Transplanting the Corn

Today marks the beginning of some nice, warm weather.  It's a perfect time to set out the corn.  I started the seeds in the potting shed - actually 2 plantings as the first one had spotty germination.  Only one section of my 32-section planter has failed to produce a corn seedling but I haven't given up on that one yet.

The bed was started a while ago with 3 wheelbarrows of soil removed.  The soil was put on top of composting vegetation to grow squash on, but that's another post!  Today I raked 2 wheelbarrow loads of finished compost on the bed.

This year, I'm going to plant the corn in a different pattern.  It seems to me that it will grow more stably if I plant the seedlings in small bunches with a bean in the centre.  I drew 8 rough circles in the soil, each of which will hold 4 seedlings and one bean.  My planter has large holes in each section, which allow me to poke a finger up to help ease out the seedlings.  Corn isn't really meant to be transplanted, but I do it anyway!

After the circles were planted (one has only 3 seedlings) a Fortex bean seed was planted in the centre of each.  The beans will grow up the stalks of corn and give them stability while adding nitrogen to the soil - a happy pairing.

Finally, the bed was given a good watering.  Tonight I'll put Remay cloth over the corn to give it extra protection.  In the background, you can see that the Italian heritage beans are flourishing and almost ready to start climbing the bean frame.

In the rest of the garden things are growing well.  The snow peas are in flower and within the week I will be picking the bounty.

A Bonica rose which came from my daughter, is in full bloom.  It always puts on a great show.  Too bad it's unscented.

Not to be left out, Abraham Darby, a David Austen rose, is in full bloom giving us beauty and lovely scent to boot.

Planting Tomatoes - Early!

This spring has been a warm one so far - lots of record-breaking temperatures.  And since no one seems to want to buy our house, today I stuck the tomatoes into the ground!  Usually I plant them out around the 24th of May, but when you have steady nighttime temperatures of around 10 C, you can set them out.  And my plants were getting quite leggy in the hot potting shed!

To combat the legginess, I dug the planting holes to the bottom of the concrete beds.  I trimmed off the lower leaves from the stems and snugged 2 big shovelfuls of screened compost for each plant.  Each plant got a good watering at this point.

Then I filled in the holes gave them another water and fitted a large tomato cage over each plant.  These 6 plants are Health Kick - a determinate tomato that doesn't grow too tall, but produces heavily and needs strong support.

The tomatoes are already sporting flowers!  I have cherry tomatoes planted elsewhere in the garden - Gold Nugget, Sweet Million and Yellow Pear.  A friend traded plants with me and an Indigo Rose (another cherry) will sit in a 4x4 bed with a Gold Nugget. The rest of the bed the Health Kick are now occupying will be planted with peppers - Anaheim, Ancho, Jalapeño and Hungarian Hot Wax.  The sweet peppers - Gypsy - will go in the 4x4 bed with the cherry tomatoes.

The rest of the garden is doing very well.  Snow peas are scrambling up the zig zag fence.

Lettuce is ready to pick.

And this lovely Iris should really be owned by someone who is into growing flowers - my efforts these days are all about vegetables.  It's called Thriller and is an amazing colour!

Blanching Snow Peas For Freezing

The snow peas are in full production right now.  Each day I can go out and pick, coming back with more than we can eat in a week.  It's time to start putting snow peas in the freezer!

Most vegetables being frozen must be blanched.  This stops the enzyme activity that causes vegetables to decay.  Freezing doesn't stop this process and if you don't blanch, you could get off flavours, colours or texture.  Luckily it's a really easy process and the basket of snow peas I had ready didn't even take half an hour from start to finish.

A big pot of water was boiling on the stove.  The snow peas had already been topped and tailed.  Ready to go!

Since I want to keep the water boiling, I only do a few handfuls at a time and just keep them in the boiling water until they turn bright green - it only takes a minute or two for snow peas.

Then I scoop them out into a colander under running cold water until they are no longer hot.  This stops the cooking process.

Once drained, I put meal-sized portions in zip lock snack bags.  The bags are put on a tray in a single layer and frozen.  Tomorrow I'll put the bags in one big zip lock bag - or vacuum seal them in a big bag.  Today's production provided 14 little baggies of delicious snow peas which I can steam for a minute or two for dinner, or add at the last minute to a soup or stir fry.  It's a great feeling when you see the freezer starting to fill up with homemade produce!

Planting Peppers

We're in the middle of a mini heat wave.  Today the temperature got up to 27C in the shade, when normal for this time of the year is 15C.  I decided that the peppers could go outside as long as they were protected.

