Grape Muffins

At this time of the year we are scrambling to keep ahead of the produce.  The Italian prune plum tree has been dealt with.  Plums halved, pitted and frozen for future Pflaumkuchen this winter.  Onions and garlic stored away.  Bean pods for dried beans spread out on trays in the potting shed.  Tomatoes mostly harvested and turned into soup, salsa, pasta sauce - but more tomatoes still out in the garden ripening.

And now the grapes!  There are signs that the racoons have been visiting - all of the easily-reached grapes are gone, but bunches hanging from the sides of the arbour which the racoons can't reach are ripe and ready to be picked.  A quick harvesting scooped up one big basket and those were stripped from the bunches and popped into the dehydrator.  One lonely bunch was left - how about grape muffins?

The Candice grapes growing on the arbour are small, tart, seedless grapes - perfect for dehydrating.  Most recipes I found on the Internet called for halved red seedless grapes.  Our grapes are the size of large blueberries, so no halving necessary.  Using my old standard recipe, I had a go at making muffins.  Recipe at the end of the post.

It's a pretty basic recipe - dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another.  Add the wet to the dry (and dump in the grapes!) and mix only until the dry is incorporated and no more.  Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 350F for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.  They're not as pretty as blueberry muffins, but they taste great!

Grape Muffins

Dry Ingredients
2 1/2 cups flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar (these are tart grapes!)

Wet Ingredients
2 eggs well beaten
1 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 1/2 cup grapes

Time to Make Salsa!

I have two baskets of Health Kick tomatoes sitting on the counter and there are lots more ripening in the garden.  I don't have a lot of time to spare today because I'm a tester for a new women's shirt pattern, but these tomatoes need to be dealt with.  Vegetable gardening, cooking, sewing - I sound like the quintessential housewife, don't I?  Well don't be fooled!  But I digress.

I have all the ingredients for salsa on hand.  The recipe is on this website.  The only fresh ingredient not from the garden is bell peppers as mine aren't ripe enough yet.

The recipe calls for onions and garlic.  I showed you a quick way to peel garlic on this blog.  Now here's a quicker way to deal with onions.  First quarter the onions through the middle - skin and all.

Now cut the root from middle to skin but not all the way through the skin.  It's now easy to pull the skin off.

Trim off the dried bits from the top.  Your onion is now ready to chop.  I got through 2 cups of chopped onions in record time and not a tear to be had because it was so quick.

Onions and garlic chopped, it was added to my big Maslin pan along with the vinegar, tomato paste and spices.  The oregano was fresh so I added a tablespoon instead of the teaspoon of dried called for in the recipe.

Next, the peppers.  I didn't have quite enough jalapeño peppers as I inadvertently gave away a plant leaving me with only one, so I supplemented it half and half with Hungarian Wax peppers.  And they're hotter than jalapeño peppers.

I needed 3 cups of chopped mild peppers and I used Ancho and Anaheim.  They're the green ones in the basket picture above.  Now I just needed tomatoes.

The tomatoes needed to be peeled and coarsely chopped.  No need to seed as Health Kick has very few seeds.  The quick way to peel tomatoes is to first cut an X on the bottom.  Plunge them in boiling water until the skins come off easily.  The X makes it easier to see when the skin will come off and also makes it easier to peel them.  I dealt with the tomatoes 4 at a time.  While I was peeling one batch another was in boiling water.  The peeled tomatoes went into a bowl for chopping later.  I think that's the fastest I've dealt with tomatoes, too!

In no time I had my 8 cups chopped and into the pot with the rest of the ingredients.  The pot was set to boil and then turned down to simmer.

While I type this, the house is filled with the delicious aroma of salsa!  All that's left is to bottle it.  And think of something to do with the big basket of tomatoes that's still sitting on the counter.

First, Peel the Garlic

This morning I'm going to be making tomato soup.  A friend gave me a terrific recipe and it's on the blog here.  All the main ingredients come from my garden - tomatoes, onions, carrots - and a few spices.  Now the recipe doesn't actually call for garlic, but I'm adding it to this batch.

But first you have to peel the garlic.  And this year, with my garlic getting rust, the bulbs are small which makes peeling a royal pain!  But there's a solution.

To do it the quick and easy way, you need 2 metal or ceramic bowls.  I just had one metal bowl and a lid.

Next, separate the cloves.  The easy way do do this is to smack the bulb with the heel of your hand.

Now place the cloves in the bowl and cover with the other bowl (or in my case, the lid!)

Shake vigorously for 10 to 15 seconds and voila!  Peeled garlic ready to go!

Be sure to check out the tomato soup recipe - it's a winner!

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....."

Garlic Rust!

I've grown garlic for years with relatively little problem.  One year the bulbs were a little on the small side.  Another year, nearly all of the plants I started from purchased bulbs didn't sprout.  But in almost 20 years, it's been a love/love relationship.  Until this year!

