New fence and fruit blossoms

May has been a month of pretty unsettled weather, with lots of rain and cloudy days. The water has been a real boon. The plants could use some heat, though.

I've managed to get everything seeded, including the corn yesterday. The garlic has been shooting up in the front yard but no sign of potatoes yet. Lettuce and beets are up; carrots remain MIA.

We spent some time last weekend completing the fence around the back yard (it has always been open on the north side of the house). 

Overall, a pretty successful project that was very expensive because the price of wood is crazy ($140 to do a 5x5' section and I already had the screws).

The fruit trees all survived the winter and are in blossom. I'm keen to see if the cherry and plum yield any fruit this year. The dwarf apple in the back is loaded with flowers, which is a good sign.

I've been aggressively weeding in the wet weather, trying to get at the roots of the crab grass and the creeping bell flower. I've also knocked a bunch of smaller home repair projects off the list. If the lathe holds off, I'll burn the last of the raspberry canes tonight!

Spring 2024

I got a late start to blogging but gardening is well underway! April was a mixed bag, weather-wise, but I had lots of time to do a general clean up. The beds all got a thorough weeding and shaping. I also thinned and burned most of the dead raspberry canes.

Some early seeds went in the second week, including 110 feet of peas, 25 feet of spinach (below) and 20 potatoes. The spinach is up. No sign of the peas yet.

In early May, I put in two beds of carrots, spendings one time loosening the soil below the rows in the hope of giving the carrots and easier time of things.

I also put out the tomatoes we've grown (some black Russians and some blush). The threat of first has passed and they were getting awfully leggy in the house.

The perennials are doing well. The haskap berries are flowering and the raspberries are putting out leaves. I was also hay to see the cherry and both pears survive the winter, along with the apple trees.

The rhubarb are also up. I still have a bunch of squash on the window sill. Some are getting quite viney and need to go in the ground, maybe tomorrow if the rain stops. The eggplants I grew have been a bit of a dud (I imagine I did something wrong).

I also spent some time reworking the drainage of the house and garage to put the water into the garden in anticipation of a mother dry summer. My hope this year is to blog every two weeks at least.

2023 wrap-up

The garden is finally put to bed, although the weather continues to be pretty good and there is no snow in sight. I spent most of October processing the harvest and trying out new ideas with the dehydrator.

We had a tonne of tomatoes so I pureed them and then put them on a piece of parchment paper in the dehydrator. The result was very stiff fruit leather (did the same thing with some apple sauce but did not dry it as much). It took about 8 hours of drying time.

I then crumbed it into pieces and ran it through the coffee grinder to make tomato powder, which works as a substitute for tomato paste.

Four plus litres of tomato paste dehydrated to about 175ml of powder!

We also dried a bunch more peppers. 

Seven bell peppers turned into about 1.5 cups of dried peppers.

So far I have jammed four gallons of raspberries. There s one gallon left but I need a break.

We carved the giant pumpkins for Hallowe'en. They were thick! Lots of seeds to roast, though. And I saved a few seeds. Jess and Jenn have also been making pumpkin pie out of the eating pumpkins.

I think the decoration in the middle was supposed to be a pumpkin but it turned out a bit Eye of Sauron.

That pretty much wraps up this year and I'm turning my mind to Christmas baking. The fruitcakes (some doused with whiskey and some with malibu) turned out well.

Pumpkins, peppers, grapes, beans

The frost arrived on October 1 so we had a busy weekend of harvesting! The pumpkin crop was impressive this year and most have been distributed up and down the street.

The bigger ones ranged from 50 to 90 pounds.

Jess had to help me lift this one up so I could carry it!

On the other end of the spectrum, we got one tiny bunch of grapes!

The tomatoes went hard to the end, with insanely thick stems. We gave away flats and flats and still have window sills full. I'm going to sauce a bunch and then try to dehydrate the sauce.

I had to call out the reinforcements for the final push on the scarlet runner beans. I am still shucking and drying them.

We had a good year for peppers in the raised bed. This is about half the crop. I put a bunch on the dehydrator.

We also had a few good sun flowers that the birds have been at.

The next few weeks are about cleaning up the beds and putting things away for the winter. The garlic is in. We still have a few carrots, beets, and potatoes to dig. And the jamming season hasn't started! But whew!

Apples, tomatoes, watermelon

Harvest season is in full swing. Jess did most of the ladder work this year ("15 years since our last time-loss injury!") as we harvested the second apple tree. Need to prune the top a bit this fall, I think.

We got a goodly amount of apples and we baked and sauced most them the first week.

We ended up with four gallons of apple sauce and half gallon of apple butter. Plus pies and muffins and such.

The tomatoes continue to produce. The six of the black Russian tomatoes is crazy. The slice on the left covers the whole piece of bread! 

We've been saucing a lot. The different coloured tomatoes each give different coloured pulp!

I also harvested the first (of four, I expect) pumpkins. They are each the size of a five-pin bowling ball.

This one as one of the yellow fleshed ones and tasted pretty good. It was very juicy, moderately sweet and had a lot of seeds. We'll see what the next few are like.

There are still a lot of tomatoes on the vine. We can likely start the bean harvest tonight. The potatoes were disappointing this year (I came the heat and drought). The pumpkins are doing well and there are a lot of carrots left in the ground.
 

Pepper, Apples, Tomatoes, Pumpkins

I'm not sure how I forgot to update the gardening blog for three weeks but there you have it. Things have been busy! First up, I pulled in the three largest papers. I think we'll get 15 this year. These have since ripened and two are in the oven right now for fajitas!

The watermelons are also doing well. I think we'll get three watermelons and two cantaloupes this year.

 

We harvested the first apple tree and ended up with a goodly number of pretty big apples. Some of these have gone into crisps. 

The rest I canned as pie filling to make room for...

...endless tomatoes. I started pulling off the riper ones to help the plants make some progress on the greener ones.

The result was very crowded window skills.

The smaller stupice tomatoes, I mostly dehydrated for the winter.

The largest tomatoes, including some black Russian ones have been ether eaten fresh or crushed and canned.

I have another 40 tomatoes on the window sills ripening. These I'll run through the tomato mill and likely sauce. Finally, we have four (or maybe five) huge pumpkins (four litres ice cream pail for scale).

There are also about a dozen smaller pumpkins. I managed to process the garlic and most of it is in storage. Ditto the onions. The next big rush (other than the tomatoes) will be the scarlet runner beans But those are likely several weeks away yet.