So hot...

The last two weeks have been pretty extreme, weather-wise. We had a few days of rain and the slugs materialized so I had to bring in all of the tomatoes that were sitting on the ground before they were ruined. 

As the weather turned towards insanely hot (+37C in Edmonton and days of +30 or more?), I also brought in a bunch more to try and take some of the load off of the plants. The upshot is we have three cookie sheets of tomatoes (most now ripe) that need to be sauced.

A friend also let us pick his apple tree. We turned 15 gallons of apples into 24 litres of sauce. This is pretty easy with a food mill but still took a whole morning of canning to safely jar them.

The next day we had the pressure canner back out as we made another seven litres of zucchini salsa. This was pretty tasty and I look forward to using it over the winter.

We also went for a walk and I finally saw some wild plums (that I have read about but assumed were fictional). I grabbed two near-ripe ones to try and also to seed if the seeds would sprout.

Our own apple trees are loaded. With the heat up over 35C, they are all maturing faster that I'd like! Usually these are a September harvest. We'll see how long they stay on the tree in the heat.

I've spent the past few days watering and digging up more irises to give away. The sunflowers have also started blooming out front.

I hope to get a vacation in next week (for a few days, anyways). The temperatures look set to mellow out a bit so we can go away without too much worry about gardening.

Raspberries, strawberries and tomatoes

So the past ten days have been pretty busy as summer heat causes things to move along. The corn is looking pretty good this year and I expect we'll get edible heads.

The raspberries are going into their last weeks of picking but we have lots frozen and I made a batch of raspberry jam. If the weather would break, I'd make a second batch.

The apple tree is also ripening. Friends have offered us their apples in the next week or so to sauce with (ours are more autumn eating apples).

We're also starting to see the tomatoes ripen. First up are these tiny tomatoes. Very flavourful.

On the weekend, we visited Strawberry Creek Farm by Warburg to pick strawberries.

It was a lovely morning (about 20 with a breeze) and the berries were good.

We came home with four gallons. We froze some, I did two batches of jam and two batches of strawberry-rhubarb pie filling. We also ate a lot with ice cream.

Our own garden is coming along. The yard-long Armenian cucumbers are setting fruit. I'm interested to see how these do.

We also have a huge amount of dill from some seeds inadvertently spilled last year after the harvest.

The front yard is in good shape. We're halfway through splitting the irises and gave buckets away to neighbours and Facebook friends. I need my back to recover a bit before we do the other half.

The potatoes are fully grown and I'm starting to see the early plants start to yellow and die back. This seems a touch early but I'm happy to know new potatoes are imminent.

The tomatoes are also just starting to get a bit red. We should have lots to sauce this year. And a second crop of zucchini are ripening so we can do another batch of zucchini salsa. Jess has been cooking more and did a lovely set of grilled veggies on skewers the other night.

We also have some flowers and I think I have the midge problem on the daylilies under control,

Hopefully we get more of these in the coming days.

The weekend should see us make some more jam and continue watering the yard (it has been so hot--nearly 30 every day for almost two weeks).

Blueberry Jam and Zucchini Salsa

We didn't manage to get to a strawberry u-pick this week but I did find a deal on organic blueberries so we bought a couple of flats. Some we froze to baking, some we ate and I made about two litres of blueberry jam.

I don't think I've ever made blueberry jam before. When we used to pick wild blueberries, it would take so long to get even a few cups that jamming was a terrible waste of fruit! This was pretty good but not as good as raspberry.

The alternating heat and rain has made the front yard very lush. The add-on of a bunch of compost last fall may also have helped. The potatoes on the left and the tomatoes on the right are going crazy.

We also purchased a few pretty flowed to interplant. I have no idea what this pinkeye is but it is very nice looking.

The yellow summer squash are also coming in so it was time to make salsa. I recruited some help with the chopping.

After some overnight salting, I put the rest of the ingredients together and started cooking it.

Zucchini salsa is good enough that it is worthwhile bringing out the pressure canner for and we made 7 litres with the first crop. Since we eat salsa fairly regularly, I'm planning at least one more canning session when more zucchini ripen (maybe two).

The tomatoes are also starting to fill out Nothing red yet, but lots of green tomatoes. Hopefully the harvest is a good as its promise seems to be.

We've been picking raspberries every night and freezing them (those that we don't eat) so I soon hope to have enough for a couple of batches of jam. Just need a few cool days to steam up the kitchen. I've also been drying herbs and need to get back at the basil and maybe also some garlic scape pesto.

Rain, raspberries and peas

The first part of July has been a mix of hot (+28C) and wet (lots of rain). The result has been a lot of growth in the yard. We've managed to mostly irrigate the back from two rain barrels of the garage. The front has required a fair bit of tapster (tomatoes and peppers and whatnot).