Rust on garlic leaves

I'd noticed the orange staining on leaves and assumed it was the result of our extremely heavy pollen year - our brown roof is gold!  Then noticing that the staining was advancing, I finally did some research into garlic problems and discovered that it's rust!  Puccinia porri, to be exact. We have had an extremely wet early spring and apparently this is what has brought it on.  Leningrad and Porcelain plants seem to be the ones most affected - the larger bulb-producing plants, of course.

What to do?

I imagine that there are chemical controls for this, but I didn't even investigate that.  I got out a pair of ancient dressmaking scissors that are never used in the garden.  Wearing a new pair of gardening gloves, I snipped all the lower leaves from the plants and affected portions of upper leaves.

Sad looking garlic planting with affected leaves removed

The poor plants look pretty bald!  I gather that the plants will still produce bulbs although I'm expecting that they'll be smaller than usual.  Once finished, the scissors went back into the house for disinfection and the gloves went into the wash.

Prevention of future outbreaks

I won't grow any members of the Allium family in this bed for 2 or 3 years - onions, leeks, garlic.  Watering in the morning only is important and water the ground, not the leaves.  You don't want the plants to spend the cool nights with water on their leaves if you can help it.

Affected leaves headed for the burn pile

Cleanliness is important. As I said above, everything used to remove the affected leaves has been taken away.  And the removed leaves will go straight to the burning pile - definitely not composted.

I have learned a lesson from this.  Now that I know what it looks like, next time I see rust on garlic (or any Allium) I'll remove it immediately.  If we experience another extremely wet spring, I might consider putting plastic over the garlic to keep it dry.  Crop rotation - which I've always practiced - is important.  Any sign of rust will mean that that particular bed is out of action for Alliums for at least 2 years.  And having never seen rust on Alliums before, I hope I never see it again!

And one final note from my research.  Apparently the bulbs are not affected and it's perfectly safe to use cloves from these bulbs next year.  So as usual, I'll save the best bulbs for planting in the fall.  And perhaps I'll stick to the varieties that were least affected - Spanish Rioja, Czech and the unnamed variety I've been growing for years.  We'll see!

Garlic Planting 2015

I started this blog in September 2012 with planting garlic.  The purpose of the blog was to provide myself with a diary of work in my garden.  I had tried many methods of keeping track and all had failed.  This was my last resort to log garden activities - successes and failures - and I started with garlic.  Three years and one month later, I'm planting garlic again.  I'll save the retrospective for another post and just get on with the garlic!

This year, the garlic is being planted in the bed that previously was home to onions - NOT an ideal decision on my part, but this bed was good and rich.  The onion crop was outstanding.  This bed is the only one that is totally free of planting and was going to be topped with good old SeaSoil, so we'll just see how we get along!

First the bed was turned over and raked.  I got the bulbs ready having saved the best bulbs from this year's harvest.

I set the bulbs beside where their rows would be.  This year I planned to have double rows of each variety and since I don't think I really grew enough last year, I have 8 bulbs to plant.  Hopefully that will be enough. In the picture above, from the top are Leningrad, Czech, Spanish Roja, Porcelain and an unknown variety I've been growing for years.

I carefully peeled back the papers and gently pried out the cloves, setting them in place and then pushing them into the ground just up to the top of the clove.

Finally, a wheelbarrow load of SeaSoil was raked over the top and the whole planting left to soak up the winter rain.  Garlic doesn't like competition from weeds so it's important to give it a good mulch.  This year's planting takes up just over half of one concrete raised bed.  In a few weeks I may find the first brave green spikes thrusting up through the mulch.

A few cloves were determinedly stuck together and these were brought into the house for consumption.  In spite of the poor garlic year in which many people bemoaned the poor garlic harvest, Leningrad and Porcelain have produced magnificent cloves.

Garlic taken care of, a quick look around the garden showed that the Brussels Sprouts are finally starting to form.  Whether or not they'll be ready in time for Christmas - who knows!

Bright Lights Swiss Chard is delighted that the cooler weather is here and looks just as beautiful as it tastes.

The heritage Italian beans had been harvested and brought into the potting shed to start drying.  Today I brought them into the house to finish.  It won't take long to complete the dehydration and then I'll shell them and store them away for planting next year.

Zippy Salsa 2015

The last time I made salsa it was a hit - hot without being too hot and full of flavour.  Since each time I make it, there are slight variations in the ingredients, it seems smart to document exactly what I put in each batch to arrive at the ultimate recipe.

This year nearly all the ingredients are from the garden.  I had to purchase a red and a yellow bell pepper as my Gypsy peppers weren't ripe yet, but other than that small portion, all the fresh ingredients are ours.  To the mild peppers - Anaheim and Poblano, I added a Garden Salsa and a Hungarian Hot Wax as last time I made this, I didn't realize that Garden Salsa were actually hotter than  Jalapeño and the last batch had a LOT of Garden Salsa!  Hungarian Hot Wax are even hotter....

