandwiched between the layers.  (If you are testing larger seeds like peas or beans it may work better if you put them in a glass jar with wet paper towel on top.)

3)      Place your “seed sandwich” in a zippy and seal.

4)      Keep the baggie in a warm area and check daily to make sure the paper towel is damp.

5)      After a week, or a few days if you’re impatient like me, take out and unfold the paper towel to see what is happening.  You may start to see some sprouting action or you may see nothing.

6)      Make sure to keep the paper towel damp and continue to check your seeds until they have sprouted or you feel nothing more is going to happen.  Keep in mind the longer the seeds take to germinate the less healthy they are. (Of course this also depends on the type of seeds.)

When I did this, I tested three types of onion seeds.   According to what I had read, onion seeds were only good for one year.  As these seed were about to enter their third year of existence I felt it important to test them.

My results: only 40% of the green onion seeds sprouted, 80% of the white onions sprouted (extremely slowly) and 100% of the red onions sprouted within a ten days.  My conclusion: turf the green and white onion seeds, keep the red onions.

Happy seed testing!

A Storage Note

Last fall a majority of our garden vegetables ended up being blanched, vacuumed sealed and frozen.  What we didn’t freeze ended up in our Cold Room.

When storing in the cold room, we placed the potatoes, onions and garlic in burlap bags so they could breathe and the carrots were packed in sand in plastic bins.

As the end of March approaches we are noticing a significant reduction in our vegetable stash: there is only one pack of turnip left, a handful of packs of swiss chard, peas and beans, about 1/3 of the potatoes, ½ the carrots and the onions, garlic and shallots are long gone.  (Note: In the fall  we ended up with around 160 pounds of potatoes and 2.5 - 20 gallon plastic tubs of sand packed carrots.)

We’ve noticed the Yukon Gold Potatoes store a lot better than the Red Norlands.  The red potatoes are softening and starting to sprout while the Yukon Gold are sprout free and are as firm and crisp as the day they were harvested.

The carrots, despite the odd top trying to grow, are firm and crisp and are showing very little sign of drying out and decay.  In the past, we haven’t had this sort of luck with our carrots.  Over our few years of gardening, we have found that different varieties and different storage methods have a significant impact on the duration you can store carrots; and I’m sure this applies to other veggies as well.

The first year we had our garden we stored the carrots in a plastic tub packed in sand; they did ok, but many become soft and dried out over time.  The second year we grew the same carrot but stored them packed in sand in a plywood box; we will never to do this again as the wood absorbed the moisture from the sand leaving the carrots soft and wrinkly very early in the winter.  This (or last) year we went back to plastic, to keep the moisture in the sand, and grew a carrot variety that was good for storing.

When storing vegetables, it seems as though there is an element of luck to it.  Keep in mind though there are also a few things you can do to improve your “luck.”  When shopping for seeds consider how you plan to store or process your vegetables.  Most seed descriptions specify if they are good for canning, freezing, or storing- I look for these qualities in the seeds I buy to ensure that we can get the most out of the garden for many months after the final harvest.

Eating Local… Really Local

Eating local and knowing where your food comes from is something we hear about more and more.  It is something we should all pay a little more attention too as there are many benefits to eating local, not to mention it’s important to know where your food comes from.  We have all become dependent on grocery stores to provide us with our food and in doing so, people are losing sight of where our food comes from and kids think food “grows on shelves.”  We have become a society where we care more about what something costs as opposed to where it comes from.  The “Eat Local” movement is trying to remedy this by making us think twice about the food we buy and consume. 

Here’s an interesting watch if you have a few minutes.

Some people take the whole eating local thing to the extreme defining local as a certain radius around the area they live;  have your ever seen or heard of the 100 Mile Challenge show on Food Network??  For many Canadians limiting what we consume to food that was grown or harvested in a 100 Mile radius would make eating a healthy balanced diet difficult.  We consider anything Canadian to be local; if I’m at the grocery store and I have a choice to buy an apple grown in Canada vs. the States, I’ll take the Canadian apple.

With a garden, we know exactly where our food comes from and it can’t get much more local than your back yard.  The wonderful thing about gardening is you can grow as much or as little as you want; you can have a huge garden with multiple vegetables or you can grow a few different vegetables in pots on your deck or apartment balcony.  The only problem with our garden is that it only provides us with vegetables; it doesn’t provide us with any meat.  It may be food for meat, but it can’t grow meat.

Last fall after the garden had been harvested and put to sleep another type of harvest began; a harvest that would add some meat to all the veggies in the freezer, a harvest also referred to as hunting season.  By the end of hunting season we had successfully harvested three deer leaving our freezer close to overflowing with vegetables and meat that we knew exactly where they came from.  In fact, one of the deer came from the green belt directly south of our acreage. 

Now we can proudly boast, at times, that we had a 100 Mile Meal, and depending on what deer meat we eat, a One Mile Meal.

Tomatoes: A Sad Story

Last year our tomatoes sucked – plain and simple.  We didn’t have a single fruit ripen on the vine and the ones that were brought inside didn’t do that great either.  We attempted to ripen the tomatoes inside using two different methods.

