Early Apples

It's going to be a tremendous year for tree fruits!  Before we realized what was happening, early Gravenstein apples were starting to drop off the trees!  We have an espaliered apple tree with 6 varieties grafted on it.  Apples on this tree seem to ripen earlier than on our other trees, and to my surprise, I was finding apples on the ground.  Time to do something with them!  It was easy to get my husband to gather apples for me when the reward was apple crisp for dessert.  I have a recipe that has to be one of the best apple crisps ever.  It's on the blog HERE.

Since there were so many apples, I made 2 crisps - one for the oven and one for the freezer.  I peeled, cored and sliced the apples, dropping them into water which had lemon juice in it to keep them from turning brown.

The topping is a sort of shortbread-like mixture with walnuts added at the end and roughly chopped.

When I had enough sliced, I drained the apples and mixed them with a sugar/cinnamon/cloves combination.

Topping is added to the apples and gently smoothed over the top.

Then into a 350F oven until golden brown and oozing juice.  The kitchen smells wonderful!  Now to get some vanilla ice cream and dessert is covered.  And there's another unbaked apple crisp in the freezer!

Signs of a Cool Spring

We've been experiencing the kind of spring we usually had on the West Coast of Canada - cool and damp.  Summer so far hasn't been much better.  Our previous several springs and summers were hot and dry - which brought their own problems - and I think we got used to thinking that's how it should be!  Well here we are again!

Garlic rust

My first clue that things weren't going the way I wanted them was the rust on the garlic plants.  At first I thought it was pollen - but I was wrong!  It's resulted in tiny bulbs of garlic - definitely not what I've come to expect.

Tomato leaf curl

Then there was the tomato leaf curl.  This has affected mainly the cherry tomatoes.  The Health Kick tomatoes haven't been bothered at all.  Indigo Rose, a cherry tomato given me by a friend, has been the most affected.

Blighted leaves

Some tomatoes also are showing signs of what I think might be blight.  I actually had to discard Yellow Pear.  Sweet Million has lots of yellowing leaves but is still soldiering on.

6 Kick Tomatoes

Good old Health Kick is looking as wonderful as it always has.  The first year I found a tiny Health Kick plant in a nursery was a bad year for blight.  Only at the very end of the season did I find blight on my Health Kick.  No wonder it's my "go-to" tomato!  In the picture above you can see how bushy they are - and I really did space them out.

Ripening Health Kick Tomatoes

They are covered with fruit and some is now ripening.  I look forward to lots of roasted tomato pasta sauce, tomato soup base and salsa!

Seed head on Copra Onions

This is the first year in a few that the onions have developed seed heads.  So far I've picked off 4.  That's actually not bad.  One cold, wet spring 3/4 of the plants developed seed heads.  This doesn't really affect the onions except that you get smaller bulbs which don't keep as well.

Copra Onions starting to fall over

Another strange thing happening with the onions is that they've decided they've had enough!  Most of the plants have now fallen over which is a sign that they've matured and are ready to be cured.  I'm not sure why this is happening.  This early maturing means that the bulbs aren't as big I we usually see but there's nothing for it but to go along with what the plant has decided.  When they've all fallen over and have had a bit of time to sit, I'll pull the plants and let them cure in the sun for a bit.  Then they'll go in the potting shed to completely cure so that I can remove the dried tops and nip the roots, then store them away.

Heritage Italian beans in flower

However, it's not all doom and gloom.  The beans are in flower and this year promises to yield a bumper crop of the heritage Italian and Fortex beans.  Luckily a relative has given me a recipe for her delicious dilly beans which will help use up some of them.

Liberty apple tree

This will also be a stellar year for the apples.  Every tree is loaded in spite of thinning.  The poor little Liberty is dragging on the ground - as it is every year.  Liberty is a tremendous producer of tart-sweet small beautiful red apples.  One of our favourites!  And to look at it, you'd never believe that I've removed 3/4 of the apples in thinning!

