June update: Peonies, squash and apple

Alright, several weeks of travelling (followed by frantic weeding) have kept me away from the blog but things feel more in hand now.

Peony season is just ending and it was amazing this year. Lovely blooms and one plant that was struggling last year seems to have recovered (I suspect all of the rain got in June helped).

The carrots are up and look so much better than this photo suggests. The beets have also germinated after a second sowing along with green beans. I pulled the radishes and, after an unsupervised trip to the green house, replanted the areas with a mix of pepper plants and some flowers.

The rain has also helped the squash, which are starting to look viable! The basil has been less happy with the water and could use a week or two of heat.

The potatoes in the raised boxes are about to set flowers. The potatoes in the ground are a few weeks behind (which is fine).

The cucumbers and squash I have planted to trellis up struggle, for reasons I do not really understand. The soil has been amended over and over. They may just need some time. Everything seems a bit set back by the cooler June. Or, possible, I have been cursed.

The daisies are running wild in the yard and may require action.

The water has been good for the apple trees, which have fruit and it is starting to get big. Both trees got a sharp pruning last year so I'm not sure what that will mean for the overall harvest.

The community garden, where I do not have a plot, has also busted out with the rain.

Today is garlic scape harvest day so that is probably the plan for the weekend. The saskatoons and raspberries will be the next crops--likely in two weeks.

Winter activities

Clearly gardening hasn't been high on my list of activities (it is winter in Edmonton, after all!).

One thing I have been doing is attending my community's gardening club's meetings. My interest is in the discussion around the possibility of a community garden. This seems quite exciting (although the approval process is daunting). 

I hosted our last meeting and the educational component was "things from the garden that I have fermented". Jennifer handled the pouring of the various drinks. The rhubarb wine was well received, the hard cider was deemed okay, and the apple jack was reviewed as "smells good". Which is pretty fair--apple jack has pretty intense flavours. Strawberry wine is on my list of summer projects.

For Christmas, I bought Jess some vanilla beans and vodka to make her own vanilla (she uses a lot while baking). She was very excited to get the 26er of vodka in her stocking. I sensed some disappointment with the vanilla beans.

Anyhow, we have cut the beans and they are soaking--this can apparently take up to six months to to get all of the flavour out of the beans but the initial (one month) results are very promising.

In the meantime, we have been trying to enjoy the good weather with skating, skiing and snow shoeing. The hoar-frost this week has been crazy beautiful.

I've also been cooking and trying to use up what we stored last summer and fall. Above I included some oven-dried tomatoes and much of a bottle of rhubarb wine in a risotto, to rave reviews.

Jasper community garden

There is lots to see in Jasper, but one of my favourite stops is their community garden. It is located just up the street from the train station and has gorgeous views of the mountains.

The garden is surrounded by an elk fence (the challenges of mountain gardening!) and contains 40ish 4x8 foot plots. Over the years, gardeners have also started colonizing some of the empty spaces in the garden and there are mini-gardens tucked into corners everywhere.

The diversity of vegetables and flowers is pretty amazing, especially given the shorter growing season and space constraints.

Some folks have also expanded their beds. This stone expansion sits in front of a regular wooden bed.

This gardener has gone upwards, with a pea trellis capped with an inverted light fixture for basil.

I suspect frost, fires and animals make for some interesting challenges, but it is a lovely use of otherwise dead space in the townsite.

Food forest, peas, tomatoes and berries

Last summer, a bunch of folks planted an urban food forest in the river valley. The idea was to use a city program designed to increase the number of trees to plant fruit-bearing bushes. I took a wander through this week and, unfortunately, it doesn't look like much survived (although the grass was quite high so perhaps some is just hidden).

I did, however, almost step on this nest of chicks. You can just make out their open beaks in the dark spot (click on the photo to zoom in).

The heat is really helping the plat. We're seeing the mock orange start to fade along with the peonies. But the day lilies are just budding up and will be with us the rest of the summer. On the south side, we're also seeing the delphiniums getting ready to bloom/

More exciting are the first few tomatoes that have set. I started cleaning out the freezer today in anticipation of lots of sauce come fall. Around front, the Persian cone flowers are attracting the bees.

The strawberries are also ready and we're starting to see a few shell peas. Everything is requiring watering during this spot of really hot weather.

The zucchini have also finally hit their stride and are noticeable bigger every time I'm behind the garage.

I'm hopeful that Jess and I can pick some strawberries during the first part of vacation. Today we bought some cherries at the farmer's market and I'be pitted and frozen a bunch for smoothies in the winter. I'd also like to do some baking and can some rhubarb but it is too hot to turn on the oven!

