Fall

September 16, 2011

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It’s Fall Bulb Planting Season!

Having a new garden to work with has driven my flowering bulb frenzy to a whole new level. At last count I have purchased 17 packages of bulbs and the planting season has only begun. There are lots of tantalizing bulb sales to happen upon yet, and plenty of time left in which to find space (somewhere) for “just one more.”

When we moved here late last fall, we made a last-minute $88 impulse bulb purchase even though we did not yet have a dug up patch of earth, or an inkling as to what we would be doing with the yard come spring. Propelled by the anticipation of springtime blooms, we haphazardly dug up some grass close to the house (where we would see them from the back window) and managed to get them into the soil the day before it snowed.

Despite their rocky start, the bulbs did bloom, and while we enjoyed seeing them, the overall look of a bunch of random bulbs coming up willy-nilly in an empty plot of earth was, for lack of a better term, some cheap-ass Gong Show shit.

Now, as we head into our first full fall with this garden, I can’t say that next spring is going to be much better. The garden looks lush and full and has grown into something more than I expected it to in five short months, but the entire east side is just one, long, slightly chaotic, landing strip. You know, the cottage garden look.

Total mayhem.

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October 18, 2010

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A Glut of Green Tomatoes

When it comes to dealing with an end of season garden glut I have one rule: everything roasted. I am yet to find a vegetable or fruit that doesn’t benefit from this treatment. I thought I’d tried it all and there were no more surprises left. I was wrong.

Last weekend I pulled out almost all of our tomato plants in all three gardens. I left in a few that had fruit that had some hope of developing a bit further before it gets too cold. There’s green tomatoes and there’s green tomatoes that are too green. I prefer to try and get them as developed as they can be before packing it in for the year. And before anyone mentions the hanging the plant upside down indoors trick; I simply don’t have the space. My neighbor tolerates a lot of my little gardening eccentricities in our shared hallway space: overwintering plants, bags of soil, stacks of terracotta pots, jars of tomato seeds…. For the record, he keeps a life-sized cutout of John Wayne in that same shared space. It was there a good month before I stopped suffering a miniature heart attack every time I walked into the hallway. For that reason alone I think we’re fairly even, but full-sized tomato plants hanging from the ceiling might be pushing things too far. I know where the boundaries of social decorum lie and I try to respect them. Most of the time.

But I digress. As I always do. Back to the tomatoes. In short, I have a lot of them and am in the process of making my famous green tomato chutney as I type this [ed. I wrote that a few days ago. The chutney is done and I have already given half of the jars away as gifts!). I did not intend to can them this year; I just don’t have the time. It’s funny how you can forget what 2 pounds of chopped tomatoes plus miscellaneous ingredients looks like until it is there in front of you. I had it in my head that I could just make it and stick it in jars in the fridge rather than canning. I do not have a fridge that big or the appetite to eat it all quickly enough. So canning it is.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), one batch does not take care of all of the green tomatoes I’ve harvested. What to do with the rest? I love fried green tomatoes, but that’s a lot of fried stuff. I’m spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on my ass these days. The only part of my body getting exercised are my typing fingers. I do not need to introduce several pounds of fried tomatoes to my digestive tract right now.

And then I remembered my glut rule: everything roasted. I adore roasted tomatoes but had never tried roasting green tomatoes. If green beans are delicious roasted with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt then surely green tomatoes would benefit from the same treatment?

In conclusion: they do and then some. It’s a revelation!

Instructions are simple:
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October 12, 2010

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We Made a Pumpkin

Thanksgiving weekend has just passed in Canada, and even though I’m not big on the holiday, the one thing I do demand is a homemade pumpkin pie. Fortunately, we made a pumpkin this year. Accidentally.

