If it’s sunny and you have a bunch of extra herbs, why not make sun tea? Simply snip and wash mint, lemon balm, or chamomile and pack loosely in a jar. Fill with water and leave in the sun for the day. I also use some of the yummy teas I usually sip in the winter like white tea with mint, fennel, ginger, and my all time fav chocolate mint!
August 19 2010 | Growing Food and Photography and Recipes | 4 Comments »
Here are the lovlies blooming in my garden this month. Hover over the thumbnail to see the name or click on the thumbnail for a larger picture. Anyone able to help me name the hydrangeas? Extra points for identifying the bright red bloom.
August 15 2010 | Flowers and Gardening and Photography | 13 Comments »
August 10 2010 | Growing Food and Photography and Vancouver | 5 Comments »
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 »
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 | 13 Comments »
August 04 2010 | Photography and Vancouver | 8 Comments »
This week the first slicer tomatoes ripened suddenly. I grow these Siletz organic seeds because they are dependably early on the coast and will withstand cooler temperatures so they can be set out in April. They are nice tidy shrubs with about 8-12 large tomatoes each ripening right now, and hopefully a long and productive season ahead. I have 3 plants at the house and one at the community garden plot.
The toms were amazing with fresh basil and some olive sourdough I made from my starter.
There are many peppers ready to be eaten green (or purple as with the Filius Blue peppers), some are picked to encourage more flowers, and the others will get left to allow the peppers to turn red and spicy.
There are still lots of blueberries on the shrubs out front, and now that I have divided my yellow alpine strawberries into a lot more room, I’m getting heaps of those as well (thanks for the advice, Laura!) And with all the kale growing at the community garden, I just had to have more kale chips.
I thinned out a bunch of small beets this week for both the sauteed greens and the roots. I’m growing at least 4 types this year: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden.
It has also been a big week for flower harvests. With so many cutting blooms growing, my house is filled with colour both inside and out. The crocosmia below is one of my favourites – both the firey orange crocosmia and the larger upright lucifer crocosmia look just a good indoors as outside from my hammock.
July 26 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Photography | 14 Comments »
How could I have so quickly forgotten in my Harvest Monday post this week about my Green Globe artichoke?! Sorry old friend, you deserve much better.
And “old friend” is certainly appropriate. I started 6 plants from seed in January 2009 and this year just one of the 2 remaining plants gave me an artichoke. I watched it for weeks nervous that someone would take my prize from the community garden (theft is unfortunately a problem there) and just when I couldn’t stand the suspense for one more second, out came the clippers and I snatched it myself.
I brought my green gardening trophy and gave it a good rinse in the sink. Then I cooked it for about 45 minutes in a steam basket.
Then late on a summer evening, I enjoyed it with a Caper Mayo Dip. To make the dip, blend a 1/4 cup mayo with 1 tbsp drained capers, 1 clove garlic, 1 tsp lemon zest and add olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste in a mini food processor. Serve immediately with prized steamed artichokes and, of course, enjoy! I did.
July 22 2010 | Growing Food and Harvest and Photography | 14 Comments »