With vegetable gardening, every year is an adventure.  Things are never the same from one year to the next.  You just have to ride it out and hope for the best.  And every gardener thinks, "Next year....."

April Chores

Today my husband got going on building the compost bin and I got some transplanting chores done.  More on the compost bin when it's complete!

As I said in a previous post, our house is on the market.  There was an initial flurry of activity and showings resulted in offers 4:3.  Unfortunately, all of the deals collapsed and things are currently pretty quiet.  It seems that we will probably be staying here.  Time to get going on the garden!

Transplanted tomatoes

I started off today's chores with transplanting some of the tomato seedlings into larger pots.  6 of the Health Kick tomatoes were moved to bigger homes as well as the mixed up Gold Nugget and Sweet Million tomatoes.  Those two varieties are starting to make their identities known!

Then on to the outside transplanting.  I've been wanting to get the Copra onions in the ground but had to wait until the irrigation pond pumps were up and running.  Then of course, life got in the way with family lunches and appointments.  Today is warm but cloudy - a perfect day for transplanting.  The final 3 Lacinato kale plants found a home and I tucked 91 onion seedlings into one of the raised beds.

Onions planted

The Copra seedlings were a little larger than I usually allow them to get, but a thorough watering of the pot allowed me to gently tease them apart.  I marked out 13 rows on the bed and watered it well.  7 onions went into each row including one little guy with a not very strong root system.  We'll see how he gets on.  The rest of the seedlings were pretty robust and I firmed them into the wet soil.

Tomato cages provide protection for the seedlings

The final step was laying tomato cages over the seedlings.  This prevents neighbourhood cats (which just might include our own!) from digging and uprooting the little plants.

Onion seedling

By the time the tomatoes need their cages, the onions will be well established and not need protection.

Apple blossoms

Spring is certainly roaring on with a vengeance.  All the apple trees are bursting into blossom and the mason bees are working hard at pollinating the flowers.  As long as the weather holds, it looks like we might have a good apple crop!

Chunky Apple Cake

It's apple season!  This year the apples are a little on the small size, given the extreme dryness we've experienced, but are as delicious as ever.  There's nothing like an apple freshly picked off the tree.  A friend who was going camping made what she called my apple cake to take with her.  Of course it's not my apple cake as I got the recipe from someone else, but it is a family favourite.   I always make it at this time of the year to use up some of our excess apples. Moist and delicious, it has chunks of apple and nuts in it and we usually top it off with cream cheese icing.  Today I made it with walnuts and divided the cake in two, freezing half for later.

Chunky Apple Cake

4 cups peeled, chopped apples
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 cup chopped nuts
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt.

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a 9x13 pan.

Peel and chop the apples.  I used our favourite Gravenstein apples.

Mix together apples, sugar, oil, nuts, eggs and vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients together.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and pour into the prepared pan distributing it evenly.  The batter will be thick.

Bake at 350F for 45 to 60 minutes - until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

We topped half of our our cake with cream cheese icing, but my friend baked hers as cupcakes and planned to serve them with frozen yoghurt.  And I'll bet it would be nice with raisins instead of walnuts - or even with.  Or perhaps dried cranberries.  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Bean Strategies and Dealing with a Tomato Glut

This year we set up a bean arbour in hopes of providing a solid structure for the heritage Italian beans.  The vines are incredibly vigorous with large leaves.  The first year I grew them in with the corn in a Three Sisters Garden.  They proved too much for the corn and broke the plants under their weight.  Last year they were on the bean rack my husband made me, but since it was 8' tall, I couldn't reach the beans at the top and lost a lot of the crop.

This year I decided to try a bean arbour.  My daughter grows beans very successfully on a metal garden arbour and I thought, why not try something like that much bigger - like a grape arbour.  So last May, my husband built me my bean arbour which spans 2 concrete raised beds.  It is covered with bean vines!  So much so that that the beans are again trying to escape.  Some vines have managed to latch onto the corn which is now thankfully finished.  Others have tumbled into the Queen of Denmark rose which is behind the beans.

