Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

The last two weeks in the yard have been pretty quiet, involving weeding, succession seeding, and a battle with some ants in one of the garden boxes. The rhubarb out front has recovered from last year's drought enough for me to take some stalks.

I've made strawberry-rhubarb pie filling before but I've never tried it as a jam, so I found a recipe online and some frozen strawberries and away we went.

Maybe a bit sweeter than I might like my jams, but it definitely tastes good. Texture is basically a soft spread, not all that different from stewed rhubarb. Might be good on pancakes on a cold, winter day. I'm going to try Saskatoon-rhubarb jam later in the season. Sounds gross but the pies we've tried with this combination are amazing.

The flowers we bought seem to be doing very well in the planters and pots. Keeping them wet in the early heat is quite a job.

The raspberries are all in bloom, to the delight of the bees.

The chives have also flowered like crazy out front beneath the plum tree.

In more exciting news, it looks like the plum tree has set a small number of fruit after a very pretty blossom this spring. Hopefully it will see these through to the fall.

I was wandering the back alleys of the neighbourhood the other morning and noticed some of my neighbours have put up this lovely grape trellis and plants the base on both sides with a huge strawberry patch. Very pretty!

This week, I need to do some thinning of the carrots and the beets and hopefully harvest some lettuce for salads.

Spring arrives!

As it often does, spring came hard this weekend. On Good Friday, there was 12 inches of snow in the yard and I had to shovel my way to the fire pit to burn off some clippings from last year.

By Sunday, it was +18, the snow was almost gone, and we were eating on the back deck in shorts. This meant we could start on a few garden projects. First up was a trip to the equine centre to get some compost for the bed we'll be planting corn in this spring. Note for next year: white pants are not ideal for shovelling compost.

We're still likely eight weeks away from planting corn, so we just dumped the two loads of compost on the bed and spread it out. I'll spent some time turning it in a bit as the ground thaws more.

Jess started tomato seedlings in her room about three or four weeks ago and they were ready tp transplant into containers so we did that one evening. This year, she's labelled the tomatoes, which will making gardening a bit less of a mystery. A few stupice and blush tomatoes, then a bunch of larger red and black tomatoes. She plans to start basil next. She'll be off to work in Banff again this summer so I'll be responsible for getting these into the ground.

I spent a lot of time cleaning up matted leaves and generally tidying the yard. I also fiddled with the water bucket arrangements (going to try a chain drip this year) but need the ground to thaw some more to level the wooden bases. Only a few early tulips have appeared.

The raspberries on the south fence line should produce this year (finally!). I'm going to top seed with clover to try and cover some of the bald patches.

The eastern side of the fence (facing the alley) had thawed enough that I put up a pea trellis. Eventually I'll plant scarlet runners here.

Until then, we can enjoy some early peas (ate the fancy new gardening knife stuck in the ground). I also went out and bought some more supplies for more elaborate trellising for melons and squash in the back yard but the ground needs to dry out a bit before I start to assemble that.

I'm committed to more frequent posting this year, with goal of 20. We'll see. The new neighbours are also talking about doing a garden in their yard so I'm keen to see what they do.

Apples, garlic, carrots

We're headed into harvest season so I have called out reinforcements. Jessica was up the ladder to pick the early apple tree.

We ended up with 60 or 70 pounds of apples and most were of good size.

A bunch went into crisps that are either in the freezer or in my belly.

I dried 18 apples in the dehydrator, filling five one-litre jars.

I then sauced about seven litres full. We'll do more saucing and some apple butter with the second tree after a frost.

Watching the weather. we've also started doing some selective harvesting. We pulled in the ripest half of the cantaloupe harvest. The rest need more time on the vine.

We also culled about a third of the tomatoes. There are still lots on the plants but this will be plenty if we get an unexpected frost.

 

I harvested a bed of potatoes during the week then amended the soil and graded it for garlic next year.

 

Jess got pressed into some stoop labour to get sixty cloves in before the rain last night.

Jenn has been helping me dig carrots.

The carrots are crazy-big this year.

Jenn also helped me pull down the pea trellis on the inside of our fence and till the soil a bit. On the outside, I cut a small new bed for next year to run some scarlet runner beans up the outside.

Hopefully, we'll get a long enough fall that I can get ahead on some of the processing before we have to pull the tender stuff. 

Garlic!

It was garlic week as the leaves were dying down and some local urban outdoorsman had helped himself to a bunch of heads we were growing in the alley.