I've been reading up on peppers lately as I've only recently started growing them.  They are members of the same family as tomatoes and potatoes, so I've had to readjust where I was planning on growing them because I'd thought to plant them where potatoes had been last year.  Not the best idea, so I've moved their location.

I also discovered you can plant them up to the seed leaves.  I don't think they will produce roots on the buried stem as tomatoes do, but it probably gives them a bit more stability.

You can plant them quite close together, although I haven't done that.  Each plant went into the ground with a good half-cup of my fertilizer which had been mixed well into the soil.  Seven plants went into one space - 2 Jalapeños, 2 Ancho, 2 Salsa and one Hungarian Hot Wax.

You should keep hots and sweets separate.  Gypsy, which is a good one for the west coast, is going to go into pots.  There are 4 of them, and because they'll go into pots, I'm keeping them in the potting shed a little longer.  Apparently if you mix hots and sweets, the sweets will get hotter and the hots sweeter.

Today's planting of the hots went into a bed that had onions last year.  The bed is nicely fertile and as I said above, each plant got a good dose of fertilizer.  Also in this bed are Red Sails Lettuce, the celery and garlic.  I located a piece of Remay cloth which would just cover the peppers.  I'll keep it in place until June.  This will keep off breezes, provide a bit of protection at night and allow any rainwater to go through.  At that time, I'll give each plant the support of a tomato cage.

For now, they're tucked into their loose covering, which is held in place with a few rocks.  The heat we're expecting over the next little while and their Remay protection will give them a good start.

Elsewhere in the garden, things are springing up in the good weather.  The snow peas are starting to climb their zig zag fence and before you know it, will be sprouting flowers.  How I love the spring!

Things are exploding!

We are in the middle of a little heat wave.  People in regions that are used to hot summers will laugh but 32C is pretty hot here on the coast!  The garden, however, is loving it.  I'm out there watering twice a day just to make sure that everything is happy.  This year I've abandoned my watering systems in favour of hand watering.  Now that I have more time to devote to the garden, it makes sense to pay more attention to what actually needs the water.  Early in the morning when the garden is still in the shade seems to be the best time with a selective top-up in the evening.

Copra Onions

I think these must be the best onions we've ever grown.  It's only the first part of July and already they're bulking up nicely with no sign of slowing down.  This bed had tomatoes in it last year, received lots of SeaSoil and had a good dusting of homemade fertilizer before the seedlings were transplanted.  We only lost 2 seedlings and none of the plants show signs of going to seed, which is the result of a cool, wet spring. So far this year, we've been fortunate.

Corn and beans!

The Three Sisters Garden is a veritable jungle!  There are only 4 squash plants in the beds this year and all are positioned to sprawl out of the bed - which they are definitely doing.  I see lots of little Waltham Butternut Squash forming.  The Fortex Beans are scrambling up the corn stalks and they're a much better choice than the Italian heritage beans, having smaller leaves.  Hopefully they won't break the corn stalks.  The Italian heritage beans are starting to form flowers, so it won't be long now before we can have beans for supper!

Sweet Millions

The tomatoes are also very happy with the heat.  Sweet Millions has fruit starting to change colour.

Classica Tomato

All of the tomatoes have heavy crops and I can see some busy times ahead processing the bounty.  Both Classica and Health Kick have lots of tomatoes and while both are bush varieties, Classica seems to be a bit more compact and the fruit are more elongated.

Cantaloupe

I placed a piece of fencing behind the cantaloupe which is growing in the compost bin.  This way, the vines will climb up the fencing and the fruit will be much easier to find and keep clean.  Here, too, small fuzzy balls are starting to take shape.

I pulled out the snow peas yesterday and we carefully removed the zig zag fence so as not to damage the sunflowers.  Several were staked as I'm not sure how stable they will be now that the fence has been removed.  Then I transplanted 2 of the peppers to this bed and today seeded kale for a fall crop.  If the wood bugs leave the seedlings alone, I'll transplant them to the small bed that had Seiglinde Potatoes in it.  When the garlic has been pulled - in a week or so - I'll plant a fall crop of snow peas in their place.

I may not enjoy the hot, hot days, but the garden certainly does!

Grilled Zucchini

I'm always looking for new ways to deal with zucchini.  I only have 2 plants but they are huge and I can see that once again, my limited ingenuity will be taxed.  Tonight's dinner was again from the garden with the exception of the steak.  It was my husband's turn to cook and he marinated a steak to grill on the barbecue.  He baked a couple of freshly harvested Pacific Russet potatoes and steamed snow peas to go with it.  I had a nice-sized zucchini and thought I'd try an oil-seasoning mix on them, which turned out quite tasty.  Even my husband, who is definitely not a zucchini lover, agreed that they were - well - okay!

