Archive for the 'Harvest' Category
This week we thawed out from that crazy November snowfall and I jumped at the window of opportunity to dig up the rest of the root veggies from the community garden plot. It was a very beautiful day at the garden. Even though the plots are a mess I found it quite romantic with the setting sun beaming through the skeletons of our summer gardens and sky-high pampas grass.
It felt great to get out and dig in the soil, and harvesting is always fun. While I was disappointed to only have a few pounds of potatoes, I did get a bunch more Gladiator parsnips and a ton of various beets that I didn’t expect. I roasted up this bunch of roots for a family dinner tonight.
Now that the community plot is officially put to bed for the winter I wonder weather I want to keep up the space again next year. I have enough room to grow a small variety of veggies at home and while I love gardening with the community members, it has lately been feeling more like a chore. Much of the food at the gardens gets stolen, many say because of the part of town we are in (notorious for homelessness and drugs) but sadly, the folks that I’ve seen steal are (gasp) other gardeners or visitors in suits who drive Hondas and show off their knowledge of growing food by cutting off all my garlic scapes or plucking a pumpkin. Mostly the thieves are foodies with a sense of entitlement and little concern for community. So that sucks.
Then there’s the growing conditions. The soil is poor and disease is rampant. Without daily weeding the plots are soon overrun with buttercup, horsetail, bindweed and in some cases the dangerous giant hogweed. This year I just wanted to grow squash. I ended up planting 10 types of squash and got about 12-15 orange spaghetti squash and downy mildrew killed the rest. I did also plant strawberries, potatoes, artichokes, tomatoes, beans, celeriac, beets, parsnips, peas, fennel, carrots, garlic, leeks, and kale, so I strayed from my focus and got a little of everything (except the celeriac which was a big failure). It’s fun to bring home fresh veggies and I haven’t really shopped for any in the grocery for the last 5-6 months. The number and variety of what is left after theft and disease is just a taste. Despite a valiant effort–I added manure to the soil, a bacterial / fungal mix that we bought at the farmers market and compost compost compost–the soil still lacked nutrition. This combined with the fact that disease is so quickly spread in a community garden space that I fought rust, mildew and blight daily. I certainly appreciate the fresh food I brought home, yet this alone is not worth the effort when I can buy the like at the farmers market each week.
Even if I never brought home a veggie I would still be a member because I joined the garden in the first place for the community. I wanted to learn from others, connect and share. In my mind perhaps I had the idea of a communal gardening group of people laughing and sharing huge baskets of fresh produce, while tending their lush green plots and beautifying the neighbourhood. The reality is that you see most of the members only at the monthly work parties. For most of the year I went to the work parties religiously. A few of the other members have the same commitment, a few. It’s great to see some of them, sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a community. There is rallying around the condom/needle clean up and stopping the crazy dude from pouring rat poison on our plants, but it’s not quite what I had imagined. I’ve made a few friends at the garden though, so that’s something.
Now, as another year comes to a close I’ll reflect on whether or not it’s worth the effort or if perhaps there is another group or space that would be a better fit for me. For all the reasons above I almost gave up my membership last year, but something kept me there. The promise of something new, perhaps. Maybe this year some new people with join and keep me company at the work parties. Or perhaps I’ll get to run a seed starting project with the new greenhouse or learn something new. Who knows? But if I’ve learned just one thing about being a member of a community garden, it’s that it is about a whole lot more than just growing food.
December 06 2010 | Gardening and Growing Food and Harvest and Vancouver | 13 Comments »
I was just not prepared for snow. Not in my garden, wardrobe, or attitude. It’s not typical to get snow in Vancouver, particularly in November, so it’s reasonable to be unprepared. The beet greens, parsnip tops, chard, kale, lettuce and all my winter vegetables got smooshed and frozen for a week. And the trees weren’t prepared. Leaves hadn’t fallen yet so the sticky white stuff brought down my 50-year old lilac and crushed a few other hardy growers. One day it’s fall, then next, winter. That’s just the way it is.
I got out a few days before the dump and covered my rosemary, sage and gai lan with greenhouse umbrellas which may help a bit. As you can see by the photos, it’s a bit like trying to drink a swimming pool.
My weekly home-grown vegetable adventures weren’t a total bust though. Just before the dump, I managed to get a few parsnips from the ground and make a lovely parsnip and white bean soup with crispy parsnips. It was delish.
