Apple sauce and pie filling

The garden is beginning to produce some nice veggies. We did a very early pick (or late thinning?) of some carrots and beans and dug a few potatoes to make a veggie pot pie this week. The beans were amazing--so much better fresh than frozen.

The last of the raspberries are also coming ripe (the delicious but thorny black raspberries).

We're also finally seeing some tomatoes ripen. I suspect it will be a late year for these guys and probably a "headlamps in the sleet" pick one night.

Jenn bought some strawberries at the farmers market this week so I made six litres of strawberry-rhubarb pie filling. There was also some left over to go on ice cream.

And a friend dropped off a bag of early apples, so I sauced them on the weekend. we got about 10 litres of sauce in the end. Our own apples are a ways off from picking and I plan to dehydrate some of them.

My tiny plot at the community garden is going well, with radish and chard germinated and starting to put out real leaves. Not sure we'll get a crop off, though! In the meantime, we continue to plan the new back yard as we get closer to garage demolition (fences and signs arrived this week).

Berries, garlic and building

Looks like I really dropped the ball in terms of weekly updates for some reason. It has not been for lack of gardening!

We're coming to the end of berry season. We've frozen more than four gallons of raspberries this year in anticipation of autumn jamming. We've also probably eaten two gallons!

The potatoes have all blossomed and some are even dying off and are ready for digging. I'm holding of on those to try to keep everything in some kind of order. I only want to dig once!

While we continue to wait for the garage guys to show up, Jess and I planned to repaint the garbage caddy. When we hauled it into the yard, much of the wood was rotten. So we pulled apart the rotten wood and replaced it piecemeal. Jess did most of the work--I offer advice and did some of the tougher sawing. The result is pretty decent and we'll likely get another 10 years out of this.

The dallies are offering some late summer colour out front. I plan to move some daisies around to add some variety.

The community league offersd up some small beds in conjunction with gardening club. I took one. I think the idea is a demonstration project in anticipation of a more permanent set up when the exterior renovations start. It is a bit late in the year so I planted radishes and swiss chard plus some pansies.

After giving away most of the garlic scapes this year, we harvest the garlic. It is presently curing under the deck (whew!).

I turned under the soil and smoothed things out. We then dumped all of our old lettuce seeds in the garden. We might get something edible before the frost. Otherwise, they'll be an okay cover crop and all of the old seed is out of the closet.

It looks like we're about to enter apple season. A friend dropped off a bunch for saucing. Our trees are also starting to fill out (later picking variety).

 

I'm hopeful we'll have some tomatoes soon from the yard. The wet summer has meant a lot of greenery but not many ripe fruit. Assuming we get a garage pad in sometime before the snow flies, I'm going to have Jess design the two wooden garden boxes that we'll put along the sides and four out the lumber order (moving from doing construction to planning it).