Asparagus season!

The end of the flowering shrubs is in sight, which means the lilacs are out!

And, after a lengthy period of doing whatever it is that they do, the potatoes have finally pushed out of the ground.

The summer flowers are also underway, with these self-seeded poppies brightening the front porch.

On the weekend, Jenn and I rode down to the farmer's market and picked up several bunches of asparagus. We ate some fresh and the rest I started processing. Most of it was snapped, blanched and frozen for pizzas or veggie pot pie in the coming months.

I used some of the left over stalks and the water from blanching to make soup stock. I also put some of the ends of the asparagus in the dehydrator to make asparagus powder.

Over about 20 hours, five trays of split asparagus stalks lost about 90% of their volume. A quick whirl in the coffee grinder and they were reduced to about a half a cup. The powder will go into soups over the next winter.

The first of the radishes are ready out back. We harvested them along with a first cropping of lettuce for a salad last night.

I have done a second sowing of lettuce in some of the bald spots in the lettuce bed. We also planted from scarlet runner beans in behind the peas (which are up about 8 inches).

Jessica and Jenn also cut some rhubarb and combined it with some of last year's frozen strawberries (freeze clean-out time) to make a lovely pie.

We're forecast to get a bit of rain and a break from the heat this week. That's good as the watering demands have been crazy these past two weeks.

Dill, tomatoes, sunflowers and bees

We took a few days away from the garden to do some camping and cycling. While we were gone, the dill burst into bloom, to the delight of the local bees.

We've also begun harvesting. The first three tomatoes came in today and were delicious. We also harvested green beans. They were tasty and I blanched a bunch along with some peas for freezing.

It looks like we've come near the end of the raspberries but I managed to get some jammed the other night. Looking around the neighbourhood, it appears apple season will also be starting early this year. I need to make some crab apple jelly and apple sauce. 

We dropped rode t the downtown farmer's market yesterday and picked up some fruit and new potatoes (ours are still growing and I hate to disturb them).

This afternoon we'll be harvesting the garlic and planting a cover crop (likely buckwheat since I have a bag of seed in the cupboard). I think Jess is also bringing in the last of the peas.

This afternoon we also need to bottle the beer I have been brewing. To free up some bottles, I will apple jacking some cider for two years ago (which has finally smoothed out). And the rhubarb wine could likely stand to be racked off again (much clearer now). I think I'll save the next wine kit for a week or two to accommodate another short vacation.

Long weekend busy-ness

The Victoria Day weekend is always a busy one. The 104th Street farmers market was back outdoors and busy. We arrived at 11 and the crowds were much larger than the photo below suggests. Jenn pickd up some flowers for her mom (which we later planted) and some sausage and apples and a tub of butter chicken sauce.

The yard has been responding to the additional heat this week and the phlox is starting to bloom. It is hard to get a good picture of the very subtle mauve coloration of the flowers (usually they just wash out in bright sunlight) but a moment of cloudy weather helped.

The radishes in the cold frames are starting to form nicely. These are a bit bigger than the photo suggested--about one centimetre in diameter. Anticipating the harvest, Jess planted some zucchini seeds in the bed.

We also spent some time thinning the pumpkin seeds, selecting for the first up and fastest growing seeds from each of the eight clusters. I thinned out the elm seeds that germinated under the glass (love the trees, hate the seeds) and we've decided to just leave the self-seeded lettuce and then harvest it as the pumpkin plants get bigger and need more room.

The onions and garlic are coming along and jumped up again after a big rain last night. There are a few walla walla slips that didn't survive the snow that fell we had after I planted them so I have filled these in with a few addition yellow bulbs.

Something I meant to do last year but didn't get to was try grafting. We have an ornamental cherry tree in the back. It is perfectly located for a clothesline but otherwise doesn't do much for us. So I decided to graft some Evans cherry branches onto the many, many suckers that come out of the base. My friend Marc donates the cherry branches and we'll see how my grafting went as the summer progresses.

Jess was asking me what the red bump coming out off the rhubarb was last night. It split open this morning to reveal a new leaf, which was pretty exciting (our lives are a bit staid, so you take your excitement where you can get it).

This afternoon we'll be planting some Hooker's sweet corn our front (soil seems warm enough). Most of the rest of the garden is in except a few spots for cucumbers, the interplants we'll do with the corn, and a later seeding of carrots. If I get organized, we'e going to drop the canoe in the water this afternoon.

