Summer 2014 in Ontario

Some garden goodies. Potatoes, herbs and fresh garlic. Is there anything better?

Arcly garden yield, August 2014

I want to recreate this picture in miniature form now.

This summer has been very busy and I am looking forward to some guilt free down time so that I can make some minies. I just finished math camp (I am an organizer for Queen's U girls math camp), before that I was volunteering for the summer games and before that was Elo time and conferencing.

This year Elo and I paddled the French River in Ontario. (see proof below) 

Arcly and Elo 2014. French River

The canoe trip was really great. We had some okay weather and some really lovely scenery. The only problem was the ambush that happened right before dark. An unbearably thick swarm of mosquitoes would attack as soon as the sun went down. This forced us into an early slumber every night.

A hand model picking blueberries before she spills them and they fall into the cracks of rocks.

Wild blueberries were in season and just about everywhere we looked.

French River Provincial Park

Long Overdue for a Garden Update

red currant

This is year 4 of my garden. I have been downsizing my effort while trying to expand the square footage. I am embracing lazy gardening. Planting things that I do not have to weed because they do better than the weeds.

sunchokes in the spring

Sunchokes (Jerusalen artichoke) are native to Ontario. You can find them growing wild all over. Finding them in the summer is the easy part. The difficulty is when you try to harvest them. They are not ready until the tops die down (September-October). So they are very difficult to find at that point. I have had some in my crisper for about 10 months and they are still in good shape. Its quite amazing how well the bulbs (tubers, roots...?) store.

My garden, spring 2014

My garden is a little work in the Fall and a little work in the Spring. In October I plant my garlic and rearrange my sunchokes (help them invade).  You could say sunchokes are perennials. Once you have them they will be difficult to get rid of. I am okay with that though.  Besides sunchokes and garlic, I like growing herbs. The kind that self seed or are perennials.

Lastly I am investing in some berry plants.  Mostly gooseberry (which grows wild around here) and currants. Both make fantastic jam.

domesticated gooseberries

Garden Evolution

Last summer I started a vegetable garden at my parents house. I am never satisfied with its progress.  But it is satisfying to look back and see how much it has.... evolved. 

Year One:

Year Two:

and I already have lots of plans for next year.

Decided to Make Tea

my garden

Bee Balm: Robbed from my moms garden. This smells yummy, I hope it is not poison.

bee-balm

The other day I looked at the ingredients of my $10 Starbucks "calm" tea. It contains camomile, lemon grass and rose pedals. No magic precious plants from obscure tropical islands I have never heard of. Yah, so... I am going to make tea now. I tried making tea last summer. I picked a ton of wild mint. I washed it and laid it out on a sheet out side to dry. Then when I packed it away it was covered with ants. Although dried boiled ants probably wont kill me, I still never tried it.

Lemon Balm: It just smells amazing. Like a lemon-minty smell. 

lemon balm

So I went out yesterday and scavenged through the old dried up herbs at the local garden center. I bought lemon balm (it looks a lot like catnip), camomile, more mint and lemon grass. I have also been picking linden flowers in the park like a crazy person.

Camomile: Is ugly and scraggly.  I read that you can make a camomile lawn.. that would look terrible.. The person who wrote that probably has a car parts and gravel lawn. Also after purchasing these plants I noticed that they are growing wild all around the gravel driveway :(

camomile. Not a pretty plant

Mint: I feel like a chump buying mint (getting my mom to buy me mint). It gowns wild around here. But its a perennial and will come back next year.

mint

Lemon Grass: this could be scotch grass and I would not know the difference. That being said, I hope it is lemon grass.

lemon grass

What I like about tea and jams is that they last for a year. Right now ALL of my green onions are ready and I have no use for them. If I leave them in, they fill flower. If I put them in the fridge they will slowly die.  What can I make with 50 green onions? The same thing goes for herbs. I never use oregano or savory or sage. And if I do I just use a pinch, not a bucket full. That is why I am excited for the onions, garlic, sunchokes and potatoes. They store well and will last me a long time. Plus I eat all of those things often.

Bentwood Trellis and Garden Update

My garden, week 3 , year 2

I love low maintenance plants like garlic and herbs. I am trying to move away from pesky plants that need my attention. My lettuce always bolts... aka tastes bitter and terrible. I dont even try planting it any more.  This year I am growing:

• bunching onions
• onions 
• garlic (scapes are almost ready)
• tomatoes (a variety)
• potatoes  (gold fingerlings and red)
• herbs (perennials: thyme, mint, oregano, savory, sage, parsley and annuals (or ones that die in our zone 5 area): cilantro, dill, basil, rosemary, camomile)
•  sunchokes
•  squash
•  goji berry (wont be producing fruit for years)
• cucumbers
• kale (purple seems to be pest resistant)

Pests

I stole my moms arbor with the promise to build her a new one. So far I have only dug holes where her imaginary arbor sits.. oops. Anyway, the arbor in my garden attracts birds, which is not great because they just sit there, ignoring the bugs that eat my potatoes and poop on my beans. I need to get some of those bus station spikes that they put in the rafters. That should look good.. . So the sparrows are a little pesky but what I am really concerned about are these flat bugs that eat my potato leaves (just the yellow fingerlings).