Now that the ground has thawed a bit I’ll try to dig up the potatoes I left at the community plot (whoops) and I pulled some beets. Greens are wilty but the roots are plump and sweet. I hope to continue pulling the roots for as long as I can, but I think that the winter vegetable starts are a write off for the year so I’ve set up the automatic sprouter indoors and I’ll grow my greens there for now.
It’s been an interesting week or two we have been having here, so it’s great to have a look over at Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others are harvesting elsewhere.
November 29 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Photography and Vancouver | 13 Comments »
Tis the season for micro greens and sprouts. The weather outside is frightful freakin’ cold – the coldest on record in 25 years. Too cold to sprout seeds outdoors, even under cover, so I’ve brought the operation indoors.
A few years ago I gleefully ripped open my festively-wrapped automatic sprouter and started the winter tradition of growing fresh greens on my kitchen table in the less pleasant months. There are many seeds that benefit from spouting in this manner (hydroponically) like radish, alfalfa, lentil, clover, and many more. Sunflowers however, do much better when grown as micro-greens: seeds that are sprouted in soil and harvested as seedlings.
Indoor Gardening Project: Sunflower Micro Greens
Equipment:
- makeshift mini greenhouse
- organic black oil sunflower seeds
- clean potting soil
Directions:
No fancy equipment need for this high-brow salad trimming. I used a biodegradable plastic dome (make sure it’s food safe) from a pre-cooked organic chicken: a prefect soil tray and greenhouse. You could also use a milk jug cut in half, a cake tray, or whatever you can imagine that would create a mini greenhouse.
Add about an inch of clean, rich soil to the bottom tray, and spread sunflower seeds over the top. I generously cover the soil with seeds not letting any of them overlap. Cover those seeds with just enough soil to hold moisture on them and put in a warm place out of direct sunlight. The top of the fridge is a great place to sprout them. In 1-4 days when the seeds have sprouted, remove the dome and get them to a bright windowsill. Don’t bother using a grow light or worrying if the sun isn’t shining every day. Who cares if they are leggy?! You just get more yummy sprout to eat.
The micro greens are ready to harvest when the mighty seedlings push up the soil (which helps to knock off the black husks) and grow two fat seed leaves. Snip the seedlings at the base and wash in a salad spinner. The nutty flavour is a fresh treat in the colder months and it only takes about 7 days from seed to table.
A great winter project for those days when you want to eat a salad and imagine yourself in Hawaii.
November 22 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Projects | 20 Comments »
I’m proud to say that my shiitake mushroom block is back to work producing mushrooms again. I bought this block last year at the Van Dusen Plant Sale and kept it under my deck for the spring where it gave me many meals. As summer hit it became too warm for the block to be outside and the mushrooms were mushy (ironically bad), so I harvested what was left and put the sucker to bed in the back of the fridge. I pulled it out again a few weeks ago and in no time I had a number of huge mushrooms bursting from the bag.
These three shiitakes made a heathy serving for 2 after being sauteed in some butter and salt. Amazing! They were buttery, meaty, and by far the very best mushrooms I have ever had. If you get the chance to try growing your own, do it! You’ll be rewarded with a whole new appreciation for mushrooms.
As for the rest of the garden, I’m shocked at number of edibles that are still growing in my garden despite the wet, sunless days and cold temps. I’m still eating tomatoes (even if I did pick them a few weeks ago), beets, kale, chard, and of course lots and lots of herbs. Since it’s the season for soups and stews, a huge handful or rosemary, sage and oregano goes into just about everything I simmer or bake. I’ve also had a nice resurgence of my Kentucky Colonel mint (THE mint for a mint julep or mojito) and a whole bunch of stevia that I’m not totally sure what to do with.
I picked the last of a few things this week: Thai Dragon, Habanero, Garden Salsa, and Filius Blue peppers – although pretty they aren’t very hot. Peppers really need heat to build their spiciness, and October/November just ain’t going to give us the spice in Vancouver.
I also harvested the rest of the ground cherries. Many are still green, some are split from the cold, but there are lots of them and many are big. I plan to pick through the bunch (and toss the green ones which are rumored to be toxic) and whip up the amazing Ground Cherry Caramel I made last year. Damn that was good stuff.
There is some nice growth on my winter crops – well, at least the ones that didn’t get mowed by slugs! Daikon radish, Altaglobe radish, winter turnip, spinach, mizuna, and Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli) are all doing very well. M y lettuce seedlings have pretty much been more trouble than they are worth, so I do hope that in a few months I might actually get a salad, but if the weather doesn’t cooperate it isn’t looking good. Boy do I hate store-bought salad. I’m going to fire up the automatic spouter again this week and get me some fresh greens inside if I can’t get ‘em outside.
