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Harvest, glorious harvest!

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:48 pm

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This has been so much fun. I am completely addicted to my garden and like many of you I'm sure, am already planning next years rows.
Over the last 2 weeks we have picked more beets, another handful of beans (I pulled all the plants out except one) 6 brussells sprouts! 6 lbs of tomatoes, many of which were dented and bruised fromt he hail in August. These tomatoes were skinned, bad bits removed and frozen in ziploc bags for soups. We've eaten another 2 meals of pan roasted cherry tomatoes and I've picked 4 good sized zucchini. There are still more to come! We also picked a bunch of our carrots which were rather stubby and wide at the top. The longest was about 4 inches, maybe 5 but a good 1 1/2 inches across the top. Our soil was so airy and soft this year that I thought we'd have long skinny carrots. Any ideas?

In our effort to cut eat locally I bought 3 baskets of Ontario peaches which were excellent and large this year and processed those into large jars for winter. I think I will do pears this week-end since the peaches look so good. When the kids saw what I was doing they both said "oh you're making those kind of peaches, we love those!". It will be nice to compliment the apples we'll be eating all winter.

I may take our Arctically challenged contributor's advice and bring the root veggies in to keep in sand over the next couple of months. We don't have any potatoes to store (they were put into a Shepherd's Pie by accident when Hubby was cooking) but we'll have lots of beets and carrots.

Here is a mid-Sept dinnertime harvest. Note the Weiner dog trying to steal a tomato.....




Last edited: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:19 am

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It's finally drying up in Southwestern Ontario

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:51 am

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I am back after being away for 9 days and am pleased to say that the garden looks great. The zucchini plants have grown new leaves and are acting as if nothing happened at all. If zucchini had water glasses they would always be half full!


I had a friend pick some things while I was away and she brought in 2 nice sized zucchinis. She also picked a half full 4 quart basket of cherry and grape tomatoes so we had those for dinner as follows:

From the Barefoot Contessa at home cookbook by Ina Garten (great name huh?)

Garlic and Herb Tomatoes

3 T olive oil
2 t minced garlic
2 pints cherry tomatoes
2 T chopped fresh basil
2 T chopped fresh flat leafed parsley
2 t chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Heat the oil in a saute pan large enough to hold all the tomatoes in one layer. Add the garlic to the oil and cook over medium heat for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, basil, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low and cook for 5-7 minutes, tossing occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to lose their firm round shape. Sprinkle with a little fresh chopped basil and parsley and serve hot or at room temp.

I actually added zucchini to the pan after I scooped out the tomatoes and that was delicious too.

There have been 7 or 8 full size tomatoes ripened up over the last week and they are delicious. Most of the ones with the hail damage rotted on the vine except a few which I'll cut up into something.

Check out the bean below, it was left on the bushes and I just found it today. It's about 9 inches long! My kids split it in half and ate it...a little fibrous???
The snow peas are still producing even though the vines are drying up.


I dug up my 3 potato plants that were in the garden today and this is my harvest. We had some for dinner and the flavour was so much better than the ones I grew in the 2 black pots.


I had a pleasant surprise today as well as seeing the good harvest, my raspberries are starting to ripen. I bought some canes from a nursery a few years back and have moved them at least twice trying to find a spot that I like for them. This year they grew very large and they seem to be a really late variety. They ripen in Sept. I live near Toronto and that is about 6 weeks later than the usual raspberries around here. I'm not sure what variety I bought, I'm just happy that they are going to make fruit!



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Shredded!

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:03 am

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Well, it seems that things were pretty badly hit. I didn't take any photos today (our first day back after the week-end away) since the garden hasnt' really perked up the way I thought it might after that storm. A lot of the veggies have holes in them (green peppers) and the zucchini and tomatoes have dents that have made blemishes. The underground veggies have their green tops half flattened. I think they will still be fine. The bean leaves look like they have been through a mulcher and the snow peas suddenly look tired and are browning. My potatoes look miserable! I think I'll go digging tomorrow and may just dig them all up now. It's been since June 7th or so that they have been in the ground, does that sound like long enough to do what they should? They have flowered (about 3 or 4 weeks ago) and one of them has those little buds on top that I thought I read meant that the spuds should be picked asap.
I'm not giving up! There are lots of tomatoes on the vine still. We ate a huge red one tonight in a simple salad with feta, chopped fresh basil and some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was excellent. The zucchini look like they still have plenty of new flowers along the vines.
It was sunny and beautiful here on the week-end and as soon as we arrived home today it started to thunder and rained a few drops, now it is rumbling again. I actually yelled out loud that it had rained enough already and to quit it. I had a glass of wine after that.....


Last edited: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:03 am

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HAIL (not Caesar, but the cold damaging kind)

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:39 am

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We have had crazy weather this year but today's hail storm seems to have taken first prize. It came down once, small gravel sized balls, not too bad, for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then it let up a bit, started again and lasted 20 minutes. It was so forceful that the lawn looked like it was making popcorn. The deck and places where the eaves come to a corner and are chutes for rain had piles of hail on them. It got really windy at one point (a little scary for the kids and us too) and the hail was being blown through the trees shredding them with their force so there was leaf matter flying all around the yard for about 5 minutes. It was a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz!
Here are some photos of the aftermath. Thank goodness it did not turn into anything serious.

