So many apples

Harvest has begun to ramp way up! After a cold and wet summer, the heat of August is moving things along.

I was sure cucumber crop was a bust but suddenly, we have dozens of tiny cucs growing. Some are these small, ball-like ones. Others are these more traditional field cucumbers.

The plum trees are also starting to bear, albeit the crop is still pretty small as the trees are young.

The tomato plants are also beginning to provide a few to eat. 

There is also a large patch of sunflowers that I had nothing to do with planting.

The garlic finally dried enough that I could trim them up and then they returned to the garage for another few weeks of curing. I will probably plant next year's crop towardws mid-September.

We have been carefully thinning the carrots and this is paying dividends in terms of big-ass carrots at the end of the season. Mt hand span in 9 inches (thumb to pink) and most that we have harvested have been in this range.

Our early apple tree is loaded. I picked over 600 apples just standing on the ground. There ar eprobabky another 200 or so I can get with the ladder.

We have made pie filling, sauce, and multiple crisps. We've also given a couple of hundred apples away. The late tree is looking similarly loaded.

It got so crazy I had to go buy more jars!

I hope to dig some potatoes next week an start cleaning up some of the beds for the winter.

So much rain

Alright, this has been the rainiest June ever in Edmonton (26.5cm) and it is raining again today! This has had some impact on the garden!

There have been lots of opportunities for cool picture taking.

The ground, though, is sodden and plants are suffering.

The kale and potatoes are doing okay. Other root veggies (carrots, beets) are stalled and even the peas are way behind. The basil and squash all look like they are about to give up.

Some of the flowers are doing okay.

I've spent a lot of time indoors, to avoid the rain and plague of mosquitoes. I harvested some rhubarb and combined it with saskatoons from the freezer to make and can some saskatoon-rhubarb pie filling, which was delicious

I also baked some Christmas cakes, soaked them with whiskey and put them aside to age in a cool cupboard. The yard desperately needs weeding but what can you do?

Paneer

We've spent the past month cleaning out the freezer and the pantry of last year's produce and are making progress. For a change of pace, I made some paneer today (under the close supervision of the dog), since the store was out.

A pretty straight-forward process. Getting back to the pantry, we're on track to use up the jam and apple sauce we canned and we're making some progress on the dried stuff. More tomato powder and paste will be on the to-do for next year. Also, more minced and dried onions.

We have pretty much everything out of the freezer except for some garlic scape pesto (more pesto in general would be appreciated). We do still have a lot of saskatoons. I need to find some rhubarb in order to make some saskatoon rhubarb pie filling. And I might get ambitious and use some of the apple pie filling we have canned for some tarts. We'll see how bored I get this week.

The paneer turned out well and is in the fridge awaiting dinner on Wednesday. I had a brief moment of insanity and started looking at greenhouses. Temu-style greenhouses are cheap but the reviews are hilariously bad. Real greenhouses are insanely expensive. Happily, sanity has prevailed and I contented myself with a wander around the seed store and purchased some green bean and pea seeds. 

 Oops, looks like I forgot to post last week after we returned from a short vacation to the Okanagan!

The good news with the extended fall has been that the squash and melon plants now have a chance at getting some mature fruit off!

I've also harvested about 75% of the potatoes. I'm letting some plants go a little longer this year in hope of extending the shelf life of the stored potatoes. The picture below is about 25% of the total take this year.

Jenn and Cajun helped me harvest the second half of our second apple tree.

These are a slightly more tart baking apple.

The result was a lot of apples!

The big ones I reserved for baking. The smaller ones all got sauced.

We ended up with close to 20 litres of apple sauce and a few pints of apple butter.

I also harvested the grapes to make a small batch of jelly with later on. These are currently in the freezer.

In anticipation of the last haul of veggies needing to be frozen, I have started thawing and jamming the gallons of raspberries this summer.

I managed to get two gallons finished (maybe 6 litres of finished jam) before I got bored. I will try to do something similar next week.

It looks like we'll be getting a frost this weekend so I am harvesting the more vulnerable crops. I have also been moving dirt around to install three more raised beds in the warm, sunny spot by the garage. Hopefully, I will have this done by next week!

Beans, beets and tomatoes

Most of this week was spent managing the harvest and beginning to put the garden to rest. Since there is no frost expected for at least another two weeks, I've decided to leave lots of stuff to continue growing.

I did pull the last of the bush beans and harvested the first of the pole beans and froze them for a winter meal.

The tomatoes are just starting but there aren't enough to do anything with them except eat them fresh. So I took the ripest of the excess, cubed them and froze them. When we get enough to process, I'll thaw and put them through the mill.

There is a half decent grape crop this year but it needs a bit more time to ripen.

I did yank the rest of the beets and made some sweet pickles. I forget how much work and mess there is when pickling beets!

Apples and pesto

We're reaching the point where planting decisions are now starting to come back and haunt me.

The grape vine is looking like it will produce enough grapes this year to make a very small batch of jelly.

Jess helped me pick the last of the early apple tree last week.

We had about a third of the tree's production left. I made crisps and such but also cooked a bunch down to make apple sauce.

The extra sauce that wouldn't fit in the canner got turned into apple butter and canned later. I'll probably repeat this with the later tree once we harvest it (probably the last half of September).

Some of the peppers are ready enough to be incorporated in dinners.

The squash are in a race against the front. We might get this hubbard squash off.

The cucumbers were a wash out this year and I'll need to make better planting decisions with them next summer.

A friend gifted me a head of celery. We ate a few stalks and then I dehydrated the rest. It shrinks down to about half of a cup once the water is out.

I also harvested enough of the basil to make some garlic scape pesto to freeze for the winter months.

We've been trying to enjoy the garden as fall sets in and had out first autumn fire the other night. The huge squash patch in the background continues to grow.

There are a couple of pumpkins I'm feeling good about. Maybe also some butternut squash. The vines are sprawling and hiding little pumpkins everywhere, including two that are growing at chest height on raspberry canes.

Today's task is to deal with the first of the tomatoes. We're getting too many to eat but not enough to can (kind of a busy year for tomatoes in my garden) so I'm thinking of freezing them whole or chopped for later processing.