Gooseneck Barnacles at Botanical Beach
August 10 2010 | Growing Food and Photography and Vancouver | 5 Comments »
Archive for August, 2010
Harvesting in Early August
This month my neighbours and I have more growing than we can harvest and eat so there is quite a bit of food sharing going around. Almost daily I get a delivery of somthing, like a giant bowl of fresh figs, that I turn into some lucious creation. I have also now organized a farm fresh egg delivery in my city neighbourhood and been out picking wild berries – all making for a crazy first few weeks in August.
I’m currently harvesting the following veg from my home garden and the community garden plot:
Beans: Purple Peacock, French Filet
Peas: MammothMelting Snow Peas
Tomatoes: Black Russian, Siletz, Sweetheart Grape, Gold Nugget Cherry, Sungold Cherry, Isis Candy Cherry, Red Zebra, Tumbler
Sema Fino Florence Fennel
Beets: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden
Chard: Rainbow, Fordhook Giant, Rhubarb
Peppers: Filius Blue, Garden Salsa
Basil: Organic Sweet Basil, Thai Basil
Squash: one Gold Nugget was ready at the community garden
Potatoes: Red Chief, French Fingerlings
All this has made for some interesting recipes like carmelized figs, fig ginger jam, walnut pesto, and mixed veggies ragu. I’ll be sure to share very soon. If I can get out of the kitchen long enough. help.
August 09 2010 | Community Garden and Gardening and Growing Food and Harvest and Photography | 8 Comments »
Pickin’ Blackberries and Makin’ Jam
Today, on the annual organic blueberry run to Richmond, I stopped to walk the pooch by the Fraser River and found some huge, ripe blackberries that practically leaped into a little beach pail that I picked up for the occasion. I always snicker a bit when I see blackberries on sale around here as they are pretty easy to get a hold of here in BC. But I guess many folks are too busy to get out and pick blackberries if they want them.
The Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus laciniatus) is an invasive intruder that can be found by the side of the roads nearly everywhere there is still green space. There are brambles of the arm-stabbing, leg-slicing, nasty ass blackberries all around my community garden, but I’m fairly cautious about what I get from there given the transient nature of the neighbourhood (I’m putting it lightly – there is quite a bit of prostitution and drug use at night). I’d much prefer to get out in the woods somewhere as I did today and for my efforts I went home with a pail and a half. Plus I had a great walk, very much enjoying the first rainy weekend we have had in about 5 weeks, even if I did have to pick around the local wildlife.
Once home, the blackberries were so ripe that really, the only way to keep a large amount is to preserve them. I call this Stupendously Simple Wild Blackberry Jam because it only has 3 ingredients. The whole experince was very entertaining so even though it took a whole day, it was a day well spent.
Stupendously Simple Wild Blackberry Jam
- 8 cups fresh wild blackberries
- 4 cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Directions:
Lightly rinse the berries and put into a large pot. Mash them up a bit with a potato masher or fork. Add sugar and lemon and bring to a boil. Reduce to medium low and keep it bubbling lightly until the liquid cooks down to the thickness you desire. I cooked mine for 3 hours, stirring occasionally, to get a really thick final product. This jam will sit piled up on a cracker if I want it too.
Ladle finished jam into 12 clean, sterilized 125ml canning jars or 6 x 250ml (I think these are called 1/2 pints across the border). Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes for the small jars and 15 minutes for the large jars. Store for up to a year in a cool, dark place.
August 08 2010 | Canning and Harvest and Vancouver | 18 Comments »
Hardy Blue Passion Flower
At the rental house before I bought my current home there was an alien-like passion flower vine that serpentined around the iron fence up front steps. It was obviously old and established because it set of a profusion of flowers each year and produced many egg-shaped little orange fruits. I never tasted one for fear of the unknown but I did enjoy my one season with the vine tremendously (I’ve since learned that the fruits are edible indeed).
When I moved into my new house the following year, I went straight out and bought a passion flower along with an Italian Prune Plum tree which I also adored during my time at the rental. To my dismay, it died that winter. I bought another the following year and it died over winter too. I certainly wasn’t about to try a third time (at $18 a pop) so I grieved and moved on. Until one day a interesting plant collector traded me a Hardy Blue Passion Flower that was already more than 10 feet long! I planted and trellised it last year and just as the plant collector assured me, it WAS hardy enough to survive!
I now have an amazing twining vine above the apple espalier arbour and ducking under the variegated butterfly bush. I’m so happy to once again enjoy the most unique and stunning blooms. All hail the Hardy Blue Passion Flower – I hope to someday try your fruit.
August 06 2010 | Flowers and Photography | 14 Comments »
Botanical Beach in Port Renfew, British Columbia
August 04 2010 | Photography and Vancouver | 8 Comments »
