Bulbs, sap, oregano and peas

Spring moved into high gear this past week, with the bulbs all breaking through the soil and leaf litter.

The sap is also running in the trees. Not sure why the cherry tree in the back yard has these nicks where it dies. I wonder about sap suckers?

The herbs have come back and we planted a bunch more of annual herbs this year. I have been interspersing them with flowers, mostly for aesthetic reason. I'm hopeful we can dry more herbs this year as we ran out of most of the usual kinds over the winter.

The raspberry canes have also started too leaf out and I will start to prune out the dead canes. I meant to do that last fall but ran out of energy.

Out front the peas have germinated and we also put in some tomato starters. I have a bunch more tomatoes and peppers that I picked up today but will wait until Friday to put the, out as the weather has cooled off slightly.

The early tulips are up out back and have added a shot of colour. We managed to get the rest of the carrots, onions, beets and bush beans planted in the back. There is just a small section that I will leave until June for some later vegetables.

The onions and garlic have started to come up. As have the radishes and lettuce. No sign of the zucchini or chard yet. Keen to dry some asparagus stalks to have on had for soup mixture.

Carrots, onions, peas, chard and beets

Spring has really come on fast this week, with the bulbs jumping up and the soil thawing. I finished up most of the yard clean-up (just one small patch of raking left to do) and we visited Apache Seeds to pick up a few more packets.

The bigs are also making a come back. Jess found the first lady bug of the season while we were planting onion sets.

At this point, we have pretty much everything in the ground except the tender plants and a bed of carrots (the bed needs more work). In addition to the onions, we planted some yard-long Armenian cucumbers (our bit of stunt gardening for the year), a bunch of summer squash, and some beets, chard, and carrots.

We also got the peas in the ground and sorted out a couple of beds that were in some disarray after last fall's gardening flame-out in late September.

This week we need to do some more infrastructure work. There is an old bird bath that finally broke over the winter to break down and dispose of. We also have enough dry branches and twigs laying about that a fire might be a good idea. I spent some of Saturday staking out the tomato beds in the front so we might plant them next weekend (depending on what the weather forecast looks like).

Potatoes and lettuce

As gardening Edmonton tends to go, last week's winter has become this week's full-on spring. A few days of warmth have melted most of the snow.

Jess noticed the poppies were coming up mid-week in the front planter and by Friday the wild onion and tulips on the south side were up.

We went out Saturday and planted a box full of lettuce and radishes for some early greens. The back beds melt out first and get a nice bounce from the garage so heat up quickly. And no one seems to steal leafy greens!

I was smoothing out the beds in the front and noticed am immense amount of bunny poop.

Sunday we pounded in the posts for the pea/bean trellis. Jess can now handle the sledgehammer without me. Notice, though, I am standing well away while taking this picture.

The trellis went up on the north side of the front beds this year. We will plant peas shortly (tomorrow maybe). Beans and sunflowers (in behind) will follow.

I then graded and dug half the front beds for potatoes while Jess cut the seed potatoes. We went wit blue caribe this year--they have been the best of the potatoes in terms of size and scab resistance.

I then sat down while Jess dropped the spuds in and covered the holes. We also did a bunch of potatoes around back (again a safe alley crop as no one knows what they are).

We will plant some peas this coming week and then also put in a couple of hundred onion sets. The back yard needs to dry out a touch before we do any more digging.

Winter that won't quit!

Unit is day 168 of temperatures that are below zero and we're more than a month behind normal in terms of melting. The has been a long winter! Facebook is showing me two years ago that we were planting peas in short sleeves last week!

The back beds are usually the first to be snow-free and warmed up. We can finally see soil (as of yesterday) and I'm hopeful the snow will be gone in the next few days. Inside, we've decided to just start corn this year. The first of the shoots is up an that is hopeful.

Fortunately, the roads have finally melted out so at least I can get my summer bicycle out to ride while we wait on the garden.

Harvest wrap-up

Apologies for the lack of posting. September has been busy and I've been hampered by a twisted knee so sitting down to blog has dropped down the list some.

We have been busy. I finally racked off the summer wine. The strawberry wine seems to be a success. The rhubarb wine tastes good but has picked up some bacteria that gives it an off scent. Aerating has not resolved the issue and the chemical solutions look too complicated to bother with so I think this batch is headed down the drain. A good lesson on (I think) the risks of over-sugaring.

We finally picked the tomatoes one evening when the risk of frost looked real. Of course the frost didn't materialize.. . The window sills are now full of trays of tomatoes ripening. That triggered a quick tally of what we still had in the basement freezer from last year.

Interestingly, pressed-but-not-sauced tomatoes were the only thing we had too much of. So these frozen discs of tomatoes were sauced. We'll likely sauce and then freeze this year's tomatoes (less to freeze and in a more useful form). I also have a bunch of smaller tomatoes that I am oven roasting right now to freeze.

We have managed to stay on top of the apple crop with pies and eating them fresh. We still have sauce from last year so no need to add to the backlog!

We also picked the pole beans yesterday. These could have stood another few weeks of growing but I'm not sure we were going to get that.

I've been holding off on getting a load of manure for the beds. But I did buy a few bags in order to amend the soil ahead of planting garlic.We put in 51 plants this year (which is about right for a year or so of eating). You can see Jess below using the reliable "hang-loose" spacing method to get the cloves in about 6 or 8 inches apart.