The solution seemed to be to provide more avenues for escape and to that end, we set up ropes which tie onto the fence behind the garden.  Then I twined loose vines on the ropes to encourage them.  We should have done this long ago, but at least there's another month or so of growing time.  And it will certainly be easy to pick these beans!

Meanwhile, the tomatoes are flourishing.  Today I picked a good 25 pounds of Health Kick tomatoes - and this just from 6 plants!  These tomatoes will go into Zippy Salsa and Tomato Soup but there will still be lots left over to give away.

The tomato plants are far from finished - there are still lots more on the road to ripening and I have yet to harvest from the Principe Borghese plants.

I was worried that it was too hot for the Brussels Sprouts planted earlier this summer.  They are doing just fine, thank you, and hopefully will provide homegrown sprouts for Christmas dinner this year.

And as for apples, we are already picking Macintosh, and the Liberty isn't far behind.  This poor little tree struggles each year with its enormous crop of small, red, scrumptious apples, branches bending to the ground.  One of our favourite apples for fresh eating.  The drought we're experiencing is hitting the apple trees hard and we've purchased watering bags which zip around their trunks and provide a slow drip of water to help them out.

Confetti Cole Slaw and Garden Update

I make a mean cole slaw - even if I do say so myself!  I apply the "kitchen sink" method - I put in whatever I have on hand, and the more ingredients the better.  Tonight my husband is grilling a steak and baking a couple of our Pacific Russet Potatoes.  A cole slaw is a great addition to the menu.

Ingredients for Confetti Cole Slaw

Tonight's batch will have purchased red and green cabbage, Cripps Pink apple, kohl rabi from jollityFarms and from our garden onion, 3 kinds of kale and carrot.

Veggies prepared

All of the vegetable ingredients  are chopped into pieces except the carrots, which I grate.

Confetti Cole Slaw

The dressing is simple and the amounts vary with the size of the coleslaw.  To salad dressing I add a squirt of liquid honey and drizzle apple cider vinegar to thin the dressing down.  It's all tossed together and put in the fridge until dinner time.  A great addition would be toasted sunflower seeds, but today I didn't have any on hand.

While out in the garden gathering the ingredients, I snapped some pictures to show progress.

Corn, bean arbour, 2 pots of basil and leeks behind them

The corn is growing by leaps and bounds.  In hot weather, you can practically see it grow.  It's now taller than the bean arbor, which has vines snaking all over its top.

Corn silks

The tassels crown the plants now and silks are bursting from the stems where the cobs are forming.  It's hard to believe that the corn was just planted out 7 weeks ago!

Health Kick Tomatoes

We've already had a couple of Gold Nugget and the Health Kick tomatoes are just about big enough to start colouring up.

Yellow onions curing in the sun

Today I pulled up the yellow onions and left them on the surface of the bed to start the curing process.

Butternut squash

In the compost bin, Butternut Squash vines are spilling over the edge.  I placed planks to help them to the ground, but they're ignoring them, choosing instead their own path.

Pressing Apples

Today we went to our son and daughter-in-law's house to help them press apples.  They live in a house built around the turn of the 20th century which is blessed with a pair of old apple trees.  Our son built his own equipment for grinding and pressing the apples from instructions he found on the Internet.  All of the wood is sealed with wax to protect the wood and keep the juice pure.  We brought a laundry basket full of a selection of our own apples and our daughter brought 2 big tubs from her own tree.  This is truly a family affair!

Everything was set up in the back yard.  A table on the lawn is the apple preparation centre where we cut up the apples to get them ready for the grinder.

Under the grape arbour stands the grinder.  This is a simple but very clever machine.  Apples are forced down with the tamper which is resting on the top of the grinder in the picture above. Inside the chute is a hardwood drum with screws set in it.