Here’s how it happened. Back in the late spring, a friend gave us some unmarked transplants for the Yardshare Garden. A few of them were squashes, but at that size we could not yet tell if they were bushes or vines. We didn’t have any full sun spaces left, so we tucked one into a slightly less than sunny spot near the back of the garden. It wasn’t the best spot, and we knew it wasn’t the best spot, but we planted it anyways. I thought it still had a shot and felt it was worth the experiment to see what would happen when the growing conditions aren’t perfect, but not too far off of the mark either. I’ve learned a lot experimenting in this way. Probably more than I’ve learned doing things the right way. Some edible plants surprise you: they turn out nicely but their yield is lower. Others are just too unhealthy and succumb to diseases and pests they might be more resistant to in better conditions.

When we planted the squash, I assumed it was a bushing zucchini. It wasn’t.

And so it grew and grew rather quickly as winter squashes often do. And when it was threatening to take over the yard, I brought over a freestanding trellis I had woven from green branches in the early spring and we wound it up and off of the ground.

It looked pretty good for an unexpected plant stuck in the wrong space. We were all surprised when the plant grew a pumpkin and the critters that visit the garden didn’t get it. I’ve grown pumpkins (intentionally) several times, but keeping them going in community garden spaces that are overrun by mammalian critters is difficult. The trick is to find ways to protect the fruit when you aren’t there, which is most of the time. City critters are smart — they always break through my defences. Yet, here we were with a pumpkin that we didn’t intend to grow, had put in the wrong spot, and had made little effort to protect. Go pumpkin!

Unfortunately, it was a strange summer. It was unbearably hot and dry for weeks, then raining, raining, raining. Not the best conditions for a squash plant that was not in the sunniest spot in the garden. The plant quickly turned the corner from nice to unsaveable in the bat of an eye. Fortunately, by then the lone pumpkin had turned orange and was very near mature. Eventually the plant died back entirely and the pumpkin fell off of its own accord.

Here it is.
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October 5, 2010

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This Time of Year

Oh how I dread this time of year.

It’s cold. So cold. I am a wimp. The days are growing shorter, and darker. My hands are like ice cubes almost all of the time. The days of fresh tomatoes and basil are coming to an end. Sweaters, warm socks, and months of dust are coming out from the back of the closet. My book manuscript, photos, and designs are due soon.

It’s getting cold enough at night now that most of my cold sensitive houseplants need to come back inside for the winter. This process takes time. Lots of time. It involves a lot of repotting, shifting, and rejigging my haphazard indoor growing situations (I can’t give these homemade contraptions a more formal description) to make room for my most beloved plants.

Now is the time when I am forced to make decisions about what stays and what simply can not be shoved into a window or underneath a light. Just how did I end up with 10 agave plants? I often wonder if the local cops have looked up at one of my south-facing windows and considered what goes on there. Surely no one would bother to put forth so much energy, time, and money into growing plants without a street value?

Davin jokes that I need a plantervention. Either that or more space and bigger windows.

One thing I do like about this time of year is taking the time to appreciate the great plants I am growing and seeing them in a new light after they’ve had months replenishing outdoors.

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August 31, 2010

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File Under: Weird Food

Earlier this year I discovered that the fruit from the Kousa Dogwood tree (Cornus kousa) are edible and I’ve been waiting until the end of summer to get a taste.

The first fruit on my friend Barry’s tree are starting to ripen and I managed, over the weekend, to collect a few from out of the clutches of the neighborhood squirrels. The fruit are ripe and optimal eating when they turn from green to bright red, and from hard to squishy. You should be able to squish the orange fruit from the centre easily. That happens to be just how I ate my bounty. The skin is unpleasant tasting. It looks like a lychee, with the texture of some of my favourite tropicals, sugar apple and sour sop. The insides are bright orange and soft, with a couple of hard pits. It tastes like papaya.

I’ve read that there is a lot of variation between trees and varieties, so if you have the chance, I’d suggest trying fruit from a sampling of trees. The fruit I ate are small but tasty. They are from a landscape tree that is bred for the flowers, not the fruit. But there are varieties with much larger fruit that are worth searching out if you’re looking for more than a light snack.

Related:

Paw Paw (Asimina triloba): A local and unusual tree fruit that is also coming into season.
Search this site by the tag, Weird Edibles to find out about other unusual vegetables, herbs, and fruit to grow or forage.

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