Grilled Zucchini

Mix together very finely minced garlic, salt and cajun seasoning with olive oil.  Slice a medium-sized zucchini lengthwise into even "planks" and let the zucchini sit in the oil mixture while the barbecue heats up.  Grill the zucchini for about 5 minutes per side, until soft.

I made up the oil mixture several hours before dinner so that the garlic and spices could thoroughly infuse the oil.  My husband brushed the potatoes with some of this oil before he baked them since we like to eat the potato skins - and very nice they were too!

Snow Pea Snowstorm!

It's amazing what a zig zag fence about 8' long can produce in the way of snow peas!  Oregon Sugar Pod II is an excellent snow pea.  It doesn't get too tall - it's over the top of the 3' fence now, but won't get much taller - and the sturdy vines bear lots of 4" long sweet, crisp pods.  I know from experience that they freeze well, so we have lots of potential for the winter.

I went out yesterday morning and picked half a basket of pods having previously picked just 2 days before.  I'll need to pick again tomorrow!  It's time to start blanching and freezing snow peas again.  I immerse them in boiling water until they turn bright green.  Then I scoop them into a colander and run cold water over them to stop the cooking process.  They are then frozen in meal-sized portions in small zip lock baggies.

I need to find more ways to serve them - I guess I'm just not imaginative enough!  They're lovely raw in salads and we use them in stir fries and as a steamed vegetable.  Recently I tried out a new recipe with great success and we'll definitely be serving them like that again.  Here's what I did.

Snow Peas and Red Peppers

3 cups of snow peas, topped and tailed, strings removed if necessary
1 small red pepper, cut in thin strips
1 garlic clove, minced fine
1 Tbsp oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

Stir fry the garlic in the oil until fragrant.  Add the snow peas, peppers and seasonings.  Cook until tender-crisp.  Add the vinegar, toss and serve.  4 portions.

Very simple and delicious!

Dinner from the Garden

Tomorrow is the first day of summer - and today is the first day that most of the fixings came from the garden.  Not the chicken, of course, but the coating contains our own garlic and the herbs were picked from the pots on the deck.

Our first picking of snow peas, cooked tender crisp, and Seiglinde potatoes with just a smear of butter.  Absolutely delicious!

The coating for the chicken is really simple:  Panko crumbs, grated parmesan cheese, finely minced garlic and chopped fresh thyme, rosemary and parsley, all moistened with a little melted butter.  Smear the chicken pieces with Dijon mustard and then press into the coating.  Since the chicken pieces were thigh/leg combinations, I baked them for 45 minutes at 375F.

And to top it all off, Totem strawberries from the garden and vanilla ice cream!  What could be better?

May Garden Update

We've just had a spell of very nice weather and the garden is all the better for it.  Things are sprouting.  Things are growing.  Things are getting away from me!  As in weeds...

The hummingbirds are at the feeder in full force - in fact one evening we thought there might be as many as 30 all vying for a spot on a perch - but who could count! Now that there are lots of flowers in the garden, competition isn't quite so fierce.  On the deck, my herb pots are doing nicely.

I've even used some of the oregano, chives and tarragon!  All of the parsley seedlings have made it - and I transplanted a lot since parsley doesn't like being moved.

The two cherry tomatoes have been very happy under their hot caps, which I've removed on nice days and replaced at night.  They're bigger than their mates in the potting shed and will soon have grown too much for their hot caps.

In the potting shed, the tomatoes are also growing well.  We are expecting some cool rainy weather for a couple of days, but after that, I might plant them in the garden, protected, of course, with hot caps.

Fruit trees are in full flower and the mason bees are doing their jobs pollinating.  I was worried that there wouldn't be many bees this spring after a bird pierced nearly every straw looking for meals.  We have plenty of bees to go around, however,  and nearly all the holes are full.  This year when the bees have finished I'll turn their houses sideways so they will be left alone.

Lettuces, snow peas, gai lan, radishes - all are doing well and we'll be eating radishes with our next salad.  I've planted sunflowers in the zags this year and all are up.

The Pacific Russet potatoes in one of the new 4x4 beds have been hilled up once and today I added a good 4" of chopped maple leaves.

In the potato grow bags, the German Butter potatoes are sprouting and soon will have more soil added.

And our favourite rose, Abraham Darby, which was transplanted last year to its new location has never looked so good!  All in all, spring is progressing well.

Planting Garlic - Full Circle

It's hard to believe that a year has come and gone.  I started this blog last year on September 12th with the planting of garlic and today, almost exactly a year later, I'm planting garlic again!

Russian, Porcelain (I think!) and my own bulbs.

