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.

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.

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.

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!