Racing the Squirrels!

Every year it's a contest to see who gets our produce first - us or the squirrels and raccoons.  The raccoons have a better track record with the grapes than we do.  I'd love to let the grapes go to fully ripe but we'll lose the whole crop if we do that.  Fortunately, the squirrels aren't interested in the grapes but hazelnuts are another matter!

The other day when I was out picking tomatoes with my daughter, we heard a squirrel scolding us.  At the time we thought it was in a nearby fir tree, but today I realized he was in the hazelnuts.  I went right up to the bush and there he was on a branch with the hull in his paws carefully removing the nut - not bothered by me at all!  Of course by the time I came back with a camera he was gone.  Now we don't begrudge the squirrels a nut or two.  Our little guys are the native ones and the big invasive greys and blacks haven't made it to our little island yet.  We are happy to let them share the sunflower feeder with the birds and even to have a few nuts.  But enough is enough!

When we started harvesting this year, there were signs on the ground that the squirrels have had more than their fare share!  Lots of empty husks!

This year's hazelnut crop is a good one.  We only have 2 mature bushes bearing nuts and 2 young bushes just about ready to start. And the young ones have Perigord truffle spores at their roots!  One mature bush is a heavy producer.  It's smaller but always loaded with nuts in clusters.  The other bush is huge but bears very few nuts although the nuts it does produce are very big.  This year it has a good crop, too.

Hazelnuts are not the easiest to see in the bushes.  The clusters appear near the end of the branches on the undersides and tend to blend in very well.  It took a good half hour with our relatively small bushes to get most of the crop.  My husband pulled down the branches for me to strip.  Once we got most of the clusters off the bushes we extracted the nuts from their husks.

I think this is the best crop we've had so far from our hazelnuts.  We'll allow them to air dry in the house for a few weeks before they're ready to eat.  And I'm sure there are still some up there to keep the squirrels happy.

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!

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!

Raccoon Invasion!

Every year we have some invasion by the raccoons.  Usually it's the grapes and we have a race to see who gets them first.  If I'm not quick off the mark, I get none at all.  Greedy little raccoons!

One year it was the hazelnuts.  I usually harvest them when they start turning colour just to beat out the raccoons.  A few years ago I was a bit slow and there were none to be had.  Plus broken branches.

Devastation in the corn bed!

This year it's the corn, which is the first time they've ventured into this crop.  One morning I went out to find 4 stalks brought down and cobs ripped off.  The next morning, many more plants were brought low.

Downed corn stalks

I decided to leave the plants on the ground in the hopes that they'd leave the rest of the crop and just work on the cobs that were easy to get.

Fortex beans growing in the corn

This morning there are no new plants on the ground, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  If I lose the corn, I'll also lose the Fortex beans that I have growing on them.  I'm growing these beans in the corn because they tie the plants together and provide strength from the wind.  One year I grew the heritage Italian beans in the corn, but it's so vigorous that they broke the stalks!  Fortex beans are much more courteous!

Heritage Italian beans striking out on ropes strung to the fence

I didn't want to give up on the delicious heritage Italian beans though.  We've built a special sturdy frame for them.  These beans don't like to be confined, however, and I've even strung rope to the fence.  The beans have taken over 2 of the 3 ropes and are heading into the grapevines - which are set to meet them halfway.  This will certainly make picking the beans easier!

Swiss Chard growing beside the beans

Elsewhere in the garden, things are coming along nicely.  We've had quite a few meals of Swiss Chard which is such an attractive plant.

Gypsy peppers

And the Gypsy sweet peppers will soon be turning colour.  Growing them in a proper bed has resulted in a much better crop.  They share this bed with Sweet Million and Indigo Rose cherry tomatoes.  The hot peppers are growing in a bed with the Health Kick tomatoes.  You don't grow sweets and hots together or the sweets get hotter and the hots get sweeter!

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....."

A New Strawberry Bed

We are currently growing two kinds of strawberries, everbearing and June-bearing.

Everbearing strawberry planted in a tire

We bought 4 everbearing plants this spring and will start a proper bed with them soon.  Currently they are housed in a temporary bed and are doing very well.  Everbearing strawberries don't have the deep delicious taste that the June-bearing ones do, but they produce right into the fall and they certainly taste delicious when all you can see in the stores are the hard tasteless ones that are imported!

Totem plants growing in a 4x4 concrete raised bed

The June-bearing strawberries we grow are Totems.  I got them from a friend who got them from me!  We stopped growing strawberries as we were tight for room.  Thank goodness he is still growing them!  We planted these ones in a 4x4 raised bed and they did well for a couple of years.  Since this was a new bed, the nutrition wasn't as good as beds we've been tending for years.  The time had come to de-commission this bed and rebuild the soil.  Strawberries are extremely efficient reproducers and are constantly sending out runners.

9 rooted plants waiting to be settled in their new home

I filled 9 pots with soil and anchored a runner in each.  When they had firmly established themselves -it only took a couple of weeks - they were ready to go.  I snipped each runner from its parent and then moved the plants to their new bed.  And as it happened, each little plant was already making its own little runner.

Soil prepared for the new plants

The bed they were destined for had recently housed my poor rust-infected garlic.  Since no alliums should be planted here for at least 3 years, making it into a strawberry bed is a perfect solution.  For now they will share the bed with carrots, but it won't take long for us to eat them up and free the bed for strawberries.  This bed was well prepared for the garlic and had been mulched with SeaSoil.  All it needed was turning over.

Pots set out to get proper spacing

I placed the new plants approximately where I wanted them, leaving plenty of room so that their runners would have room to root as well.

All done!  They just need a good watering

Then the plants were firmed into the soil.  I was careful not to plant them any deeper - strawberries hate that!  If planted too deeply, the crowns will rot.  Then the runners were placed approximately where I wanted them.  Finally the whole bed got a good watering.