Garden Blessings

It's been a difficult year in the garden. It's been hot and dry. The heat has benefited the pears and the tomatoes but other things are struggling. My zucchini has been rotting on the stem and my swiss chard is barely 4 inches tall. If that weren't enough the blight of urban deer has spread to my garden. More than one morning I've gone into the yard to find a handful of deer happily munching away. They ate all my beautiful cabbage.

The long hot summer seems to be making the grapes very happy. Almost every morning I collect handfuls of grapes for my children's snack. I've also been harvesting cherry tomatoes daily. It's been such a joy to eat from our garden. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than picking vegetables and then heading straight to my kitchen to make my family dinner. Just the other night we had herb mashed potatoes with roasted carrots, beets and squash all from our garden.

August Bounty

August is always a good month for garden bounty. It's the month when we harvest the most zucchini, beets, cherry tomatoes, greens, beans and potatoes. We've been so fortunate to enjoy a vegetable from our garden at almost every meal. August also brought us pears and apples.

As we almost always do, the apples were sent off to be juiced. The apples from our tree are very tart and not great for munching straight from the tree. I always turn a few into applesauce but almost all are juiced. There is nothing more comforting in the winter as getting a jug of that apple juice from the freezer and boiling it with spices to make the best hot cider. I look forward to it every winter.

We've been dealing with our usual bumper crop of pears. They are beautiful this year, almost no bug damage. My family isn't a fan of pears sliced so I've been making pear and yogurt popsicles (I have two dozen of them in my freezer). We've also been sharing them with friends and neighbors. It's always nice to have a big harvest to share with others.

September will bring us hopefully another lovely harvest. Carrots, roma tomatoes, grapes, chilis, delicata squash, perhaps a few brussels sprouts and hopefully some radishes. I'm planning on planting a lot of spinach. My spring spinach just bolted so I didn't get any this year and spinach is one of my favorite garden greens. Let's hope September is good to us.

Blueberry Fields

 This post is a bit delayed, blueberry season is already coming to an end, but in honor of my favorite harvest it had to be shared.

We returned to our favorite blueberry farm to harvest fresh berries. Stewart's Blueberry Farm is a family farm and their berries are the best. Unsprayed and organic practices as well as family friendly. April is always thrilled to pick berries. This year she was much better about putting the berries in her basket rather than her mouth. Though she was asking the whole time when she could eat her berries (truth be told, I was having a hard time waiting as well). Their little farm also includes goats and ducks. Our visit is never complete without paying them a visit. On this day the ducks were out cleaning up the rows by removing the dropped berries. What helpful creatures.

We simply couldn't wait until we got home to delve into our baskets of blueberries. I wish I had the words to describe the perfect blend of sweet and tart and juicy and firm that are those fresh blueberries. They were even still warm from the sun. I ate until my stomach hurt. I think this might have been the one case of overeating that I didn't regret. Blueberries never taste as wonderful as they do straight from the bush and they are so nutrient packed that I can't resist eating them by the handful. I had such plans for using those berries. Muffins, jams, pancakes, smoothies, popsicles; all were on my list of things to try with our 6lbs of fresh berries. Aside from one small batch of blueberry pancakes (at April's request), the berries were eaten in their purest form. We didn't even bother serving them with yogurt or ice cream. We just munched away for the next few days.

Blueberry season is almost at a close but after writing this post I'm convinced we need to make one last effort to collect more berries. The season is so brief and out-of-season berries can't even come close. I think I will end this post and start gathering my baskets. The blueberries are calling.

Goodnight Garden

It's finally that time of year when we tuck the garden in for a long winters nap. I was very ready to say goodnight this year. My winter garden never did materialize so it simply became a matter of removing the plants that will not over winter and covering the garden.

Thanks to my brilliant husband, we worked out a way to reduce the morning glory crawling up our garlic in the spring. He bought a large roll of garden fabric, cut a pop can in half and used the sharpened edge to cut holes big enough for our garlic. Although it seems we have more holes than we need for garlic. I think I might use some of the left over space for shallots and leeks. I was planning on planting some green onions but it would appear that the onions in the window box that I planted last fall have continued to grow so I will simply help those ones along.

