Happy Autumn Equinox 2013

harvest season is upon us at the garden city homestead, and it's colourful.

<3

freezing our tomatoes

if you haven't guessed by now, i'm slightly tomato obsessed! it was a long, sad winter without the delicious fresh tomato taste as i refuse to buy them out of season from a grocery store. between missing harvest season and moving suddenly last year, i didn't get the chance to preserve any of last summer's bounty. now i have the chance!

we may have planted a few more tomato plants than needed, and we didn't expect them to do so well as the past couple years have been bad for dry rot. anyways we ended up with a ton of enormous, delicious tomatoes and we don't want any of the bounty to go to waste.

we are currently housed in a small bachelor basement apartment which we refer to as our 'hobbit hole'. though it has many benefits such as a huge back yard in which we can grow as much food as we want, there are drawbacks like not having a real kitchen. our tiny little induction element isn't big enough for a canning pot, but we do have a chest freezer so we decided this year we would try freezing them.

as you can imagine we spent a great deal of time trying to decide what was the best way to deal with tomatoes before freezing.. should we skin them? cut them? core them? freeze them whole??? and we decided after weighing the pros and cons of all the methods that we would simply bag them up and freeze them whole. that way we can take from the bags as needed, and they should be easy to skin after thawing anyway. this will better lock in the flavour than if they were skinned or cut i think, no matter the method they're pretty well guaranteed to be mushy, so we opted for the least impact method. plus we had tons, and there's still five times more not ready yet.

we will have to deal with them when we return from the east coast, many soups and sauces are in the future of this batch. we have already used some of the yellow ones fresh for sauce, and they added a sweet fresh flavour to our pasta dish. i was planning to try roasting them with peppers and garlic and making a delicious salsa with them as well.

late august bounty

it's harvest time in the garden.. there's something becoming ripe for our enjoyment daily. we have enjoyed fried green tomatoes, eggplant tempura and eggplant burgers [that turned out amazing!], various flavours of tea, some super fresh pasta sauce, spices, sandwiches [made with deli fresh bread!] and salads.. all grown in our very own back yard.

one thing i'm most proud of growing has to be our giant sunflower. there are half a dozen or so around the back yard, but this one in particular is massive. it stands well over our heads and the stalk is well over an inch across, and it hasn't even flowered yet! but it's working on it.. we had a late start this year with our last minute move, so we didn't have a chance to start a garden right away after last frost. on top of that we had to start from scratch in an overgrown backyard turned meadow after the grass had a chance to get waist height. what an adventure... and here we are, almost fall. what a great gardening experience, so much learned and so much yet to try!

gifts from the garden

there has truly been no shortage of tomatoes in the garden this season, and i say keep 'em coming! i love fresh tomatoes, and this year we will learn how to freeze and can them so that we can make use of them over the winter. it's a good thing that toasted tomato sandwiches are one of my favourites, and matt loves his fried green! 

 i'm excited about the sunflowers this year. for some reason i never tried them until now, and they are certainly the biggest thing i have ever grown from seed. the biggest sunflower towers over me, and it's not even flowered yet! this one along the back bed i snapped a shot of as it's starting to bud, and i noticed after the fact that there's an enormous daddy long legs just hanging out on one of the leaves.

here's something that we weren't expecting, i was told by other tenants of the house that the grape vine along the back fence hasn't produced fruit in years. so i was surprised to find a few bunches hanging out on the vines. i was happy enough to have it as a wind block and a privacy screen, plus the vines are a lot more pleasing to the eye than the car lot on the other side of the chain link fence.

every day there's something new to discover in the garden. just having a garden is a gift of it's own, but it's an amazing feeling knowing that you can have something beautiful to enjoy, and it will feed you too. my partner agrees:)

weekends in the garden

 i've been spending the past couple weekends camping out back with the garden patch, and giving it some much needed attention. it hasn't been quite the same since the storm hit, but most of the plants are still doing pretty well. the herbs, funny enough, were the things that suffered the most, we lost more than half of them under the blown over tomatoes and kale. next year's redesign will address the wind we haven't been used to preparing for in previous years. after another weekend of trimming and staking, i ws pleased to find a few good sized black beauty eggplants!

 the fig tree seems to be happy as well, the fruits are starting to show a bit more growth, but i'm still skeptical that they will become full sized fruits this year. i wasn't expecting the tree to fruit at all in it's first year, and yet here she is, decked out in little figs.