That’s my harvest report for this time of year. I look forward to hearing and reading all about what’s happening at your gardens all around the globe.
November 07 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Projects | 16 Comments »
If you haven’t seen the Fall issue of Delish yet…what are you waiting for?! It’s fall, it’s free to reader, and it’s a pretty fantastic read.
I have a few pieces running this season, but since I’ve been posting about preserving lately, I thought I’d post a taste here. For the full article with recipes and handy links, check out Delish. Oh, and if you make your own creative canning labels, check out my Jam Label Inspiration Contest.
PRESERVING SUMMER
www.delishmag.com Fall 2010 Issue: Change
Gardeners know what a tomato is. And it’s not the geneticallymodifiedmushyblandwateryshippedfromfarfaraway tomato that can be found in grocery stores. It can be perfectly round, or bulbous and odd looking. Red, orange, yellow, green, pink, purple black, or all of the above. Grape-shaped, cherry-shaped, strawberry-shaped, lemon-shaped, egg-shaped, or whattheheckisthatshape-shaped. A garden tomato can be meaty and sweet, with such a big punch of flavor that you can easily chop a bit up and add it to eggs or sautéed veggies to brighten up the flavor. Or it can be a cheery cherry tomato treat still warm from the sun that bursts in your mouth as you garden. Some are lemony, tart, sugary, earthy, salty, buttery, but never, never the blah of the non-garden variety grocery store tomato.
With all this variety it’s no wonder we gardeners wait all year for fresh garden delights to be in season. We plan out our seed lists in the chilly winter, start our prized seeds in heated trays and grow lights while still under frost, watch the temperatures rise in the spring until that magical day of last frost that the seedlings can be set out on their own in the garden. We spend the summer pruning, staking, watering, and nursing our leafy babies, praising their flower buds and watching the fruit grow bigger week after week. Until one day in the heat of summer, when we can’t wait even another day, there it is: the first tomato.
Finally!
The recipes that swirl around in our heads fall victim to our primal urge and we just gobble it up right there in the garden. Luckily, before long there is another and another and another of those prized globes. In summer and fall, garden goodies will ripen faster than you can get your harvest basket out and soon your friends and family are overflowing with your bounty as well.
Amidst the lavish cornucopia of fresh foods available during fall harvest, it’s difficult to remember days spent in front of the fire with seed catalogs and desperation for a freshly picked goodie. But when the leaves and temperatures have dropped, so does the flavor and freshness of the produce available. You can’t buy a strawberry, pear, tomato, corn cob, cucumber, beet green, apple, fig, or pea pod from the grocery that tastes like the garden variety in season.
With the explosion in popularity of growing food at home, farmers markets, and local eating, it’s no wonder the lost art of “putting food by” (preserving, pickling, and canning) has experienced a resurgence in popularity among foodies and gardeners. How wonderful to plan and work ahead to preserve the delicious harvest when it is plentiful, to enjoy at a time when it is not.
Once I started canning foods myself, I learned just why the practice was abandoned in my mother’s generation for prepackaged foods with eon-long shelf lives. It’s much more difficult to make applesauce than to buy a can of applesauce at the store. It takes time, which is increasingly difficult to find in today’s busy schedules.
But preserving foods back in the day was a family activity; a skill passed on to the next generation that in many cases remains a fond memory. It didn’t mean adding chemicals for shelf stability nor adding thickeners and artificial flavors. It meant extending the harvest to feed your family throughout the year. And today, it means taking a snapshot of the flavor at its ultimate peak, capturing it in a can or jar and reliving the memories in a much less abundant time. And I can tell you, it’s worth the work.
Putting Food By In The Modern Age
You’ll likely be familiar with canning, which means preparing foods into jams, jellies, compotes, relish, salsa, and sauces and processing them in canning jars. Whole fruits and veggies can also be canned in syrup (fruits) or brine (pickles) or be fermented in jars as in olives, kimchi, and sauerkraut.
Other foods benefit from drying (yes, bring out that Ronco Food Dehydrator you bought from late night TV) like plums, apricots or tomatoes. And perhaps the easiest way is to simply freeze what you harvest in bags, freezer jams, sorbets, and even single-serve pesto in ice cube trays.
Regardless of the method chosen to preserve food, it is important to follow a trusted recipe. This is not the time for creative additions or substitutions — as hard as that may be for many a home chef. The recipes are designed to balance the flavor of the end product with the right mix of ingredients to ensure food safety.