A small electric motor turns the drum.  The screw heads on the drum tear up the apples which fall into a large white bucket standing under the grinder.

The press itself is operated by a car jack which presses down on the bundles of apple pieces.  The juice lands in a tray with a hole at one end which directs the juice into a large container below.

First a slatted rack is set on the tray and a square shaper is placed on the rack.

A cloth cut from a high thread count sheet is draped in the shaper.

Apple grindings go into the cloth-lined shaper.

The cloth is folded over the grindings.

Then the shaper is removed from the bundle.

Another rack goes on top and the whole process is performed again until sufficient bundles are in place so that the jack can operate.  In this pressing, there were six bundles.  Finally a solid piece of wood goes on the top, the jack is put in position and the pressing starts.

We did four pressings today and got 11 gallon jugs of juice plus lots left in the big stock pot to sample fresh - almost 3 jugs per pressing.  The juice was truly delicious!  Tonight the juice will be pasteurized and sealed in double-sized beer bottles.  Lots of tasty juice for the winter from fresh organically grown apples.

All that was left was to clean up after a very productive afternoon - and even that was fun for Gaba and grandson.

The Winter Bed

This has been an awkward year for the garden.  Just when it was starting to kick into high gear, life got in the way.  What with one thing or another, there just hasn't been the time to devote to the garden.  And this year, the name Messy Gardener really applies!  The vegetable beds have not been weeded properly and I haven't been able to take full advantage of the produce.

Today, however, it was time to start thinking ahead.  Time to get the winter garden in gear!  The bed that had the onions has been designated as the winter bed.  After the onions were harvested, I turned over the bed - and discovered that the cedar trees around my garden have managed not only to find a way in, but have widened those cracks and taken full advantage of the lovely soil in the bed!  It took a lot of hard work to cut the roots away and pull them from the soil, but it was finally done.  The combination of a very dry summer and cedar roots had left the soil very dry, so I've been watering this bed to prepare it for the plants to I'd planned to install in it.  A lazy woman's purchase 6 Red Russian Kale and 6 Red Sails Lettuce were bedded in as well as multiplier onions from this year's crop.

Kale and lettuce plants for winter use

This bed was also designated for garlic.  I went in with my daughter to buy fresh garlic bulbs to augment three of the best bulbs from this year's harvest.  First the soil was prepared - a good litre of my homemade fertilizer was worked into the soil.  Then the cloves were planted with the new varieties - Spanish Roja, Leningrad and Czech - being labeled for future reference.  There are now 52 potential garlic bulbs nestled down in the soil.  Then the whole bed was mulched with what is left of the SeaSoil and watered well.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

In spite of my neglect, a number of things are doing well.  This has been a good year for the Swiss Chard.  From only about a dozen Bright Lights and Silverado, we've had lots of meals and it should do well through the winter as well.

Cantaloupe

There's one enormous cantaloupe and a number of smaller ones.  I won't be growing them again, but we'll enjoy what we have for this year.  I'm not sure what I'll grow in the compost bin next year - perhaps squash.  The Waltham Butternut has been excellent this year and if it gets the benefit of a compost bin next year, it should be even better.

Liberty Apple

Now that we're in September, the apples are coming ripe.  Our favourite has always been the little Liberty tree.  Beautiful crisp, tart little apples with brilliant red skins.  This tree was originally nearer the house.  Overshadowed by big trees and well nibbled by deer, when my husband suggested moving it, I didn't give it much hope.  It's thrived, however, and every year is so loaded with apples that the branches touch the ground, even after rigorous thinning in the spring.

And finally, on the flower side, the autumn crocuses are in full bloom.  They are always such a surprise!

I'm hoping that next year's garden with be able to benefit from more care than this year's garden got.  And with gardening it's always, "Next year, I plan to......"  With a garden, there's alway hope.