talk about a jungle.. what survived also thrived, especially along the west facing side of the patch. the purple kale looks as majestic as ever, as well as behind it the rainbow swiss chard. both plants looking almost prehistoric. the sunflowers are the biggest thing i've ever [successfully] grown from seed, and they are my trophies this year. i plan to plant them again next season, maybe right in the ground this time instead of starting them in jiffy pots. the squirrels and birds can't possibly find every seed, could they?! ha..

 up front some of our surviving herbs, and the heirlooms coming in enormous. this was one of the plants that broke right over and re-rooted itself right away. there's got to be over a dozen huge tomatoes on this plant alone!

 the garden looking a little less jungle like after a trim, you can get into the path once again. i was pleased to discover there is still life lurking beneath the tangled mess left by the storm, more than i had expected. our eggplants are survivors, even after being smothered once given space they bounced right back and are starting to flower like crazy.

tomato rainbow..

between the batch of green tomatoes knocked loose from last week's incident, and the ones coming up ripe on the vine, we have been feasting on many garden fresh specimens. cherries for salads, early girl for sammiches, and the greens were some delicious heirlooms that we ended up slicing green to make some fried green tomatoes. it was my first time trying them as i had never fancied the idea of eating them green, but they turned out to be very yummy, zesty and flavourful!

so flavourful in fact, that i refuse to eat 'fresh' tomatoes in the winter. these so called tomatoes that you can get at the grocery store are bland, watery and acidic in comparison to any tomato grown and picked fresh off the vine. luckily this year we should have enough left over to do some canning so that we have garden fresh goodness to make sauce and salsa with all winter, yum!

the tomato incident

back when we had that big storm, the tomato plants must have taken it the worst. they were heavy with fruit and had outgrown their six foot stakes, and when the wind and rain got to them it pushed them to the ground. in the following week we had to gently lift many of the plants back up and restake them, and untangle the mess of limbs of them and the neighbouring plants.

one plant in the further end of the bed had fallen back over, and when we attempted to lift it for the second time, the main limb snapped right off with about a dozen full sized green tomatoes attached. i pulled the branch and saved the fruit, and hit google for some ideas on what to do with them all. the green tomato bread sounds interesting..

we also got to pick our first legit ripe tomatoes, a couple little cherries on the vine. i can't wait until we have buckets of them for salads and fresh homemade salsa! good thing there's more on the way... speaking of tomatoes, i know i had mentioned earlier that the plants got far bigger than we had expected. this gives us ideas on how to design for next year. we know now that we can afford to give them a little more space, and we may actually move them into a further extension of the garden, and keep the closer bed exclusively for herbs and flowers. just an idea for now, we'll see how it draws out.

Recovery

the food garden recovered well after the storm. it required immediate attention, but we managed to lift just about everything back up off the ground. the bed is certainly a little bit overgrown, i have cut back enough branches from the tomatoes that you can walk up the center of the patch, and see what lies beneath. as i had mentioned in a previous post, we weren't expecting the garden to get so big considering our experience in previous years.

the garden is so thick it's almost like a mini food jungle.. when you walk into the center of it you can feel that it holds it's own temperature that is much cooler than the sweltering summer heat present on the outside. the soil beneath is dry only on the very outer layer, i probed the bed with my finger and i could see that it also holds a fair amount of moisture. i bought a hose almost a month ago because we had almost a week without rain and dragging cans of water out from the basement was becoming tiresome. i used the hose all of twice, and since the garden has been able to hold it's own. we haven't gotten this much rain in years, but it has rained every two or three days which has eliminated the need to water pretty much all summer so far.

when we first put the eggplants into the ground, we were concerned that the crazy weather at the start of the season may have stunted them, as they began to flower when they were only half a foot tall, barely strong enough to stand never mind holding fruit. then we had one of those days where it just would not stop raining, and within a few days the plants had nearly tripled in size. a couple of the asian eggplants have quite a bit of fruits on them, just about ready to be enjoyed.

though the storm did a lot of damage to the garden, the damage was a blessing to the rainbow swiss chard. we didn't think it would make it this year.. at the beginning of the season some sort of slug or insect had a feast on both plants. there was next to nothing left of the leaves. after cutting it back to allow it to re-grow, much of the surrounding vegetation had gotten enormous and shaded out the chard. when the storm hit it blew many of those things aside and allowed the swiss chard to thrive.