The leaves:


My poor zucchini!


The snow peas in the big garden:


The beets, carrots and brussells sprouts whose leaves just snapped right off. Argh!


The hail did this to the tomato stems which were exposed and running horizontally:


Look at all the cherry and grape tomatoes it knocked off! There were 2 full size ones on the ground too.

Yesterday's harvest, before all this crazy hail hit!


I'm hoping that over the next few days it will dry up and the leaves will stand upright again. It is supposed to be dry here for 3 days in a row. That's a first for the last 2 weeks! We've had daily storms.


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Wet weather, a few harvests and a zucchini question

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:34 am

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We've had more rain here and I think my zucchini are suffering. Some of the little ones (2") are looking soggy and their flowers are knocked off from the rain. If anyone has had experience with this and has some advice (should I trim some leaves so that on sunny days (sparse) they get more sun and get more air to dry them out?) please send it my way!
Last week I picked green beans every other day and we had 2 huge meals. Beets are still making 6-8 2-3" beets every week. Lettuce is done. Snow peas are still producing! If it was a typical summer I think they would be done but it's cool and wet so they are happy as can be and huge. Tomatoes are coming, a handful of ripe cherries daily and one big one that will be ready on Wed. Our carrots are about the size of "baby carrots" from the store so maybe in Sept. they'll give us a good yield.
Here are my pickings from last week:

And here is what I got today:

I decided to have some fun and dug up the 2 potato plants that are in large pots in the yard. They were starting to look wilted, bloomed a while ago and I thought they might be finished. I got these potatoes (and I have already picked about 8-10 from them) and there were still more small ones so I put the soil back on them. If anyone can tell me if that is scab that I have (the skin looks like parched soil in the desert) especially noticeable on the one in the top right, that would be great. These are small to medium size. The littlest is about 2 1/2" long.


Last edited: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:34 am

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Some new photos of our progress

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:44 am

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I got out and took some new photos of the garden. Here are from left to right:
Snow peas, beans in foreground and snap peas in back (they are short and drying up)


Tomatoes (1 grape, 1 cherry, 2 regular)
Green peppers
Brussell sprouts, carrots
Beets

And some close-ups:
Zucchini

Snow Peas

Up close and personal with the "sprouts". These are the neatest things to watch grow. I had no idea they grew this way.

Grape Tomatoes

And here are my 3 "producing" gardens. Foreground is the raised bed veggies, middle is slightly raised and beyond that is my herb garden.

That is a "first week in August in a Southwestern Ontario garden" view for you.
Happy growing everyone!

Last edited: Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:55 am

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Here come the beans!

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:09 am

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It seems to be green bean time in our garden. This week-end we had them twice and also the first 2 zucchini of what looks like many to come. The snow peas are still producing a small bowl full (maybe 20 pods) every 2 days. I'm really impressed with how well they have done and how many pods we've had. My beets are growing at such different rates that I can pick out 6 big ones for the family to eat once a week and that acts to thin out the rest. There are some orange cherry and grape tomatoes and the kids have had the first truly red ones.
It's amazing how much fun it is to go out there each day and slowly pick my way through all the plants to see what surprises are under the leaves. I love this!

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Welcome to my flower and vegetable garden blog!

Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 2:48 am

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It all started with our wish to lessen our footprint on the planet and with all those beautiful photos in Harrowsmith Country Life magazine.
My husband suggested that we plant a huge vegetable garden. I did some research, read that it is good to "start small" and convinced him that since I would be the one working in the garden I got to pick the size! It turned out to be an 8x12 foot cedar raised bed with 2x8 and 2x12 sides and a 4x4 on top. 4 vertical 4x4 were set into the ground in concrete in each corner and it was all attached to together. Next, sides were made to keep out the weiner dog, kids, bunnies and gopher who live in or around our yard. (It took us a while to figure out who kept eating our tomatoes when we last had them. They all had bites out of the bottoms only....weiner dog...). Some gingerbread from the garage that had never been used added a decorative touch and makes it really pretty to look at.
3 yards of triple mix arrived just before the Victoria Day long week-end, the bed was lined with weed fabric (to keep our good soil from leaching down into the sandy soil below) and I started planting. What seemed like copious amounts of space between plants and made them look even smaller than they were has turned out to be, well, you know, just barely enough space!
I put in tomato, pepper and brussells sprouts plants and carrot, beet, snap and snow pea and bush bean seeds and 5 seed potatoes. 2 weeks later I had to plant more beets and carrots (I used old seeds) and then added zucchini and 4 more tomato plants to another garden that came from the extra soil and wood. I'm glad we have that extra space now!
In early July this is what our garden looked like:


by mid-July it was even bigger!


We were eating lettuce all through June and July and in mid July we had our first full meal of vegetables from our own garden. Here's what we had:

It is now August 1st and we've had 2 meals of beans, 3 meals of beets, the lettuce is finished, the zucchini will be ready to start picking in the next few days, the tomatoes are starting to ripen, there are snow peas every day, enough for the kids to snack on or to add to a salad and we dig up the odd potato just because it's so much fun to root around under them!


The flowers this year are wonderful too. With so much regular rain they are lasting a long time and have huge blooms. Here are some sweet peas:

and my 5 year old garden which is really full this year:



Last edited: Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:59 am

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