We've now brought in all the squash from the garden and we will give it a while to cure. We are still working through all the delicata squash and pie pumpkins we picked last month. I'm hoping if we cure our fairy squash and butternut well, we can get them to last until at least December. We are also bringing in the few cabbage that we managed to get this year. They are very small heads and were the victims of many slug attacks. I will use what I can for stir fries and if there is a head left over, attempt another batch of sauerkraut.

In terms of our perennials and our over winter plants; herbs have been moved into the green house, raspberries cut back and the chives and rhubarb will be cut back this week. We are over wintering kale, sprouting broccoli, brussels sprouts and hopefully our celery. The kale and broccoli can tolerate our winters without cover but I will definitely be covering up the celery and brussels sprouts this week. Those under cover may be ready for eating before winter truly hits, if we have some more sunny days, but at this point they are not quite ready for harvest.

The rest of the garden has been covered with plastic or cardboard. The leaves are being raked and distributed between the chicken run (for bug food) and a couple more bags of leaf rot. The trees will be pruned once they are bare and the covers will be on the remaining plants within a few days. Garden, sleep well. We will see you when the days grow long again and the spring is upon us.

Sweet Rewards

After much deliberation we decided to pull some honey from our main hive this year. We took a medium box to be sure the hive had more than enough honey for the winter. I don't mind feeding the bees but I think it is better for the health of the hive to have honey for the winter.

The weather forecast for the weekend was sunny so we decided that if we were going to take a box of honey it should be this weekend. It was our last chance. So on Friday the bee escape was installed and worked fabulously well. Saturday the bees were out of the box so we were able to bring the frames inside to warm up overnight. I love the way it smells. We sat the box on top of our dryer and the whole laundry room had a sweet beeswax smell.

This was certainly an experiment for us. Neither of us have ever extracted honey and the only extractions we've seen were on YouTube so we were just trying to figure out just what worked for use. Turns out I like using the uncapping fork but Jon likes the uncapping knife. It also took a couple of spins to realize we had installed the frames backwards in the extractor. Once we found our groove the honey started flowing.

We were surprised by how much honey came from that one medium box. In the end we got about 16lbs of honey which will be more than enough to get us through the winter. We have a dark amber honey that seems to have a bit of an herbal taste to it. I think the bees loved my lavender, chive, mint and oregano more than I thought. It was just such an amazing process. All the work these bees did to bring in the nectar, cure it and cap it. Such a gift. Thank you little bees, we won't waste a single drop.

Still Harvesting

Usually around this time of year I start to feel like visiting my garden less and less. Perhaps I'm exhausted from perpetual weeding or perhaps I long to hunker down and knit or perhaps I start to forget that I still have many things growing out there. Whatever the reason, neglect tends to set in as the days grow shorter. After a week long break from the garden, I walked out there and came back with a large basket of veggies.

That basket was full of zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes (of all kinds), delicata squash, chilies and pumpkins. There are still many tomatoes still ripening, not a single fairy squash is ready, pumpkins still on the vine, butternut, cabbage, kale, carrots, zucchini, chilies and grapes. I'm still holding out hope that I might get a few edible stalks of brussel sprouts. They have been in since April so it's been a tough year for them. The grapes are slowly ripening but sadly recent rains have caused many to split. Those that do make it off the vine seem to go directly into April's mouth.

All the pears were harvested and shared as well as the blackberries (though none of us could really keep up with them). All our apples were harvested and juiced. We have frozen 40L of organic juice for the winter. It wasn't a great year for our apples. We had a bad problem with blight, many were unusable so they were trashed. Thankfully my parents shared their apple harvest to complete our juicing order.

It looks as though I will not have a winter garden this year. I simply was not prepared and planned my space poorly for winter planting. I will plant some radishes and green onions and I hope that my kale will over winter as it did last year. I will also be planting several rows of garlic. We were so pleased with our garlic harvest this year that I think we will try to duplicate it's success next year. Thankfully we have a freezer (or two) full of garden goodies and a pantry of canned treats to get us through the winter.