We harvested about 75 heads. Some were a nice size and some were huge!

These were heads that had gone two years in the ground. We'll have to see what they are like once they are cured (the smell in the garage while they hang  is both wonderful and overpowering).

We also got our second and likely last harvest of peas. Most of these were blanched and frozen.

The rain wants we had big, big peas this year. The story in the tomato patch is less hopeful with a reduce crop due to the cool weather.

With the old garage on its last legs, we are making plans to replace it next year. This means disassembling the garden beds in the alley, burning the old wood, and moving the soil elsewhere (instead of planting a cover crop with the garlic harvested).

There are a couple of spots the city dug up four years ago to put in a new sewer line. The fill they put in slumped, leaving big depressions. So Jess humped the soil here, smoothed it out, and then we threw some grass seed down.

I suspect this week we'll be doing some thinning of the irises out front which will include making room to move the rhubarb away from the garage construction site. The raspberries are also continuing to produce huge amounts of berries and I will have to finish up canning the strawberries so we have adequate freezer space!

Winter that won't quit!

Unit is day 168 of temperatures that are below zero and we're more than a month behind normal in terms of melting. The has been a long winter! Facebook is showing me two years ago that we were planting peas in short sleeves last week!

The back beds are usually the first to be snow-free and warmed up. We can finally see soil (as of yesterday) and I'm hopeful the snow will be gone in the next few days. Inside, we've decided to just start corn this year. The first of the shoots is up an that is hopeful.

Fortunately, the roads have finally melted out so at least I can get my summer bicycle out to ride while we wait on the garden.

Rain, radishes, black berries and beans

So, it has been a pretty damp summer, with major rain storms every day at 4 (kind of like living in Calgary...).  This was a few days ago with the sun to the west streaming in as the clouds dumped buckets of water!

The veggies are loving this. The zucchini are finally producing and Jess is baking zucchini bread as I type. I expect we'll have enough to make zucchini salsa again this year.

I harvested a 3x3 bed of long white French radishes. I saved a couple for roasting but the rest I pickled using garlic from the yard and some of the chive infused vinegar we made this spring.

The radishes were lovely to look at. Nice and crisp and snow white on the inside.

The tomato harvest is coming along. We're managing to keep on top of the ripe ones with a salad each night. But in a few weeks we're going to end up with a glut. Some I will juice and the sauce for use in the autumn.

Most of the potatoes are long done flowering and are looking about ready to wilt down and die before the harvest. Out back there appears to have been a rough Russian Blue in one of the best which shot up some flowers while we were on holidays.

In the front, the blackberry plant has more fruit on it that we've ever had and is also pushing out new canes. I suspect the wetter weather this year has helped it.

The bean vines are also really hitting their stride. These scarlet runner beans are up eight feet and are climbing past the top of the trellis onto the liliac bush and up towards a bird house. They are also producing lots of bean pods.

The back garden needs some soil amendments this fall to loosen it up (still too much clay) but the dill seems to have run wild to fill in the gaps. I must dead-head these plants before they go to seed!

Inside, we racked off the rhubarb wine again and will let it bulk age for several months before bottling. Sitting a month has helped clarify it a lot and the brief taste I got while racking suggests it is not too bad! I am hopeful we can open a beer tonight and see how it is developing.

Radish seeds, poppies, cherries and bees

Vacation has meant more time outside in the yard, cleaning up a few projects and starting to pick some of the veggies. I let a few radishes go to seed to see how that worked and they have put out very pretty seed pods. We'll see if the radishes they produce are any good next year!

The basil seeds didn't take this year but, in their place, we got a bumper crop of poppies. These guys re just about to turn their flower head upwards and give a lovely show of red.

I have been watching the bees. This huge bumble bee landed on Jessica's purple shoe and then flew off. We followed it across the yard until it landed on some delphiniums.

Jess and I went off to forage some cherries this week. On our walk there we saw this neat back alley garden.

I notices that one of our neighbours also has a fruit tree. I'd guess plumbs (despite the apricot colour). The fruit was too far into their yard to get a good look.

We foraged about three litres of nanking cherries from various public plantings near the valley. This is the first year I have noticed these plants (some I walk by every day) so perhaps it has been a good year for cherries? I made jelly with these last night; we'll see what the flavour is like when it sets.

Up next: I have been collecting raspberries and I think we have enough for a small batch of jam. I'm watching the garlic fairly closely as it seems to be heading towards maturity quite quickly this year.