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.

Beans, beans, garlic and berries

Wow, August went fast! We've had less rain this month but some stuff is still quite behind. Raspberry season has come to a close with a few gallons in the freezer and a lot eaten raw.

The raspberry inspector worked a lot of overtime this year.

We had a larger cherry crop this year as the tree matures and these are in the freezer awaiting winter baking. 

This week, I pulled the garlic out of the ground and got 110+ heads.

In order to cure them, I stuck them into this roll of chicken wire and then moved that into the very smelly garage.

The bees have been shy this year, but I did get a few nice shots.

I also harvested and froze a bunch of green beans. I'm hopeful we'll get a bunch more before the season is done.

Into the empty garlic beds went some leafy greens and some late peas. Maybe we have enough time for them to mature. I've also been thinning carrots and eyeing the very large crop of apples that are growing.

Garlic scape salt and more rain

The rainy weather had continued, with July being on pace to get another foot of water. This was the scene at the intersection north of us last night after we got almost 40mm in two hours.

The garden has struggled with all of the water and the lack of heat. Some stuff has done okay. It is, for example, garlic scape season.

I gave a bunch away this year and turned my share into garlic scape salt.

Basically, chopped scapes mixed with coarse salt and pureed into wet, green sand.

After an hour of desiccating in the oven on low with intermittent stirring, I ground up the result.

And voila, garlic scape salt. Tastes a lot like commercial garlic salt but more garlicy.

The raspberries are beginning to produce some and the saskatoons are also ready for picking. I'm eyeing up the pantry and how much jam I still have some last year.

 

We are seeing some nice flowers.

And, happily, the last of the potatoes have blossoms after I feared half my crop was lost after they just didn't come up for ever.

The peas are also about ready to pick (maybe tonight if it doesn't rain).

We;ve been having our deck replaced and are now far enough along that I re-attached the pea trellis and planted a late sowing of peas behind the potatoes.

I've also been eyeing the potentially huge apple harvest and trying to finish using up last year's apple pie filling and apple sauce. This morning I made a crisp.

I see I also have kale to harvest tonight if I can brave the mosquitoes. The last few days have had a little bit of heat and the basil and tomatoes seem to be appreciative as well as the cucumber and squash plants.

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?

Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

Alright, after a few weeks mostly spent watering and weeding, we're starting to see some progress. Most exciting is that the cherry tree seems to have set quite a lot of fruit this year. Sadly, neither plum tree got the memo.

Despite a cool and wet spring, the garlic continues to do well and I suspect we'll have scapes by early July.

The potatoes have also all come up (after I feared one whole type had rotted in the ground). The blue caribe are doing well. The Prince of Orange are just barely through the soil. But all seems good.

The wet weather has also meant the rhubarb plants are doing well enough that I could get an early cut. I chopped this and will combine with some frozen saskatoons from last year into pie filling this weekend.

Kale, which I've always thought of as the worst of the leaf vegetables, is now suddenly wildly expensive in the stores so I plants out several rows. It freezes well and I'm hopeful to have enough for stews and soups in the winter.

The lettuce has also started to show up although we're a ways away from salads, I fear.

I should have more to report in two weeks if we get some warm weather and the plants start to put on some size.

Planting completed

Alright, after a fairly chaotic spring, we're back in the yard and pretty much everything is planted out.

While this is a time of hard work, let's start with the fun stuff: all of the spring blossoms. Above, we have plums and below some small tulips.

The saskatoon bushes are also in full bloom.

And the cherries have just started. The cherry tree has a crazy number of blossoms this year so I am hopeful for a bigger crop.

The haskap bushes are still flowering but we also have the start of berries.

The front yard is also full of tulips.

I've spent several hours each day on various projects, including some soil amendments, weeding and seeding. I did stumble across the first of the potatoes to push up a shoot.

I'm also almost done removing the dead canes from the raspberry bushes and burning them. I hope to have the energy tonight to fire the last of them. Then I can get to weeding around the base of them.

I suspect, over the next few days we'll see some more seeds begin to emerge (the kale has just come up). We did have a touch of frost last week and a few of the tomatoes, a basil plant, and some marigolds look slightly scarred. Hopefully, they will come back.