A bug that likes eating my potatoes... I hate!

Next year I will only grow red potatoes. The red potatoes are unscathed.  My parents (and my garden) live 10km outside Alliston Ontario. A town that grows potatoes and has a Honda factory. In fact, it even has a Potato Festival every August (rolls eyes). I have heard that it is really tough to grow organic potatoes around here. I was also told that burring garlic in your back yard will cure warts, so you cant always believe what you hear. What i did hear was that if a potato field is planted near you, after it gets sprayed all the potato bugs will migrate over to the closest garden and murder it. This however (above) is not a potato but. It is a.....Golden Tortoise Beetle maybe????

moving on...

Bent Wood Arbor

Bentwood arbor for a squash

I cant tell if this looks cute or just crummy. This is how I would construct all of my forts when I was little. Take miss matched pieces of wood/twigs and bind them together using whatever I can. My mom bought me a squash plant that I do not have room for. I can't throw out a potential yummy plant, so I cleared an area in my spill over garden and built a little fort for it. To build a nice, classy bent wood trellis you should look elsewhere. Like in a book. To build mine, keep reading.

You want some bendy wood. We (my mom and I) used linden branches. The saplings are the bendiest. Also willow is a good choice. Actually, willow is so good at rooting, your branches may turn into trees some day if you are lucky, or not careful, depending on how you see things. I think you can make tea out of linden flowers. This tree always gets infected by a bumpy leaf fungus looking thing, so I think I will not be making tea from it.


Step 1: Find two bendy branches (linden, willow etc. ) and cross them at the top. Then secure with wire. do this twice for the front and the back of your arbor.

Step 2: Reinforce the top with an extra branch.

Step 3: Stick the two sides in the ground and connect them with some side branches. I started with the very top.

bent wood arbor for a flying saucer squash.

Some minor updates

The scapes are almost ready. In June/July the garlic plants produce these yummy fellows.

Garlic scape

garlic

My favorite way to cook scapes are grilled on the BBQ with some olive oil, salt and pepper. YUM!

gooseberry

wild blackberries

The gooseberries and blackberries are forming. They will not be ready for at least a month though. When Elo comes to visit me in August we will make jam.

Garden Update (year two)

I always called these gardener snakes. Apparently that is not a real snake. 

Garter Snake

Today I started planting my garden. It was bloody hot out and it felt like I was working in slow motion. I cleared away all the leaves that I put on the garden at the end of the season. The leaves worked really well,  there were nearly no weeds under them. My garlic is looking epic. Maybe I accidentally planted elephant garlic or.... trees.

Garden Year 2. Week 1

Garden year 2

My garlic (above) is just blowing me away. It looks so healthy even after it was covered in snow just a couple of weeks ago. 

Garlic covered in snow.

garter snake

Garden Year Two

Its March and the weather has been beautiful here in Ontario. My garlic, which I started in October 2011, has sprouted and is looking great. This is year two of my garden.  Surprisingly some plants survived the winter. The Thyme, oregano, parsley and sage are all still kicking.

Garlic Sprouting in March

The herbs I planted last year are amazingly resilient.

Oregano that survived the Canadian winter.

I have some big plans this year. I want to try growing some new things like watermelon radishes and peanuts. Last year I grew tomatillos.. turns out they do not taste great and take up a lot of room. Well, I already know I like peanuts, so what is the worst that can happen this year.  I also want to redesign the garden. I plan to make a raised bed for potatoes and a twig arbor for beans and peas.

AFTER: (start of year 2)

My garden, March 2011

Before: Me digging my garden out 2011

2011 (garden year 1) :Me digging my garden out,

Summer Wrap Up

This summer I lived at home, with my parents. We live in the country. I suppose you could say that. But really it is all relative. Here are some pictures from the summer.

Catnip Season

On the way to the barn

Bundling catnip with my dad

My Garden

Some hot peppers, blue berries, herbs and tomatoes

In the process of making blueberry jam

oven roasted tomatoes in the making

oregano

 I attempted to dry oregano and basil in my oven. If any of you have taken a plant ecology class you will know the smell of drying plant matter (oven drying to measure water content or biomass or some jazz). All you have to know is, it stinks! Also it takes about one hour of constant attention and it will smell like dust when you are done. ... How does clubhouse do it?

The Dog, if you can even call her that. 

I call this her dead hamster position

action shot, chasing wild turkeys.

The dog spends most of the day sleeping. I was terrified these turkeys would beat her up if she got close to them. How would her ego recover?!

Finally the porch 

the front room of our old farm house

It took over a month to scrape down the 100+ year old windows and repaint them in the front room. I think when I own a house some day I will just opt for no windows. Its easier that way.

Kingston

Big Sandy Bay

Ok, this is not actually Kingston, it is Wolfe Island. There is a FREE ferry that will take you from downtown Kingston to the Island. This beach is nothing special. It is the only public beach on the island and often is covered in algae or dead fish (carp?) But I LOVE IT! You always have so much privacy, even on weekends. As long as you dont mind walking a couple of km, you can have the beach to yourself. Uh.. I mean never go there.. it is horrible!