there will be so many tomatoes! last year the summer was so intensely hot and dry, no matter how much we watered we still ended up getting blossom rot on the first round of tomatoes. this year they are plump and full, and there are many. these heirloom purple striped make some funky shapes, i love heirlooms! so much character, and flavour too. the over planting this year combined with the process we used to build the beds created a perfect little microclimate for growth in what used to be a sun drenched little patch of meadow. in the next post i'll recap the method used to build the beds, which was far less labour intensive than our methods in previous years, and much more fruitful. not to mention, barely any 'weeds'!

sprouting a salad

i don't have much experience starting from seed indoors.. i've only grown peas, beans, herbs and lettuce from seed in previous years. this time i am trying a couple species of tomatoes, a bell pepper and a spicy pepper. also we were curious to see if the bean and squash seeds from last year are still viable so we threw some on the seeding trays with the peppers and tomatoes.

they lived! i wasn't sure if the beans would still be good, many of the seed packets that we were given last year we didn't get the chance to use and they weren't stored in any extraordinarily careful conditions. we were happy to see after a few days a few sprouts pushing their way out.. hopefully everything we get to sprout will survive the move and the timing, we will have to leave them outdoors in early May as there isn't anywhere indoors to keep them at the new place. we will ahve to get creative and build them something to let the sun in and keep the frost out.

our lettuce mix is looking happier and stronger each day. it will be the first fresh crop to be ready for the season, and we're eager to dig in.. i'm thinking of picking up some herbs to start next, like mint and thyme and perhaps some parsely and a few chives... the possibilities are endless. we're so grateful that we will end up having a yard this year to grow in, and we move just in time to begin after the last frost. so excited!

let the seeds begin...

happy spring!

what better way to celebrate than to start some seeds?! what an exciting time. we found out recently that we will be moving our HQ closer to the core of the city, and we aren't sure how many things we want to start before the move.. being the long weekend there were many desserts purchased by family and friends, and i managed to scoop up a few of their containers to recycle as seed starting domes and trays. i decided first to start some lettuce in a cookie container. it's a quick crop that can stand a small container, and we can trim and eat and let it re-grow.

i put the container together just a few days ago, and already some of the seeds have sprouted. it brought a smile to my face for the rest of the day to see the new life next to my window.we have accumulated a huge amount of seeds mostly given to us, so we have many varieties to choose from this season. hopefully we can get away with starting some of them a little late as we will have far more space for seedlings at the new place.

tonight we are starting another tray of peppers and tomatoes, and also we will be testing some of last year's seeds to check if they are still viable. they may not have been stored in the most favourable conditions,and we will have a chance to see if they will work or if we will have to get more before planting season begins. we will also have to test some of last season's white clover seeds to make sure they're still good. we will be using clover as a living mulch for the third year in a row, only this time at our new homebase.

2013 has been an exciting year so far, and is sure to be a busy one. stay tuned!

you say tomato, i say..

 delicious!

if there is one type of produce that i insist on having homegrown or local grown it's definitely tomatoes. the ones you find in the grocery store just don't cut it. they're too acidic, the texture isn't right, they're certainly not ripened on the vine. tomatoes are so easy to grow and i swear you can taste the sun if you take a bite straight off the vine.

i love how there are so many different species each with their own unique flavours and uses. with a dozen or so plants, a few ripe ones can be picked almost daily to be used in salads or sandwiches. Mmmm fresh toasted tomato is a classic favourite.

 last year we tried some 'tiny tim' tomatoes, and they were... well.. tiny! we put them in the ground but they most definitely would have done well as a potted plant on a balcony or in a window. some of their fruits were fully ripe at just over a centimeter wide. they were so sweet!

..and of course the classic beefsteak tomatoes. yum... during the second garden year i was working down the street at the garden center, and i had enough time to come home for lunch and pick something from the garden to eat. i'd go for one of these and toast up some fresh thick sliced bread and sprinkle with pepper and a little sea salt. yuuum!

though tomatoes are usually planted as an annual in this part of the world, we had a couple random plants successfully seed and regrow the next season two years in a row. they were both smaller varieties, cherry and grape tomatoes. it was accidental, the plants from the previous year had been tossed into the wood pile, and they grew back as enormous bushes behind the garage. these are some species we hope to help naturalize in our 'forest gardens' in the future.

...all this tomato talk has me horribly excited for planting season.... hurry spring!