Apple sauce and carrot jam

A friend kindly let us pick her apple tree last night and we ended up with about 20 gallons of golden delicious apples. These are beautiful apples--large and clear fleshed. A bit insipid as eating apples but they make a light and cheery sauce.

I started saucing this morning and we managed 7 litres before I gave up in the heat of the afternoon. We'll be back at this tomorrow though. I don't have a goal perhaps another 18 litres or so--some we'll turn into apple butter.

Jess found a recipe for carrot jam and we gave that a go. It is interesting--more like a marmalade than a jam and likely best on crackers with some cream cheese. Jess ran most of the show herself (which I watched nervously while cutting up more apples for sauce).

We also went for a walk and saw some nice acorns on the boulevard trees they have been planting in recent years.

After we came back, I sorted about five gallons of the smaller apples into a separate bin to turn into cider later on. I'm going to see if I can con Jenn into doing some peeling and cutting this weekend. We also have another pick lined up and I hope to host my first Operation Fruit Rescue Pick.

A new garden bed and zucchini relish

As summer comes towards an end, a young man's thoughts turn toward next year's garden. We have a lovely and sunny west-facing front yard, which is mostly grass and flowerbeds. And bird-seeded sunflowers, this one being more than seven feet tall.

Yet vegetables could be grown here too. And that would eliminate the need to mow the front (a thankless task). Then we could grow giant carrots like these from the back (it is nine inches long and three inches thick at the top!).

So this weekend we decided to turn the sod over rather than mow it.

Two days of work later, it was all turned and the neighbours were starting to talk.

This morning I ordered a bunch of compost and it arrived 90 minutes later! Nine yards of dirt doesn't sound like much on the phone, but it was quite a hill when it got here. Jessica's initial excitement was short-lived.

We spent the rest of the day squiring it around the yard with shovel and rake and wheelbarrow. Much was moved off to the right (another bed which is a later in autumn project). The rest was shaped into a series of rows about two-and-a-half feet wide with walkways in between.

The deep row by the city sidewalk will contain 2-3 feet of irises and then a row of veggies. The irises make a pretty border and give some separation between the city and the vegetables. The rest of the rows are for potatoes and onions next spring. Tomorrow (assuming I can lift my arms) we'll start transplanting irises from the (unpictured) iris bed on the right.

And then I made three litres of sweet zucchini relish. I see I forgot to put vinegar in the pressure canner and have hard water stains on the jars. Oh well, the relish itself is good!

Apple season starts

It is apple season in Edmonton. We nipped across the lane to pick a batch of crab apples from our neighbour's yard. These were lovely red ones. After weeding out some hail damage and some minor prep work, I juiced them last night.

Today I cooked them down into jelly. I'd forgotten how little work this was when compared to cooking down strawberry jam.

The rest was 2.5 litres of jelly from 8 litres of berries. The colour is very dark and looks great in the jars. As Jennifer likes crab apple jelly, we'll likely pick some more over the next week or two.

In the basement, I have my first 5 gallon batch of cider cooking away. I added some sugar to raise the specific gravity and then pitched the yeast. This is just starting to cook and I'll likely leave it alone for 10 days and then rack off for a secondary ferment.

The pre-treatment juice was very interesting--much more complex and tart than store-bought apple juice. It might need to blended with something to make it sweeter in the end. I hope to make a second batch, assuming I can get enough apples to do so.

 I'd also like to sauce some apples. Jessica is keen but would rather read than peel apples.

On the window ledge, the first of the paste tomatoes I rescued from last week's hail are starting to ripen. I'd like to can a bunch of these for the winter.

We're continuing to make progressing in re-aligning the back garden as we dig up potatoes for use. The big task will actually be turning down a large amount of sod in the front yard for garden. Maybe when Jessica goes back to school... .

Onions and Potatoes

We harvested some more vegetables today, including the rest of the onions and about a quarter of the potato crop. It was surprisingly hot out this afternoon!

With the vegetables curing on the deck, I then started more renovations in the back bed, putting dirt in north-south rows for next year. I'd like to have the back yard pretty much finished up by mid-September so I can focus on the major changes out front.

In the basement, my first batch of cider is ready to start tonight. A half day of sweating and swearing in the garage has taught me a lot about what to do (and what not to do) next time. I was too bushed to do any crab apple jellying yesterday but we'll see what kind of energy I have this afternoon.

Jarring salsa

Is there a happier sound than a lid "pop" signifying a good seal? I have been pressure canning with abandon this week and put up seven jars of zucchini salsa tonight. It would have been eight but I needed to leave half a litre out for eating.

I would have made more but the carrot thief has turned his attention to the zucchini (yes, really, someone is filching zucchini). I caught him tonight by chance (well put together older gentleman picking cans... and vegetables) and politely expressed my exasperation (although my shaved head and fu manchu 'stashe may have given a different impression).

We picked a bunch of battleford apples last night and today gave the garburetor apple crusher a go. It worked but the apples need to be softer so I decided to freeze them tonight, thaw them tomorrow and then crush on Wednesday. The extra step is a bit annoying but, based on the few we ran through the crusher today, there won't be any real need to press the apples when we're done (could do that with our hands).

I've had to haul in about half of the tomatoes still green due to the hail and slug onslaught. They make a pretty sight on the window ledge and I'm keen to see them ripen and get canned. I am loving the pressure canner. Tomorrow we'll pick a neighbour's crabs and make jelly.

Oh hail, no!

The eighth (!) big hail storm of the year rolled through this afternoon for about 30 minutes and made a heck of a mess. You can see the accumulation under the tree while the water overloaded the gutters and just rolled across the ground.

The hail did a lot of damage. The autumn lettuce (in the container on the deck) is a complete write off.

More troubling was the beating the tomatoes took. They were literally pounded off their trellis. I'll go out tomorrow and pull off the damage tomatoes. Between the hail and slugs, it is a tough year! The butternut squash plant in the foreground (below) was shredded and likely won't make it,

There was some flooding in the neighbourhood. You can see an intersection that is axle-deep in water in the background (click to get a larger picture).

Lots of other plants were just destroyed. Below was a large swiss chard, which is now just goo.

Other stuff will likely bounce back (root vegetables seemed okay, just a bit flattened). I also got a nice crop of kale off this morning and made chips while the rain came down.

In better news, I canned 16 jars of carrots today using the pressure canner. Wow, that was a snap. I plan to do some salsa on Monday.

Tomatoes, potatoes and pumpkins

The past few days have seen lots of stuff come out of the garden and into the house. The paste tomatoes are ripening and I plan to can a batch of salsa this week.

We've been eating the first of the early potatoes (delicious) but the late potatoes continue to bloom (which is a nice late-season flower to have around).

After claiming I've never had any luck with pumpkins, I wander out of the yard and found our vine has at least three growing. This one is bigger than a softball (the wooden offcut is 5.5 inches to give you a sense of scale). I'm excited to have our own pumpkins for once!

We're also seeing some real late summer growth. The sunflowers above the clothes line are more than eight feet tall. The top of the metal trellis is five feet to add some scale.

On the back deck, the autumn lettuce patch is coming up nicely, although the runner beans keep trying to over run it.

I've also harvested a box of carrots from the alley (marauders were picking 3-4 a night and making a mess of the the rest of the foliage). I'm in the process of pressure canning these--should be about 16 500ml jars when I get done. We're also going to try preserving a bunch in moist sand.