Zippy Salsa 2015

8 cups coarsely chopped tomatoes peeled and seeded - all Health Kick
1 cup Jalapeno peppers seeded, cored and chopped fine.
3 cups mild peppers chopped and seeded
1 cup sweet red pepper chopped and seeded
1 cup sweet yellow pepper chopped and seeded
2 cups chopped onions
1 small bulb garlic minced
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 can tomato paste
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp fresh oregano minced
2 tsp paprika

Wearing rubber gloves for all the peppers, core, seed and chop.

Make a cross on the blossom end of the tomatoes and immerse them in boiling water to loosen the skin.  Seed and chop.

In a large non-aluminum pot (I used my new Maslin pan!) combine all ingredients.  Bring to a boil, stirring often.  Reduce the heat to medium low, simmer, stirring often until thickened enough that a Tbsp dropped onto a plate flows slowly in one stream when the plate is tilted.  Takes about an hour.

Using a funnel and ladle, fill hot pint canning jars leaving 1/2" headspace.  Cover with prepared lids.  Screw on bands until resistance is met; increase to fingertip tight.

Process in boiling water canner for 20 minutes.

El Nino in the Garden 2015

This is turning out to be the driest year we have experienced in the garden and many of the crops are showing stress in spite of all the water that I'm giving them.

Butternut Squash

Many crops are very early.  Strawberries were weeks ahead of time and the crops were pretty good.  The corn is loving the heat, as are the beans.  Other heat-loving plants like peppers and squash are quite happy so far, but they all need water.

Fruit trusses on Health Kick Tomatoes

The tomato plants are huge and early on set a bumper crop of fruit, but now the flower trusses are not setting.  I've had to really keep an eye on this bed because it's one of the beds that cedar roots have managed to creep into.  I hadn't realized what was happening and almost lost one Principe Borghese plant before I discovered how dry the soil was. (Update 5 hours later:  with a temperature of 28C and a strong wind, the tomato plants were losing moisture so quickly that they were starting to wilt and a second deep watering was required.)

Principe Borghese Tomatoes

In checking back, I can see that most years at this time the fruit is just starting to turn on early tomatoes.  We've been snacking on Gold Nugget and Sweet Millions for a couple of weeks now!

Corn is a heavy feeder, too, but this bed is maintaining a good quality of moisture and I think it's the tallest corn we've ever had.  I'd say we're only a couple of weeks off harvest for the corn and the Italian heritage beans haven't even started to flower yet!

Signs of aphids on the kale

Kale is a cool weather lover and it's really struggling in the heat.  I've noticed leaves are starting to curl up and there are signs of aphids starting to make their homes in the leaves.  I'm picking those off, and the kale is getting lots of water, but the heat is telling on their general health.

Harvested garlic sorted into varieties

I just finished harvesting the garlic and am quite disappointed with the size of the bulbs.  This might be because of the heat.  They reached maturity a couple of weeks early and this means that time that might have been spent growing was lost.

Copra Onions starting to fall over

This was also true for the onions.  The yellow onions have already been harvested and I'm seeing signs that the Copra plants are approaching maturity.

And this makes things difficult for the young Brussels Sprouts plants which were just transplanted.  I will probably have to rig up some sort of shade for them to carry them through to fall.

Everything else seems to be coming along well, but each day I'm out there giving the veggies a good drink.  The perennial beds have been ignored.  Water is so precious that only the vegetables and plants in pots are being catered to.  A newsletter from West Coast Seeds addressed this issue and also finished with the sobering thought that the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting that there's a 95% chance that these conditions will continue through fall - and an 85% chance that they'll go through the coming winter.  Now that's scary!

Garlic and Onions - When to Stop Watering

Each year I stew over this subject.  Onions are simpler, but when to stop watering the garlic always makes me think.

GARLIC

Garlic plants at the beginning of July

My situation is outside the norm since I'm vegetable gardening in what amounts to a giant container garden.  Not only that, but this year's extreme early heat and lack of rain makes the situation more complicated.  I've been keeping watering longer than I normally would because things are drying out so quickly.  If you stop watering too soon, the garlic won't fully develop.  If you water too long, you run the risk of the garlic splitting the skins - which I've definitely had happen in the past!  The drying foliage is only one indicator.  I've also been keeping watch by digging up a couple of bulbs.

Test bulb

Two days ago, the bulb I dug up looks to be ready.  The cloves are clearly defined under their paper wrappers.  I've therefore stopped watering the garlic which will sit in the ground for a couple of weeks before I dig it up.