Apples, pumpkins and onion seeds

School's back in and there are signs of autumn everywhere. The apples in the yard have started to pink-up nicely. Our tree seems to finally be finding its feet with 20-odd apples, all of a good size. A tiny bit of maggot is evident but we can live with that (some of the trees I've seen this summer have been really bad).

The sunflowers and bees are both given' 'er all day long. Alas, the days are much shorter.

I tested the second patch of hawthorn berries yesterday at lunch and they too are lame-tasting. Much like rose hips--nice enough but not really worth the time to jelly when crab apples abound. So I'm going to scratch them off my foraging list and instead see about bagging some onion seeds.

The school garden nearby has been a roaring success despite limited attention all summer. The pumpkins they have are amazing!

The fall rye I planted out back as a cover crop is starting to come up. I almost "weeded" it (looks like crabgrass) until I noticed the uniform pattern of the "weeds".

We went out for a walk last night and saw a double rainbow (much brighter in person--you can just barely see the second rainbow here).

Tonight I'm going to make apple butter from some of the remaining apples.

Chard, Raspberries and an Urban Food Forest

While the weather this weekend was mixed, it was a busy one. Towards the river, a large number of volunteers put in Edmonton's first urban food forest. I think this is a fantastic idea and wish I had read the invitation a bit more closely about RSVPing. Oh well--bike ride instead.

Closer to home, the garden is coming up with the swiss chard being easy to harvest this week. I have the food dehydrator ready to go. I expect these could also be blanched and frozen.

The raspberry bushes are also getting ready to pick, with a few of the early bushes already bearing.

Similarly, the apple tree seemed to really appreciate the warm weather last week.

We took a stroll over to the river last night and checked on the hawthorn berries. They have come in in a large enough quantity to pick later on for jelly. Must locate some gloves to protect from the insane thorns (bottom right of picture below).

On our way home, we ran across another front yard garden.

This is an encouraging trend (Jess is a bit sick of me saying "imagine what you could grow in that space?") and the Front Yards in Bloom folks gave me a nice "Edible Front Law" sign this week. Now off to pick some Saskatoons.

Jasper community garden

I love community gardens and I got a chance to wander through the Jasper community garden this weekend. The Jasper garden is the work of the Jasper Local Food Society.

It is amazing to see such a diverse set of gardens in a location with such a short growing season. There are about 50 beds here and many folks have expanded beyond their bed by colonizing grassy areas between their bed and the fence. Some stuff struggled (corn, for example) but all of the usual suspects seemed to be doing quite well.

The fence is also impressive, keeping out the local elk population. An elf fence puts my own woes with slugs in context, doesn't it? :)

Even with snow dusting the peaks on Sunday morning, there were gardens full of frost hardy plants (as well as lots of tomatoes). Now back to my own potato digging!

Beans, potatoes and saskatoons

After a trip down to the legislature for Canada Day pancakes, we had a nice bike ride and stumbled across a big patch of Saskatoon berries in the river valley. This is a nice find as it means we can pick Saskatoons without a bit trip to the countryside.

We also toured the Oliver Community Garden. This is set up in what was once a paved school lot just west of downtown. There are 120 gardeners here and the garden is immaculate. Below is one of the denser plots, with at least a dozen vegetables growing and enough soil amendment that it needs side boards to contain it. The raised beds (for accessibility) are also lovely.

Back home just in time for a major downpour, we made fruitcake, bread and put some more basil into oil for winter use.

We also noted that the beans have flowered. Below, the colourful painted lady beans are out as are the Ireland Creek Annie beans. The green and yellow beans in the backyard are also flowering and the peas behind the garage have set a huge number of pods.

The potatoes are also flowering. These are russet potatoes, I think.

Up next: We need to do a bit of maintenance in the yard later today after a bike ride. This includes starting to move some irises out of the back and into the front to make way for a pea bed for next year.

Jasper community garden

I've been very impressed with the growth of community gardens in Edmonton but was floored to see one on our recent trip to Jasper.

This garden is located along the railway tracks just NE of the train station. I don't recall it being there last year.

There was quite a hippy feel to to, with nicely painted chairs and a few flower bed interspersed with very healthy vegetable plots. And the backdrop was breath-taking.

Up next: After a week away there are some surprises in the garden, including a fair number of cucumbers and a few small squash among the crn plants. I also think the corn is ready to harvest (at least some of the cobs).