I had saved two bulbs of my own growing but wanted to get some new ones as well.  Long Lake Nursery in Nanaimo had garlic for sale grown on Gabriola Island - Porcelain and Russian.  Unfortunately they were all in one basket and not easy to identify!  I know that Russian has some red to  the skin of the clove and Porcelain doesn't, so I tried to get 2 bulbs showing red and 2 not.  When the wrapper came off, however, 3 of them look like Russian and the other looks like Porcelain.

Half planted

The bed was prepared several weeks ago by adding a couple of wheelbarrow loads of SeaSoil.  It had previously grown snow peas and they would likely have put some nitrogen back into the soil.  Today I marked out my rows with a good trowel full of homemade fertilizer.  I allowed a row for each bulb and placed the rows of what I hoped were the same variety together.  At least if each bulb has its own row I might have a better idea of which variety that bulb is.  But then, maybe not!  Each row has 6 or 7 cloves in it, gently pushed into the soil root end first.

Garlic all planted and waiting for the soil to settle.

Once the soil has settled with the coming of the fall rains, I'll add a mulch of chopped leaves on the top.  Garlic doesn't like competition and chopped leaves are very good at keeping weeds at bay.

Oregon Sugar Pod II

The snow and snap peas are planted in the bed beside this one and are doing very well.  I'm hopeful that this year I got them into the ground with plenty of time for some production.

Sugar Lace II

I planted 2 varieties, Oregon Sugar Pod II - which I had grown in the spring - and Sugar Lace II which is actually a snap pea.  Now that they are growing, it's very easy to tell which is which.  Sugar Lace has an abundance of very curly tendrils and apparently doesn't even need a fence to grow on.  I'm thinking they won't be as tall as the Oregon Sugar Pod.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard volunteers

And in between the zags of peas are the volunteer Bright Lights Chard, looking extremely happy and healthy.

Volunteers

In any sane, organized person's garden, volunteers are called weeds.  I certainly pull out my share of weeds and use mulches where I can to control them.  There is a definite place, however, in my garden for volunteers.

Foxgloves immediately come to mind when I think of weeds which are welcome to make my garden their home.  Unless they actually show up in a raised bed or the middle of a path, I leave foxgloves alone.  Their stately spires are a good food source for bees and I just think they look lovely.

Currant bush against the potting shed

The currant bush which has grown up against the potting shed is another volunteer.  It looks like a cross between the enormous King Edward bush below the potting shed and the currant bushes I gave up on in the garden as the birds nearly always got most of the crop.  My volunteer has blooms which are a darker pink than the King Edward, but produces berries which I leave for the chickadees and their fluttery babies.  Right now this bush is looking pretty motley because it was pruned back severely so we could install the UV light for the pond, but it won't take long to grow back again and its location means that it must be kept small.

Parsley gone to seed

The flat Italian parsley is another welcome plant in my garden.  I seeded this variety a number of years ago and it turns up regularly in a flowerbed above the pond.  I can nearly always find some parsley thanks to the freely-cast seeds of this useful plant.  Similarly, oregano appears all over the garden - mostly where I don't want it!  There's even a clump of it growing in a grassy area which sends up a delicious, spicy scent whenever it's mowed.

Bright Lights swiss chard growing in the snow pea bed

A couple of years ago, my neighbour Beth gave me some Bright Lights swiss chard plants.  My garden is pretty warm and this variety goes to seed quite easily which is why I generally don't grow it.  A recent weeding in the snow pea bed turned up a lot of little swiss chard plants, easily recognized by their colorful stems.  Some I transplanted to more open areas and others I left where they were growing.  Now that we're heading to fall, Bright Lights swiss chard will be a very useful addition to the winter garden.

Bright Lights in the strawberry bed

I even discovered a well-grown plant in the new strawberry bed!  Of course, I left it.

Beth's Big Fat Tomato

And naturally Beth's Big Fat Tomato was originally a volunteer.  I don't think my plant is producing tomatoes as big as the parent plant, but with a volunteer, you never know what you're going to get.  I do know, however, that this plant is very productive and the tomatoes are just starting to ripen.

Arugula going to seed

Several years ago, a friend gave me several small arugula plants from volunteers in her garden.  This is the wild arugula and of all the varieties of arugula, I like this one best.  It's everywhere in my garden, but quite easy to pull out.

A young arugula seedling popping up beside the snow peas

The bed that is now growing the fall crop of snow peas had the original arugula plants in it and any time the soil is turned over, thousands of little arugula plants appear!   And in my turn, I've passed along lots of little wild arugula plants as well.

I certainly have my share of weeds - chickweed, herb robert, snapweed, wild geranium and many others whose names I don't know - but many other so-called weeds, judiciously transplanted, are more than welcome to take up a spot in my garden.