I recently learned another tip in garlic harvesting.  I've always pulled up the garlic, but a recent West Coast Seeds newsletter talked about carefully digging it up so that the bulb is not harmed in any way. After the garlic is out of the ground, I always tie and hang it out of the sun to cure.  When good and dry I cut off the stems and roots, then store the bulbs in open paper bags which I put in a cupboard on an outside wall.  And of course I always save the best bulbs for planting come October!

ONIONS

This year I grew 2 varieties.  I always grow Copra which is such a good onion and keeps so well, but thinking that not enough seed germinated, I bought a bag of yellow onion sets which were planted in the same bed.

2 varieties of onions growing in the same bed

Naturally, the sets have matured much more quickly than the plants grown from seed and a week or two ago, the yellow onions started to fall over which is a sign that they're maturing.  The Copra onions are still stiffly upright and have some time yet to go so they're receiving a good watering every day.  I have now stopped watering the yellow onions and will pull them up in a day or two.  Unlike garlic, onions can be dried in the sun.

Yellow onions

I'll just leave them on the surface of the bed for a few days.  Then, I'll brush off any clinging dirt and put them on racks to finish curing in the potting shed.  When the necks are completely dry, I'll cut off the stems about 1" above the bulb and trim the roots.  Then they'll go down into our heated crawl space for storage.  I'm anticipating that the yellow onions won't keep as well as the Copra do, and we'll definitely use up these ones first.  Since the bulbs are so much smaller than Copra, it probably won't take long to use them up.

Onions and Garlic are two crops that I would always grow.  They don't require a lot of care and the yield is wonderful.  And garlic is the easiest - the major growth time occurs during the winter and spring when it doesn't even need to be watered!  There's nothing like home-grown garlic and onions!

Tomatoes, Peppers, Celery and Mulch

After several cloudy but warm days, the sun has come out and we have a hot dry spell ahead of us.  It's time to give the tomatoes some TLC.

The tomato bed was prepared a couple of months ago.  Several wheelbarrow loads of SeaSoil were added and turned in.  The poles for the framework were put in place and holes dug by each pole - 10 in all.  Each hole was given a cup of homemade fertilizer which was watered in.  The bed sat like this and waited for the nighttime temperatures to be reliably 10C and a couple of weeks ago, that criteria was reached.  The tomatoes were planted in deeply and a week later were tied to the poles.

Today I trimmed off the lowest sets of leaves.  This is a prevention measure for when water splashes on the soil, carrying disease to the plant.  There won't be a lot of soil splashing on my tomatoes because they are mulched.

Every fall, we rake up the maple leaves below our house.  They sit in a pile getting good and wet all winter.  When spring comes, my husband puts them through our shredder and the resulting fluffy goodness is applied to plants that could use a mulch.  It's been very dry around here lately, but when I dug into the pile, the chopped leaves were nice and damp.

After trimming the tomatoes, I applied a good 3" of leaf mulch.  When the plants get bigger, I will probably trim off more bottom leaves.  The mulch keeps the ground nice and moist, which is an important thing for tomatoes.  They need a constant supply of moisture.  They don't want to be waterlogged, but they do need the soil to be consistently moist.

All of the tomatoes are forming flowers now.  My daughter, who is relatively new to vegetable gardening, asked if she should remove the flowers from her plants.  She was concerned that the plants weren't big enough to support tomatoes.  Leave them.  As the tomatoes form, the plant also grows.  If it has proper support, it will easily bear the weight of the fruit.  Since all the plants in this bed are determinate, I won't be pinching off side shoots either.  Gold Nugget (above) is always the earliest to flower in my garden and we love the little sweet yellow morsels.

I mulched 2 beds today.  The second bed to be treated was the one containing peppers, lettuce, celery and garlic.  The garlic has been mulched all winter, so this portion was fine.  As this particular bed was the last long one we built, it is also the one containing the least organic matter.  I've been finding that the top dries out quickly and water just runs off it.  Mulch will take care of this.  After weeding and watering, 3" of mulch was tucked in around the plants.

Mulching is an excellent way to treat celery, which wants lots of water.  I carefully tucked handfuls of mulch around each plant, burying them up to their leaves.

Commercial growers blanch their celery, and while I'm not planning on going to extremes to get pale celery, the mulch will do some of this naturally and keep the plants moist at the same time.

Working in this bed gave me a good look at the garlic, which is now producing scapes - yum!

And that brings me to another question my daughter had for me.  She was concerned about the uneven growth in her garlic.  I reminded her that she'd planted several different varieties - as have I.  Some of her plants are really tall and others relatively short.  She was concerned that perhaps some of her soil wasn't as fertile as other patches.  Not the case at all!  In the picture above I have 5 different varieties growing and it's easy to see that there are different growth patterns.  I have to stress that there are NO DUMB QUESTIONS in gardening.  We are all - even master gardeners, of which I am definitely not one - learning all the time.