All foods that need to be preserved are perishable by nature; the goal of preserving is to slow this process but be mindful they will not last forever. I’ve yet to run into the problem of having anything left over in my pantry come summer as what I don’t dish up for myself, I give as gifts, keeping lots of shelf space available for next ingredient inspiring me to dig out the canning pot.
Whether you are a gardener, a chef, a foodie or all of the above, growing an edible garden breeds appreciation for how freshly-grown produce is supposed to taste, and preserving gives year-long joy. What I can’t grow myself I hunt for: organic and local ingredients where possible and as close to the farm as I can get, all the while being mindful of what is in season to ensure I get the freshest, best tasting produce to start with.
Many ingredients will be available year round, yet the growing conditions required for global transport will surely affect quality, so be on the lookout for monstrous displays at the market of organic sun-ripened produce on sale and ask for the price of buying in bulk. Ask a neighbor if you can pick their fig tree instead of letting the fruit go to the birds. Or even just plan to grow a few more tomatoes next year to make your own pasta sauce. I do the work in the early months and then enjoy the ease of short days reaping the rewards of past labor.
With a wealth of great recipes to tackle, I may never have a month go by without a new gem to add to my pantry shelf. The time is well spent, gifting me with a year-long reminder of longer, warmer days. Remembering an afternoon the gang got together to make jam from our U-Pick bounty warms me from the inside on a winter’s morning. Popping a spicy bean in a guest’s New Year’s Bloody Mary makes me resolve to grow more beans the coming year. And with a belly full of fresh pasta and last fall’s tomato sauce, I curl up with my seed catalog once again, planning the next year’s crop and what it will all become: a jar of summer’s bounty, a comfort and an art, stimulating time travel for the senses that can’t be bought.
November 02 2010 | Canning and Harvest and Projects | 8 Comments »
Where has the time gone? October 25th?! I can’t believe how fast this month is flying by.
It started for me with some good, old-fashioned, back-breaking labour. I stuck my shovel in the dirt a record number of times to dig up and divide (and conquer!) the hundreds of perennials I grow in my front yard for Emerging Hope. I estimate that there were at 400-500 plants that we dug up that will be potted and sold to help the charity.
All that hard work deserved some reward so I hopped on a plane with a last minute ticket to join some girlfriends for a week long siesta in Cabso San Lucas. A beautiful place with some fascinating flora to look at (but don’t touch the cacti - youch!)
With brown skin and a pedicure, I arrived back home to trade in my flip flops and sundresses for boots and sweaters…and of course to see what’s been happening out in the garden.
There were a lot of yummy veggies that needed harvesting…
And some that the blight took (blech!)…
And many that got chopped up and thrown in a pot with a whole bunch of garlic and herbs…
The roasted flavours permeating the house and my belly was a delightful contrast to the daily fish tacos, guacamole and Coronitas of the previous week. Each was equally wonderful though, making this a truly fabulous month so far.
October 25 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Photography | 6 Comments »
There has been so much that has needed harvesting with the cool and super wet weather that we have been having that I just can’t keep up with it all. This is a collection from my home garden and my community garden plot: many tomatoes, fairy tale eggplant, leeks, small wonder spaghetti squash, zucchini, a baby cinderella pumpkin, and hops from the community plot (what the heck am I going to do with the hops???)
I also needed to pull out some carrots from the home garden before the dreaded rust fly burrowed in.
And I’ve been pulling beets for almost 8 weeks now, whenever we want them for dinner.
Needless to say our dinner plates have been very colourful the past few weeks!
October 03 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest | 8 Comments »
I picked some green grapes this past week from the community plot and since I was also given a bunch of concord grapes, I processed them in my new food mill which was sent to me from cookware.com (thank-you!). The result was a strong flavoured grape syrup I used to make the best ever grape soda.
First I cooked the grapes to loosen their skins.
I then ran them through the food mill which left me with a thick pulp. The mill did a pretty good job of removing the skins, but even with the finest screen on the seeds still got through. I look forward to trying it again to make applesauce.
I strained the pulp through a fine sieve, cooled it down, added some soda and, voila, homemade grape soda. It looks pretty much the same as the blackberry cordial I made a few weeks ago but the flavour is completely different (like comparing grapes and blackberries).
If I ran it through a jelly bag I would have had a clearer liquid, but I didn’t have one and I certainly don’t mind the homemade look of this drink. It tasted so good that it was gone in an instant anyhow. Luckily I still have lots of syrup left over to make more.
September 29 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Recipes | 8 Comments »
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