I have a bit more work to do in the beds out front before ordering manure. We'll see how my knee feels this week! Today we are also drying the remainder of the herbs for winter storage. If I get time, I'm going to try to jelly the mountain ash berries from the back (another experiment in local foraging).

Buffalo berry jelly

Every year, Jess and I forage some new fruit from the valley and try to make it into jam or jelly. It started out as a botany/history lesson and, as Jess has gotten older, has now morphed in an annual zombie-themed quest centring on the question of "what food is there to eat in Edmonton besides people"?

In the past we've foraged Saskatoons, choke cherries, rose hips, red elderberries, nanking cherries, crab apples, and high bush cranberries and made mostly jelly. Reviews have been mixed... . This year I wanted to try sea buckthorn berries which are everywhere on city parkland. As it turns out, I actually picked buffalo berries, mistaking them for sea buckthorn (cough, cough).

I'd picked out a couple of candidates this spring while cycling. Most books suggest waiting until after the first frost to sweeten the berries up some. I decided to roll the dice now as we had time and the red berries were fairly tasty (somewhere between a tart plum and a sour cherries). 

We ended up with about a third of a gallon (1.5 litres) before interest in picking started to wane. The thorns weren't too bad but I did get a couple of good stickings trying to bring a high branch down low for picking.

As we've had uneven success with foraged preserves, I just did a quick a dirty jelly with them. I washed, boiled and strained the berries. They could have stood a second filtering through cheese cloth but I was in hurry. The juice smelled (oddly) like cooking sweet potatoes or perhaps roasted pumpkin. Sweet but squashy.

I then added some sugar and a touch of lemon juice and boiled. The aroma changed toward citrus as it boiled. We got three cups of jelly out of this. I didn't bother skimming the foam but that would be an important step if I was going to store or gift (again, this was a quick and dirty effort to see what the jelly would be like).

The jelly set up nicely. I didn't bother to water bath such a small batch--they can just sit in the fridge until eaten. It has a citrusy taste and good colour. It is up there with chokecherries in terms of successful foraged jellies. I'm not sure I would do this again, but it was a fun project. And, we can try sea buckthorn next year!

The rest of the garden is winding down. The potatoes weren't super productive this year. I would guess a lack of water and compacted soil in the back beds are a factor here. The onions and apples were also a bit smaller than past years.

The tomatoes are going great guns. I see we have some slugs in our back bed holing the green tomatoes so I picked the low-hangers (that the slugs seem to focus on) and brought them into ripen The rest will stay on the vines until frost threatens.

While we wait for the growing season to end, I'm continuing to so some bed amendments. The bed by the garage had become pretty compacted over time and also invaded by crab grass. I cut out a touch more lawn to square the bed up and then started to loosen the soil. I'll work a big load of manure into the beds a bit later in the fall.

This afternoon's task is to get the rhubarb and strawberry wines in the basement racked off for bulk storage.

...And back now

Okay, wow, a month has gone by without a post. My explanation is that we took a couple of weeks to travel to PEI for a family vacation. Amazing gardens (and beaches) and the red soil was striking.

We returned to an overgrown garden. The lettuce, in particular, was crazy and needed an immediate harvest before it went bitter.

Fortunately, the tomatoes are just beginning to come in. What a treat!

We've also started harvesting some of the root veggies. This turnip was tasty despite its huge size.

The potatoes harvest has been a bit disappointing. I blame a lack of water and some compacted soil. What have pulled so far has been tasty.

The apples are also tasty but smaller than last year (like half the size). Some friends let up pick their early tree this year. Below, Jess has realized I have let go of the ladder to snap a picture... .

We've been enjoying crisps and tastes and buns. Our own apples are just ready this week so we'll be picking one tree and continuing with the dessert theme. This is appreciated as the raspberry canes have packed it in for the year.

We arrived home to the back stairs falling off the house. They were never properly based and, as the soil around the house subsided, they have slowly followed suit. I managed to pull the stairs out of the way, create a proper footing, add some new hardware, and reattach them. It felt good to renew my man-card and cost only $40.

With that project out of the way and the onions and garlic harvested, I could turn my mind to renewing the NW corner of the lot. We originally put in four rows (a compromise caused by a tree removal). These were narrow and, over time, have compacted.

So I hauled some rock around from the back to establish retaining walls along the front walk and then  moved the soil around to create four full rows (about four feet wide each). There is also a half row out of frame on the right.

Of course no house project would complete with breaking something. In this case, the wheelbarrow gave up under the strain of the rocks. A hammer, a new bolt, and some mild swearing yielded a fix.

When the tomatoes are done, I will repeat this in the SW corner. Right now I have planted a cover crop and will add manure on top after the frost comes (all the beds need a good shot of manure).

We also cleaned out the bed below Jessica's window (further to the right in the pictures above). This bed had terrible soil so we planted a bunch of perennials a few years back and basically ignored it. Jess wanted a strawberry bed so I pulled out the perennials, amended the soil a bit, and then nicked some strawberries from an overgrown bed in the back. You can see some extra rocks in the picture below (Jess watering ins strawberries) awaiting the SW bed project.

Up next for is us fixing up the back beds. The potatoes are basically done so I'm slowly pulling out a rotten retaining wall (from almost 20 years ago!). I have managed to remove most of the old wall and dig away enough dirt that we should be be able to replace the wall this week. I think we can just burn the old cedar boards in the firepit this fall. We also need to rack off some wine into clean carboys for bulk aging now that they have clarified.