Spring!

Spring has finally arrived and enough snow is gone that I can get out into the garden again. These daffodils were a pleasant surprise when I started poking around in the back yard.

The dog has been moderately interested in my puttering and providing useful supervision.

The chives are up (the first useful green, as usual) along the side of the house and I have been slowly shifting leaf litter to expose the soil in the beds I'd like to start early so they warm up a bit. We've had 20 degrees already so I hope to get spinach and peas going soon.

I built three raised beds last fall in the hottest area of the garden. Yesterday, I repurposed some old metal conduits and some monofilament netting to make a pea trellis on the western edge. When the pears are done I am hope to train some cucumbers up it. This went up fairly easily with the exception being the monofilament's tendency to catch on everything (especially my shoe treads) resulting in several Gilligan moments of entanglement.

Up next: We're off to the manure piles at the equine centre today for a bit of poop and then I hope to get some pea and spinach seeds in the ground before the weather turns. 

Paneer

We've spent the past month cleaning out the freezer and the pantry of last year's produce and are making progress. For a change of pace, I made some paneer today (under the close supervision of the dog), since the store was out.

A pretty straight-forward process. Getting back to the pantry, we're on track to use up the jam and apple sauce we canned and we're making some progress on the dried stuff. More tomato powder and paste will be on the to-do for next year. Also, more minced and dried onions.

We have pretty much everything out of the freezer except for some garlic scape pesto (more pesto in general would be appreciated). We do still have a lot of saskatoons. I need to find some rhubarb in order to make some saskatoon rhubarb pie filling. And I might get ambitious and use some of the apple pie filling we have canned for some tarts. We'll see how bored I get this week.

The paneer turned out well and is in the fridge awaiting dinner on Wednesday. I had a brief moment of insanity and started looking at greenhouses. Temu-style greenhouses are cheap but the reviews are hilariously bad. Real greenhouses are insanely expensive. Happily, sanity has prevailed and I contented myself with a wander around the seed store and purchased some green bean and pea seeds. 

Cherry Tarts!

A few years back, we bought a semi-sweet cherry tree (I think it was a Juliet) for the back yard. I harvested about a cup and a bit of pitted cherries this year and froze them in the autumn rush.

Earlier this week, I defrosted them and turned them into filling. I then made some tart dough and baked everything today.

Overall, pretty tasty. I think a better option would have been a short-bread crust, the filling, and then a crumble on top. I hope to have enough cherries next year to can some pie filling but if we have extra, I[ll give the another shot.

Last week's tomato sauce from the basis of chilli (which also used dried beans and peppers from the pantry) as well as the sauce for a pasta bake. We're making progress in the freezer and I see we have a whole lot of saskatoons to do something with soon.

Tomato Sauce!

As winter continues, I've been busy using up what we stored from last summer. We still have some potatoes and garlic plus a bunch of frozen items. This push to clean out the freezer is part of a month-long effort to use up what we have stored in the pantry and see just how much we can whittle down our January grocery bill.

There were two bags of tomatoes that I froze in October, mostly because we were sick of eating them and I was too tired from processing to do anything useful with them. I let them thaw overnight and then ran them through this food mill to remove the skins and seeds.

That gave me about a gallon of tomatoes that I cooked down into sauce. Some other stored items I was able to use included some garlic, some dried red pepper flakes, and a bunch of oregano. We had already used up our basil from last summer so I dug out some commercial basil from the cupboard.

Overall, this turned out pretty tasty and will form the basis of two meals this week. I think my next tasks include dealing with grapes I froze and also some semi-sweet cherries. The grapes are probably destined for a small batch of jelly. I suspect the cherries could be used to make filling for tarts or turnovers.

Prince of Orange potatoes!

The first frost hit about a week ago and we pulled in all of the tender stuff just before. I've since been working on the root vegetables, with the dog carefully watching my every move in case a carrot happens to fall out of my pocket.

We had an interesting harvest of squash, much of it of mixed parentages. These are curing in the dining room.

I also pulled the last of the tomatoes, basil, peppers, and the melons.

The cantaloupe were very small this year because July was cool and I'm not sure of they will ripen enough to eat before they rot. I think next year I will try something different in this bed. Maybe cucumbers?

In the interests of time, I just froze the basil in oil and have been pulling out a puck every time enough tomatoes come ripe to warrant a salad.

The autumn has been gorgeous around the neighbourhood!

Jess has been helping me convert two in-ground beds into three raised beds. 

I finished these late last week, filled them, and got the garlic (110 heads) planted for next year.

This involved a trip to the manure mounds. I will top dress with compost when it come available next spring.

This morning, I went out and dug the last five potatoes plants. These are Prince of Orange potatoes and the harvest was crazy. one plant gave me 32 potatoes! The others each had in the 20s.

These were not small potatoes, either. I think they did well because I watered aggressively, it was sunny and the soil was pretty soft.

I will definitely do these again next year!

I still have a bunch of carrots to pull and process as well as some more end of season work in the beds. Hopefully, I get another two weeks to putter in the yard before the snow flies!

 Oops, looks like I forgot to post last week after we returned from a short vacation to the Okanagan!

The good news with the extended fall has been that the squash and melon plants now have a chance at getting some mature fruit off!

I've also harvested about 75% of the potatoes. I'm letting some plants go a little longer this year in hope of extending the shelf life of the stored potatoes. The picture below is about 25% of the total take this year.

Jenn and Cajun helped me harvest the second half of our second apple tree.

These are a slightly more tart baking apple.

The result was a lot of apples!

The big ones I reserved for baking. The smaller ones all got sauced.

We ended up with close to 20 litres of apple sauce and a few pints of apple butter.

I also harvested the grapes to make a small batch of jelly with later on. These are currently in the freezer.

In anticipation of the last haul of veggies needing to be frozen, I have started thawing and jamming the gallons of raspberries this summer.

I managed to get two gallons finished (maybe 6 litres of finished jam) before I got bored. I will try to do something similar next week.

It looks like we'll be getting a frost this weekend so I am harvesting the more vulnerable crops. I have also been moving dirt around to install three more raised beds in the warm, sunny spot by the garage. Hopefully, I will have this done by next week!

Beans, beets and tomatoes

Most of this week was spent managing the harvest and beginning to put the garden to rest. Since there is no frost expected for at least another two weeks, I've decided to leave lots of stuff to continue growing.

I did pull the last of the bush beans and harvested the first of the pole beans and froze them for a winter meal.

The tomatoes are just starting but there aren't enough to do anything with them except eat them fresh. So I took the ripest of the excess, cubed them and froze them. When we get enough to process, I'll thaw and put them through the mill.

There is a half decent grape crop this year but it needs a bit more time to ripen.

I did yank the rest of the beets and made some sweet pickles. I forget how much work and mess there is when pickling beets!