The most exciting part of the mid-season is watching the potatoes fill out, flower, and then start to make new potatoes. I have not been feeling around beneath the plants but all indications are a big crop this year. This is good news as we always run out of potatoes around Christmas.

Although the Saskatoons were disappointing this year, the raspberries are early and are looking good. I expect we'll have a big crop this year--we're already getting two cups a day of the early berries. We also froze some gooseberries for later use.

We've been drying herbs (lots of dill weed this year). The peas are also ready and we picked the biggest pods this week and then spent a half hour on the front desk shucking them.

We got about three-quarters of a litre of peas (they wee big peas!), which I blanched and froze for Indian food and Christmas dinner. I expect we'll get another one of two crops off of the peas before they pack it in and the beans we planted behind take over.

I'd like to get out to a u-pick this weekend and get some strawberries for jam and pie filling. We'll see how that goes. We also have a lot of zucchini this year (three varieties) and I am keen to replenish our stock of zucchini salsa. Just need the tomatoes to start ripening! In the meantime, Jess is making zucchini loaf.

Flowers, fire and bees

The end of June turned hot again and the plants have shot up. Lots of annuals in full flower, like these snap dragons,

The city lifted the fire ban a few weeks ago and I finally managed to burn off the four wheel-barrows of old raspberry canes one evening. Man, they went up fast!

The potatoes are all up and in flower.

Our front, the zucchini plants are also producing flowers and the first fruits of the year.

The mock orange on the south side of the house is in bloom. I spent some time here putting in some new raspberry canes (that were suckering around front into the main garden bed) as well as some perennial violas (red and yellow) and generally cleaning up the overgrown bits.

The main apple tree has lots of apples on it. The dwarf tree has a few and continues to disappoint, year after year.

The most fun is watching the bees. There are at tonne of them this year. Not so many of the honeybees (with stingers) but lots of little pollinator bees.

We hung Jessica's bee house under the deck out back (no activity so far) but the bees are everywhere, especially in the raspberries, tomatoes, and on the marigolds.

This weekend we'll be doing some cleaning up in anticipation of guests. I have a failed wine project to pour out and a bunch of leaves and whatnot to clean up.

Rhubarb, berries, and bees

Apologies for the lack of updates; work got busy! We're just at the end of the peak rhubarb season. Jess has made pies and crisps and I've frozen some for muffins and also to combine with strawberries into pie filling to can (likely mid-July).

The rest of the fruit crops are coming along. It looks like we'll have a good harvest of raspberries this year.

The gooseberries are also almost ready for picking. I'm not sure we'll have enough to jam this year.

The strawberries are also coming along. The recent rainy weather has really helped the entire garden, with the annual vegetables really jumping up with the extra moisture.

Out back, the bees have been frequent visitors in the snap dragon's Jess planted in the old stone planter by the garage.

I spent some time this morning repairing our 20-year-old reel mower. The handle finally broke off due to rust. Four hose clamps put it back into its third decade of service. Which was good a the lawn was a real mess and needed a cropping.

This afternoon I have some weeding to do and then maybe we'll get a mason bee colony that Jess got for Christmas nailed up under the deck. I may also get the food dehydrator out and take some herbs in to dry.

Asparagus season!

The end of the flowering shrubs is in sight, which means the lilacs are out!

And, after a lengthy period of doing whatever it is that they do, the potatoes have finally pushed out of the ground.

The summer flowers are also underway, with these self-seeded poppies brightening the front porch.

On the weekend, Jenn and I rode down to the farmer's market and picked up several bunches of asparagus. We ate some fresh and the rest I started processing. Most of it was snapped, blanched and frozen for pizzas or veggie pot pie in the coming months.

I used some of the left over stalks and the water from blanching to make soup stock. I also put some of the ends of the asparagus in the dehydrator to make asparagus powder.

Over about 20 hours, five trays of split asparagus stalks lost about 90% of their volume. A quick whirl in the coffee grinder and they were reduced to about a half a cup. The powder will go into soups over the next winter.

The first of the radishes are ready out back. We harvested them along with a first cropping of lettuce for a salad last night.

I have done a second sowing of lettuce in some of the bald spots in the lettuce bed. We also planted from scarlet runner beans in behind the peas (which are up about 8 inches).

Jessica and Jenn also cut some rhubarb and combined it with some of last year's frozen strawberries (freeze clean-out time) to make a lovely pie.

We're forecast to get a bit of rain and a break from the heat this week. That's good as the watering demands have been crazy these past two weeks.