Apples and potatoes

We've moved into apple season, with the early tree ready to harvest. We've been making crisps while I gird myself to make sauce and apple pie filling (it is too hot to can this week).

I've also pulled some herbs to dry in the garage.

For the first tie our plum trees have fruit. There are only four of the small yellow plums and one of the red one (which was delicious). But bigger harvests await.

I also dug the first two potato plants up this week to get some for dinner. Wow, fresh potatoes are amazing!

I don't think I have much time to do much this week beyond water as we have a short trip planned.

Sunflowers, tomatoes, beans

We're in a slow patch in the garden season. The sunflowers are out, finally, however, which is cheery.

Also some of the carrots we missed last year are flowering as we harvest the first of this year's crop.

Jenn and I took a trip to the Devonian Botanical garden and saw some amazing southern globe thistles.

Although we've been eating the beans, we did have enough for me to blanch and freeze some, maybe for Xmas dinner since we didn't have enough of a pea crop to do that this year.

The cherry tomatoes are also starting to ripen.

I picked a few to eat and they were amazingly sweet and tart.

I am coming to terms with the fact that we'll probably only get one lone squash this year (I think this is a giant pumpkin) and maybe no melons. Just not enough heat in July to get the plants flowering fast enough. Oh well!

This week I'm mostly doings one dead heading and watching the apples get bigger and redder. We may need to deal with some of them next week. I also have some dried fruit soaking in hooch to make Christmas cake.

Water, carrots, and beans

We spent much of this past week out of town paddling so this post will be brief. And the headline is all of the rain we've had. The picture below is of what came down overnight one evening!

The rain, coupled with the lack of heat, has meant a lot of growth in greenery but not much in terms of fruit. So no tomatoes yet and I fear the squash will not have enough time to mature even though the vines are really doing well.

There are a lot of flowers, though, including this wild onion.

And I have dill plants as tall as I am, which the bees are loving.

I did get a decent first harvest off the green beans and I need to plant more of these next year.

I also pulled some early carrots and we had a lovely meal with some potatoes and the last of the peas.

The garlic is mostly done curing, I trimmed it up and set aside next year's seed for planting this fall. The rest has gone into storage in the basement.

This week will entail getting back on top of the weeds, maybe thinning the carrots one last time, and giving some thoughts to reworking the raised beds in the back come autumn.

Garlic, melons, water, and thistle

Well, we had both big heat and big rain this week! The garden welcomed both. On the rainy day, I spent some time in the garage trimming off the stalks from the garlic. It was mostly dried but I decided to leave it another two weeks to finish curing.

Flowers of the friendly and unfriendly kind are in heavy bloom this week. I'm not a bit fan of thistle, but this picture turned out really well.

Raspberry picking continues and I tried a second batch of saskatoon-raspberry syrup, with a slightly different recipe. The dog has a bit of a raspberry problem and insisted on closely supervising all work.

The result this time was tasty but a bit too runny. Next time I'll ad the lemon juice back in. This made enough that I canned four jars for winter.

We're also experimenting with other raspberry recipes, including raspberry crisp (sour!). The freezer is nearing capacity so I fear I will be jamming in the heat this week.

We had the mother of all rain storms. It is unusual for the water to pool in the pathways as well as in between the rows of carrots!

But the heat has kicked the squash and melon plants into gear. Finally, I'm seeing some vining and blooming on the cantaloupe.

The cucumber plants is also finally starting to climb.

The second sowing of lettuce is also now ready. The first sowing is well into bolting. Not a great picture below but I thought the colours were lovely.

I am hopeful we'll be done with raspberries this week and I can have a short break before the apples start. I did get the dehydrator going and got another batch of mint dried and put away. It will be a few more weeks before the basil is big enough to get a huge harvest off of.

Raspberry ice cream, syrup, and other garden things

Well, we're ass-deep in raspberry season (still) and I picked three gallons yesterday. We've been giving berries away, eating them as fast as we can, and freezing the rest. The freezer is looking full enough that I may need to break out the canner and sweat out a couple of gallons of jam in the summer heat.

