Relish and drying

The end of summer ritual of making my mums relish happened a few days ago. I wish I could say that the tomatoes were from my garden. 

Unfortunately while much of the garden did great in its first year the tomatoes still look like this.

In this cool climate I am thinking there will be no ripe tomatoes with out a green house.

The relish got made and I've started harvesting seeds for next year.

I am currently drying seeds from fava beans, cilantro, field peas, arugala, pak choi, sno peas, beans and a variety of flowers.I have a corner in the house filled with various containers that contain the pods and flowers that I am drying. Every few days I go through them and sort the seeds that have dried off and separate them from the chaff. After a few more days of drying they then go into an envelope and stored for next season.

I have also been drying lemon balm and holy basil for tea. The holy basil has a lot of flowers on it but the plants didn't get very big before flowering. I'll see how that works out. Again a green house would help.
We are also trying to dry blackberries. We are using the oven for this as we don't have a food dryer.
It is a long process but seems to be working. It seems if the blackberries are frozen on a tray first then put in an oven at 140'F for 10-14 hours that will do it.
Our gas oven only goes down to 170'F. We put them in the oven for a few hours in the evening, turned the oven off over night and back on again in the morning.8 hours later the berries are almost dried.

I am making lots of notes this first season. Hopefully next year I'll know what to do different.

We have a month here before we leave for Thailand. My plans include moving plants around from nursery beds into more permanent sites.

Time seems to be running out.

Blackberry jam

After a few blackberry picking walks I had enough blackberries to make a batch of jam.

The recipe is very basic and one I use for most my jams.

This recipe made 7 small jars and 4 1/2 larger jars of jam.

3 kg blackberries
juice of 1 lemon
750gm of sugar for each kilo of fruit
Boil together for about 1 hour.
Bottle and seal.

We still go on blackberry walks but now I freeze them or use them for delicious blackberry crisp.

Sailing and Blackberry season

I've just returned from 10 days of sailing. We picked up a new sail boat and brought it home. It was wonderful.
Yes I took all kinds of produce from the garden. Most of it lasted just fine in spite of the fact we had no refrigeration after the first few days. The temperature aboard was cool so that helped, but I think the fact that it was all so fresh from the garden when we left had a lot to do with it. The only thing that did not do well was the brocolli. After 4 days it turned yellow and then started to smell quite strong.

The roads here are lined with blackberries and they are starting to ripen. Each evening we go for a blackberry walk and manage to fill two large yogurt containers( 1kg) in about 20 mins. As we collect them I throw them in the freezer and in a few days we will have enough for a large batch of Blackberry jam. Yum.

Starting the orchard

As the summer progresses I am starting to see what limitations the cool climate here has on the garden. None of my findings were unexpected.
Of course the salad greens and brassicas are doing well as are the carrots, beets and peas.
The beans and summer squash are big enough to harvest though a little later than I thought. Next year I'll try growing them under plastic a little longer into the summer.

Tomatoes are flowering like crazy but no sign of fruit. I'll have to see if they make up for it in August. Looking forward to that greenhouse in the future.
The Italian and Holy basil never did grow very big. The Holy basil went to flower early on and while it looks very pretty hasn't given me many leaves to harvest.

The garlic is harvested. Considering that the garden was newly built last fall and the soil not particularly great I got a pretty good harvest.
We still continue to have lots of crab on the table and the odd fish. Looking forward to discovering some of the great fishing holes around here.

I bought a couple of apple trees last week. I now have an early apple called Early Free and a mid season apple called Gala. Even though they are on some kind of dwarfing root stock I'll have to keep them pruned regularly to keep them at the 6' height I want. I planted them hedge style - only 3' apart as research shows this is supposed to help keep them smaller.

The 3 blueberry trees I bought bare rooted in the spring are settling in well. They are Superior,Northland and Polaris.
So I have made a start with the orchard. If the gardens gets built in time I may add a plum tree or 2 this year.

  The potatoes are growing well in their grow bag as I keep adding soil to it.
The ones in the garden are already starting to die back so I think this grow bag idea is working. The somewhat dry conditions that they are growing under don't seem to bother them. Though I won't know for sure til I empty the bag at the end of the season.

I saved these marigold seeds from a friend. The flowers are small and the leaves are fine. Not sure what kind it is but it has flowered well and seems to like this climate. Next year I envision a border of them instead of the odd plant I scattered through the garden this year.

 Another new plant I grew from a friends seed is edible chrysanthemum. It has done well and I really like the taste of the leaves in a salad or stir fry. The flowers are looking good also and don't seem to have changed the taste of the leaves.

The Shirley poppies are blooming and blooming. They are so delicate looking and yet so tough.
I like that.

All is well

Back in BC and all is well in my garden.
The deer stayed on the right side of the fence and there was enough rain to keep things growing. The cool weather veges thrived though the basil is still sulking and will probably do so for the rest of the summer. I can see a greenhouse is needed here if I want to be successful with warm weather veg.

The poppy seeds I sprinkled around last fall are growing and blooming.

The lettuce in the last few weeks have gone from seedlings to fully formed heads so lots of salads on the menu.

Peas, cabbage and collards all doing well.
The first round of pak choi is flowering. Fortunately the seeds planted a month ago are almost big enough to harvest, and in a few weeks I can harvest the pak choi seeds to save for future crops.

Lots of scapes on the garlic for cooking with. In a few weeks I'll see how the garlic crop did.

I am growing potatoes in a grow bag and in the ground to see which gives the bigger harvest. Both seem to be doing well above ground, so time will tell about what is going on under ground.
Now it is just a matter of starting seeds regularly to keep the harvest going both into the fall and through the winter for spring harvest when we return from our winter escape. It's all in the timing...something I'm learning this first season in this new climate.

Quick Trip

I am winding up a quick trip to my garden in Ontario.
What can you do to a garden in 3 weeks. Actually quite a bit as it turns out.
The weeds have been removed and the bare earth planted. I have sown  lots of beans, peas and sunflowers from seed I have saved over the years.Any other areas I find the space I have sprinkled alyssum seeds. I'll call it all green manure if I don't return this summer and if I do get back there may be something to harvest.
Lots of herbs growing strong- both perennials and self sown. The apple trees have lots of small apples and the flowers are elbowing each other for space, so not so many weeds there.

I may or may not be back later in the summer, but hopefully I have done enough to get the garden through another season.
Now it is time to pack for the return trip to B.C and see how the garden has fared there. I have anxiously been following the weather there and it seems like the rain fall has been adequate, so if the deer kept out all should be well.

Fence finished

Finally with the help of some friends we finished the fencing that is to keep the deer from devouring my garden. There are a few finishing touches to be done but the gate is in place and the garden should be safe when I go back to Ontario for a few weeks.

A final touch to the job was a sculpture done by John Leonard using some of the interesting drift wood we found on our excursions.

The garden is growing, though some things are doing better than others. The plastic came off early and the basil didn't like that one bit.
But we are harvesting lettuce, radish and pac choi, so the cold isn't bothering them at all.

The cilantro I wintered over are flowering, so lots of seeds for future plantings and curries.

A generous layer of the local sea soil compost has been applied to all the vege beds. That should set the gardens up for the summer.
Finally we had some rain. Six weeks with almost none! Hopefully there will be enough over the next few weeks while I'm away to keep things growing. At least the deer will be kept out.