Poor Garden

My garden has been the victim of neglect lately. The weeds are rapidly taking over and many goodies are being missed. I'm unsure exactly the reason for the garden being overlooked but I feel like I reach this point every gardening season, I simply forget that it happens.

Tomatoes are coming ready. We've been having rainy days here on the west coast so there has been some rot on my plants but I've done my best to rescue them. One of my plants fell down so I picked all the green tomatoes to save them from the bugs. I'm still undecided if I will make green tomato chutney or simply let the ripen on my windowsill. The sun sugar tomatoes are doing the best so far. Little yellow globes of sweet delight. All these years of gardening and they are still my very favorite tomato. I'm very disappointed by my Roma tomatoes. I was hoping for some big, beautiful sauce tomatoes but it looks like they will be small and few.

I'm very pleased with my squash crop this year. We have butternut, fairy squash, pumpkin and delicata this year. They all seem to be doing well. The pie pumpkins should be ready very soon and I can not wait for all the pumpkin spice muffins, pumpkin pie, curry pumpkin soup, pumpkin fudge, oh the possibilities. The rats have gotten to a few of my delicata squash but I still think there will be enough for us to enjoy. The rain is getting to these plants as well but I think they will make it long enough to produce some good squash.

Fall fruit is also coming ready. We've been picking basket after basket of pears. It has been a bumper crop of pears this year. It's too bad my family doesn't seem to like them. I'm still planning on make a few batches of spiced pear fruit leather in the dehydrator but most of the pears are being given away. The apple tree did not do as well. The bugs really got to it this year and stunted much of the fruit. We will still try to harvest as much as possible since the juice we got last year has been a huge hit in this household. We use it for popsicles, hot cider and of course the good old juice cup. It appears as though we should get a good amount of grapes from the vine this year. Jon has been reading about grapevines and has been taking extra care of it. It seems to be paying off. The grapes are growing in bunches and are starting to turn red. April loves frozen grapes so hopefully this crop will be gobbled up quickly.

I need to get my butt in gear if I want to plant fall crops. My beets, greens, carrots and turnips should all be in by now. If I can't get the garden ready and seeded by this weekend I think we will take a pass at the fall garden this year. That would be disappointing since last year we had quite a few successes but this mama can only do so much. Let's hope there is a break in the rain and my garden gets the attention it deserves.

Blueberry Season

Blueberry season is so short but such a heavenly time. No amount of frozen or imported blueberries could ever compare to the divine taste for blueberries straight from the bush. I dream of those blueberries all summer long. The past couple weeks we have been taking the time to visit a local blueberry farm and get our fill.

As blueberry season approaches we find ourselves reading books about blueberries. Peter in Blueberry Land and Blueberries for Sal are our favorites. April is certainly like little Sal amongst the blueberry bushes. She started putting a few in her basket then stood at a bush for a solid 5 minutes inhaling as many berries as she could swallow. Then she ate all the berries from her basket and decided that the basket was best used for collecting dandelions and blueberries were best eaten on the spot.

Even without April's help, we managed to collect about 30lbs for freezing. April eats frozen blueberries by the bowl year round. Last year she ate through our entire supply of frozen berries in just 5 months. We doubled our supply things year. Of course, I insisted that we keep around 5lbs of berries fresh for eating. Nothing like munching away on blueberries for a week solid.

Our own blueberry bushes produced a few small berries but still seem to be struggling. I think it might be time to try planting a different variety in different soil. There really is only so much one can do for a plant that is not getting what it needs to go vigorously. We can't wait to see what next blueberry season will hold for us.

Backyard Time

Today we are on backyard time. We are taking the time to appreciate the sun and garden, smell the roses, listen to the hum of the bees, build sandcastles, lounge around with the cat and pick lunch straight from the plant. Such simple pleasures found just feet from my back door. It is a wonderful gift to be able to sit with my daughter in the shade of the pear tree and eat a lunch of peas, carrots, raspberries and blueberries all picked only moments before sitting down. I think we all need a little more backyard time.