Experimenting with wine making

Spring is in the air today so we went out early to get some skiing in before the snow melted. A bit icy but a fun start to the day.

One of my goals this year is to make some apple cider (meant to do it last year but just couldn't get it together). I bought a wine making kit on kijiji and thought we should get some experience with an starter (i.e., idiot-proof) wine kit before venturing into cider. So today was the day the pinot noir got started.

I was also excited to try out the apron I got at Xmas (which is now suitable stained) and Jess and Jenn both patiently waited for me to muddle through the instructions.

As far as I can tell, we didn't miss any steps or do anything wrong. I suppose we'll know for sure in four weeks.

The cold frames beside the house are starting to warm the soil a bit and there are places where it is thawed down a whole centimeter! A few more weeks and we'll be in a much better place. But the smell of earth is very nice.

Glass on the cold frame

While it is way too early to bother with the garden, the lovely weather and sun of the past two days has stirred me to do more than just fondle seed catalogues. After washing the windows (inside, anyhow), I wandered around the yard and noticed the cold frames beside the house had melted out of the snow.

So I dug out the glass from the garage and dropped the on top. There was a tiny bit of melting and condensation this afternoon which is encouraging. I recall doing this last year in March. The other cold frames are still under 18" of snow.

Now back to reading The Long Emergency with a cup of coffee in hand!

Gearing up for 2013

With the holidays over and a good dent being made in last summer’s harvest, I’m now starting to mull what kinds of garden projects to take on in 2013. Below is a picture of an apple-strawberry-saskatoon pie—inspired by what was sitting on the top level of the freezer this afternoon.

I think first up is a perennial herb garden with space for annuals (mostly basil). I have some room on the south side of the house (so lots of heat and good wind protection). Getting that space ready will likely be job one in the spring.

I’m also keen to try making sugar from sugar beets. I’ve never grown sugar beets (more of a southern Alberta thing) but I imagine they are pretty much like regulars beets. So I need to do some research about varieties and processing.

I’m also keen to make some apple cider next fall. I had a quick explanation from a friend of a friend yesterday and it looks quite manageable. So picking up the necessary bits of equipment seems like a good winter task. It also makes me keen to give Operation Fruit Rescue another go this spring.

A bigger decision is whether to expand the beds in the back by tilling under some grass in the utility corridor to the south of us. I really hate having to mow this huge stretch of lawn. This might be an autumn 2013 task, after I get a sense of what the additional bed I put in last summer means in terms of workload.

Based on what the cold room and freezer looks like, we need fewer green/yellow beans, double the number of potatoes (almost out!) and onions and garlic, and slightly more carrots. I’m going to experiment with a frame to increase the amount of potato hilling I can do to see if that helps the harvest any. First up though will be seeding some spring greens in the cold frames--in about two months or more.

I think we’re about right on jam and apple sauce. My plans to can vegetables seem to have run into a snag whereby flat-top stoves don’t necessarily get on with pressure canners all that well. Of course, there is no definitive answer about that available--just lots of cautionary tales.

An alternative might be another freezer, perhaps in the garage. The power needed to freeze irks me some. But, if we only used it in the autumn to spring, the drain would be pretty minimal (an unheated garage is pretty cold from October to April anyhow!).

Planning for next year

With a rather dreary winter day ahead of us, we decided to take some time to plan next year's garden. I've been doing some of that in my head as I dug the beds and thought about crop rotation and what would work well where.

On the east side of the property (behind the garage) we have five raised beds. These are mostly in the alley and, to my surprise, most of the onions I planted and a lot of the beans walked off this summer. So think low-value root vegetables are the ticket here. So we're going to do three beds of carrots (so about 450 plants), some zucchini (help yourself!), green beans and beans for drying as well as swiss chard and basil.

In the backyard, some of the beds we recovered will have potatoes and the rest will have squash (not sure on the type yet--I like butternut but never seem to get any fruit). This year's potato bed will host sunflowers, beans, onions and garlic and then some yellow/purple beans and peas.

The "bad" beds out front will have more yellow and purple beans (as I work on improving the soil) and peas. The raised beds on the side will see tomatoes, peppers, celery, cucumbers and more beans. We'll do lettuce and spinach under new cold frames.

We also carved the pumpkin today. The seeds are washed and drying. If I get ambitious, I will roast them tonight since the oven will already be hot from the potatoes. A quick review of the cold room sees us with lots of potatoes and no obvious signs of rot.  Now off to sweep the walks.

Carrots

We dug out the last of the carrots this weekend and brought hem in. Some were eaten, 8 litres were blanches and frozen, and Jennifer made carrot cake and carrot soup. And the fridge is full of little ones for snacking.

We tried a bunch of varieties this year. The Yellowstone carrots did well along with the Nantes. I tried a short variety (above) did okay but our soil is deep enough we don't need a shorter carrot so I will try something more exotic next year. I'm also going to try careful spacing (akin to square-foot gardening) to maximize our yield.

I've almost got the vegetable beds dug, improved and ready for next year; there are two more beds out back to fiddle with and then some work to do out front (although that can wait until spring). I'd also like to get some garlic in the ground for next year.

Late season fruit

With winter approaching, we've been trying to tidy up the yard: emptying the water barrels, amending the beds for next spring and putting up the rest of the Christmas lights. As I've been tramping about, there have been a couple of late surprises.

The strawberry plants responded to late watering and have been flowering and fruiting despite the frost. These fellows are up about 12 inches off the ground and near a stone wall, so they may get some heat and wind shelter. A fun late-season treat.

Out front, the thornless blackberries once again almost got to ripeness. The one berry I atet his year was tasty but again a hard frost has ruined the immature berries. I think these plants, while cold hardy, just requires too many days to mature.

We still have some carrots to pull from a raised bed, a couple of beds to dig and amend, and some general tidying. But I think we're basically ready for winter. Inside, we're happily cooking up the summer's harvest and I have a pumpkin from the market to process this weekend for muffins all winter long. But now I'm off to rake the rest of the leaves up onto the perennials for the winter and maybe get a bike ride in.

First frost

We had the first frost of the season last night, so after supper we rushed out to bring in any of the remaining tender vegetables (left the carrots in the ground). It was a bit brisk (or so Jess thought) as we harvested a large bowl of tomatoes, a couple of cucumbers and some beans. The window sill is covered in tomatoes.

We also cut the celery we'd been growing and brought it in. I gave it a quick cleaning and put it in the fridge for soup making (perhaps later tonight). We had relatively few slug problems in the celery this year, I think because I put the seedings inside a little "fence" I made by cutting the bottom out of yogurt containers. there were a few slugs in one of the plants but nothing like the slugfest we had last year when there was no protection.

I can now finish digging the back beds this weekend and prepping them for next year. I may also start on improving the front beds (depends on how much juice I have). I'd also like to construct a couple of trellis' for next year out of electrical conduit.