Beans!

After a quick trip to the farmers market this morning to get some asparagus to blanch and freeze (and maybe eat!), we spent the rest of the morning in the yard. The apple tree is blooming and I think I will hand pollinate it this afternoon to ensure we get some apples this year!

Out back, the Ireland creek annie beans have germinated after a couple of days of rain. I've never grown beans before (other than green beans) so these are something new and exciting.

The bean you can see pushed up out of the soil is about 1.5cm long (to give you a sense of scale. We also have some painted lady beans up under a trellis at the back. More exciting is that there are signs of potatoes pushing up through the soil.

We just about have the entire garden in (a few more tomatoes are needed to replace some losses) and (assuming Jess is up for it), we'll seed the rest of the garden this afternoon

We've also had a few volunteer's emerge, including this pansies (with a special guest appearance by my foot--imagine the contortion necessary for the picture without blocking the sun!).

Xmas dinner locally

The weather the last week has been lovely so we've been out skating every day. We even managed a short time down at the Leg on Christmas Eve while Jenn prepared dinner (although the picture below is from Hawreluk Park on Christmas Day). We managed to source almost the entire dinner locally.

The vegetables were from our garden or local farmers. The turkey was from Serban Farms by Smoky lake. Jenn ordered it last spring and, although it was slightly drier than she expected,it had a huge amount of meat on it compared to store bought birds we've had in the past. The buns were from a local bakery and the rest was made from scratch.

About the only things that weren't local were the cranberries, the coffee and some of the ingredients for desert. I made carrot cake and fruit cake and there just aren't a lot of local nuts or local candied fruit.

Cooking up the harvest

With autumn stretching out seemingly forever, we've been enjoying harvesting and cooking. We caught the last of the outdoor markets this weekend. In addition to some lovely apples, we say these hilariously large zucchinis (each is about 7 inches in diameter).

We also picked up a couple of pumpkins. I've cooked and frozen enough pumpkin for four or five pies over the winter as well as cooked up a nice batch of seeds. These fellows will make a pie this week and probably add two more pies to the freezer. We also made a sweet potato pie this week, which was an interesting experiment--a slightly different texture.

A friend gave us the remainder of her apples. I was going to sauce these but we ended up making a couple of apple crisps; the rest of the apples had started to get pretty soft so I dug them into one of the beds.

Jenn has been keen to stay on top of the tomatoes on the window sill. Having tried tomatoes every which way and given away a fair number, she decided to sauce some last night for pasta. This was quite tasty and yielded some extra for the freezer.

While I was out putting up Christmas lights I noticed the strawberry patch has put on a last burst of fruit. These were very nice and sweet.

We have a fair bit of end-of-the-season yard work under way which will take up some of tomorrow. I also would like to get a cold frame built for the spring.

More raspberries

Our plan today was a quick trip to the farmer's market and then we'd go off and pick Saskatoon berries. While the berries were ready, they were only accessible by zodiac due to the rain last night so we went to Roy's Raspberries west of town.

Today was the first day of picking and the berries were huge and very tasty. We managed to get 48 cups (12 litres) for $55 in about an hour. We'll can about 16 litres and the rest is destined for the freezer (or our bellies).

We also saw all manner of critters including hoppers and a large number of spiders. Wind kept the mosquitoes down and there was no mutiny, unlike that terrible August day in 2007... .

We came home to baby's breath blooming among the blueberry plants.

And then Jenn used some of the mint she bought at the market to make mojitoes.

With the lawn finally mowed, tomorrow I'll haul out the fruit drier and see whether I can get the apricots we bought today leathery enough to keep. We'll also need to make some raspberry preserves and perhaps make war on the dandelions on the south lawn.

More preserves

Our plans to pick strawberries this weekend went somewhat awry given the endless rain. So we went Saturday down to the farmers' market on 104th Street. As you can see, it was rather quiet (could have done it as a drive-thru...).

We picked up some lovely carrots and potatoes from Riverbend Gardens as well as some chicken and eggs from Serban Free Range.

We also grabbed a bunch more cherries and spent Sunday morning making more preserves. Jessica helped more this time, filling the jars with the cooked down fruit.

If the rain stops, I'll be up this afternoon seeing if our gutter has again clogged with elm leaves. I'm keen to try some strawberry jam if the weather will cooperate!