Jenn has been trying to incorporate them into new recipes, including making raspberry ice cream (berries, condensed milk, maybe a touch of vanilla, and whipping cream; mix and freeze).

This was super good, especially with more berries on top. She's promised another batch for when the kid gets home on some days off.

The robins and I have managed to pick our saskatoon bush clean, running into lots of bee friends along the way.

I saw someone make saskatoon-raspberry syrup for pancakes online so I followed their recipe with at test batch.

A quick heat to soften, then through the food mill to get the skins and most of the seeds out.

Then some sugar and lemon juice and a quick boil to incorporate. Since this was a small test-batch, I didn't both to water bath it--it just went into the fridge.

It was a little too gooey for syrup (loose jelly texture) so we decided to use it as an ice cream topping. It has a lovely rich flavour from the saskatoons.

The rest of the garden goes in fits and starts. I picked the last of the peas. They did poorly this year (no idea why, maybe too much water?).

Some of the peppers have fruited. Others are struggling with the cooler weather and rain.

The grapes, though are really liking the water and I think we'll have enough for a small batch of jelly.

There is finally good leaf growth on the various squash plants and a few fruit are setting. I think, with two months left, we should get something useful. I'm thinking about rejigging the back gardens this fall so I might plant them elsewhere next year.

The rain is also plumping up the apples nicely.

This coming week, I need to finish curing the garlic and get it ready for storage. I'm also hopeful we'll start to see some green beans from the plants. I should also get the dehydrator out and do another round of herbs.

Raspberries, garlic, and saskatoon jelly

As predicted, raspberry production is now a gallon a day. This was a quick pick this morning on one side of the yard. Most of these are going into the freezer for later processing. The rest are getting eaten fresh or given away. We finally finished last year's frozen berries yesterday!!

I noticed that these thorny-assed black raspberries, which I thought I had eliminated, have managed to make a comeback underneath the saskatoon bush. They are tasty (much richer in flavour and not as acidic as red raspberries) but the thorns are horrendous.

The wind has also been beating some of the canes against the fence, leaving CSI-like splatter behind.

Jess was home this week. In addition to picking some berries, she helped me pull the garlic.

We ended up with 90 heads this year, which is enough to get us through the winter and also to have some to give away or barter with.

After they dried enough that I could brush the dirt off, I hung them in the garage to cure. The garage reeks of garlic. As soon as you open the door, you can smell it.

Overall, the size of the heads is much improved over past years. A few years of selective breeding had increased the average head size to at least commercial sized. A few are huge.

The rest of the garden is slowly coming along. We have enough dill weed so I'm letting some of the plants seed, both to give us some dill seed and also to ensure it comes back next year.

Jess did a quick harvest of ripe cherries off the tree. I did a second cull today and, pitted, we have one and a bit cups (which is the first significant harvest we've had). Not bad for year three. I will probably try some cherry tarts to use them up (they are frozen right now).

Part of Jess's job requires seed harvesting. It is berry season up north and they picked dew berries, saskatoons, and wild strawberries last week. Her last shift was processing the berries, basically juicing them to get the seed out so they can dry and be collected. This meant she could bring home some saskatoon juice (it takes a lot of berries to get a litre of saskatoon juice).

There is some much pectin in the juice that it starts to set immediately on its own. We decided to make jelly. I used a crab apple recipe to get to the proportions.

The chunks in the show below are just juice that has gelled on its own.

The flavour is good and we got four small jars plus a bit of excess in the end.

We did. however overcook it, so it is hard to spread. Jenn suggests we ball it and cover it in chocolate to make some kind of bonbon.

The rest of the yard is still blooming. Below are what remains of my lilies after five years of lily beetle infestation. Super pretty for a short time but just too vulnerable to bugs to bother re-establishing any number of them, when dallies grow so well here.

I suspect we'll still be dealing with a raspberry glut next week. The apples are showing encouraging size already, probably a function of the additional rain we've had this year.