The first method was the pick the tomatoes and simply to lay them on a brown paper covered table in the basement.  (The table wasn’t big enough for all of them so we put some in cardboard boxes on the floor.)  These tomatoes did change color but I’m not sure if you could say they ripened.  By the time they were red their skins were starting to shrivel and the flesh inside was starting to dry out and break down.

The second method was to remove the entire plant from the ground leaving the tomatoes attached and hang them in the cold room.  We used this method before and it worked wonderfully; this year it didn’t work at all.  Instead of ripening, the tomatoes shriveled, started to mold, and proceeded to fall off the plants.  This was very disappointing as we had utilized this method on the healthiest plants with the most fruit because of previous success.

When we hung the plants upside down we did one thing different from previous occasions and this “one thing” proved to give the exact opposite results.  Previously we left the roots on the plants, this year we removed the roots.  We cut the roots off because the root system is difficult to remove from the ground and it creates a lot of mess inside.   I’m thinking that by removing the roots we killed the plant rendering it incapable feeding/ripening the tomatoes; if we ever do this again we’ll be sure to leave the roots on the plant.

(If all works out as planned we won’t have to ripen tomatoes inside anymore as the intent is to build a greenhouse in the spring.)

Anyway, we had brought all the tomatoes inside in mid September.  By the time the end of October rolled around, as sad as the tomatoes looked, something needed to be done with them.  We simply couldn’t turf them; there was a lot of time and effort put into them.  There may have been a hand full of tomatoes that we could have eaten as is but the bulk of them were not looking too appetizing.  So what did I do with them?  I made tomato juice – lots of tomato juice.

I washed and cut them in chucks, and placed them in my largest pot; by the time I was done my 2 gallon pot was almost overflowing with tomatoes.  After cooking on low for a few hours I gave them a quick blend with my boat motor (hand mixer) and then they were ready for straining.  To strain them I ladled the mixture into a fine mesh strainer and then used the underside of the ladle to stir/force the juice through the strainer.  This would push the juice and some plump through leaving the seeds and skin behind to be easily discarded.  When everything was said and done, I ended up with about 30 cups of pure tomato juice.  Unfortunately the quality of the juice wasn’t that great, it was watery and quite acidic.

So what does one do with 30 cups of tomato juice? Freeze it and worry about it later!

Last weekend I finally took a few of the containers of tomato juice and made tomato soup.  The recipe I used was one that I had used last year and had found on a blog a visit frequently.  I had to tweak the recipe a little because of the poor flavor of my juice and also because I had tomato juice instead of tomatoes.  All and all it turned out pretty good.

We served it will a dollop of sour cream for some extra richness.  Soup anyone?

Tomato Soup Recipe:  http://www.formerchef.com/2009/08/02/how-to-make-fresh-tomato-soup

A Smell of Summer

I love the smell of dill.  It’s such a fresh vibrant smell that reminds me of summer.

Besides liking its fragrant aroma, why do I grow dill and do I use it for?  My mom would always grow it to use in her pickles but I can’t remember it being used in anything else.  I grow it for my pickles too; but I use very little of what I grow.  So what do we do with the rest of it?

We try to use it as seasoning in some of our cooking.  I say try because more often than not we forgot about it or are too lazy to go pick it.  Dill pairs well with potatoes.  Sometimes we will throw some of the leaves/franz (the fernie stuff) in with potatoes while they boil/steam, or cut it fine and season pan fried potatoes with it.  (I love pan fried tators and dill… yum!!)  On occasion I’ve used it to make my own dill dip and if I would plan ahead more often I would do this a lot more as I love dill dip.  I’ve never put it in soup or salads but they’re both viable options.

Last year the dill in the garden didn’t grow too well so we didn’t have too much good quality dill left at the end of the season.  The cool weather early in the season stunted its growth and all the rain weakened its flavor - it was disappointing.

Two years ago in the fall I picked a bunch of dill and dried it the food dehydrated.  The best part about this was the entire house smelt like dill for about a week.  It dried and stored well but the flavor just wasn’t there.

This fall I decided to freeze it.  One weekend early in the fall I picked what was still healthy and had survived the frost.  I only picked the franze as I’ve never used the heads/flowers except for pickling.  After picking it, I gave it a quick bath and air dried it.  Once dry it was given a quick chop, put in an air tight container (I used a freezer jam container) and put in the freezer.  The idea behind this method is whenever we wanted dill all we had to do is take the container out of the freezer, open it and sprinkle some dill. 

Last night with dinner we had fried tators will dill, the entire house ended up full with the pungent smell of dill.  It was wonderful!  It reminded me of being in the garden on a hot summer day.  It was a smell that broke my will power to put off “anything garden” until March as I ended up spending the night on the couch seed shopping and planning the garden.

Cooking Tip:       As the chef house (aka Steve) has discovered, dill does not do well with excessive heat.  If you add it too soon in your cooking you will lose all of its flavor.  (This could be why I had a loss of flavor when I used the dehydrated a few years ago.)