We've been ridiculously busy here - the garden had to compete with the completion of my master's thesis in July, our wedding and honeymoon in August, and much catch up to do when we returned in September - and that's only the beginning!
Here's some highlights from the season:
We are in the process of getting all our garlic cloves into the ground. We've had a late start planting it this year - we were looking into securing land to plant it ALL (~7000 cloves) this year, but didn't find any. Even though we've sold some of our garlic, given some away, reserved a large stash for eating...there's still 3000+ cloves to stick in the ground this year. So far we've planted 6 raised beds full of it and are still looking for space.
I learned that those pretty white butterflies in the garden are not 'butterflies' but cabbage moths, that turn into nasty green caterpillars that eat everything!!! All our cabbage and any thick leafy green produce near the cabbage got eaten (broccoli, chard, etc.); and what's still out there is covered with holes! I learned a tip this year that will be a definite MUST for next year... DILL everywhere! The cabbage moths don't like the smell of it :)
We did well with chard this year which seemed to grow everywhere in our garden where it had previously grown, and where compost was spread - Definitely one of those super foods that are well worth planting - hardy, long harvest season and so good for you! However, now the cabbage moths seem to be eating up what remains.
Despite the fact that it was a terrible season for growing tomatoes (late start of warmth in the summer), that many of our tomato plants got blight, and some never ripened - we ended up with plenty of tomatoes! I made and froze four bags of spaghetti sauce, sliced up and froze 12 bags of just tomatoes ready to make sauce or soup over the winter; and we had plenty to eat in salads and sandwiches. Another plant that did amazingly well, and always seems to each year, is the tomatillo (in the tomato family), a green sweeter fruit that is great for salsa! We canned about 20 jars of tomatillo salsa (w/ onions, chillis and garlic all from our garden), and made a great chilli/tomatillo stew one night.
Not a great year for squash - although we have enough to get through the winter season for just us two. We enjoyed squash over the thanksgiving weekend and later, we have an amazing thai curry squash soup recipe we look forward to trying out. Here's this year's largest hubbard squashes:
Lots of teas (red clover, chamomile (below), mint, spearmint, lemon balm...), herbs (oregano, parsley, dill, cilantro, basil...), and saving seeds this year (carrot & artichokes (below), arugula, choy, lettuce, kale...)
Lots of potatoes!
We even had enough apples this year to make apple sauce! (About 12 jars). Along with, we did 12 jars of pear sauce (pears from my Dad's place). And made two servings of Asian pear crumble (dessert).
Plenty of hot peppers for salsa, arugula, anis root, celery, beets, carrots, turnips, water cress, japanese red mustard, leeks, onions (red, Spanish, white, yellow) ...
We enjoyed plenty of eggs over the summer - Jason brought 5 more chickens home from his trip to Alberta in June from his brother's ranch. However, today they went on a
'permanent holiday' to our 'winter wonderland' (freezer)... It was just too expensive feeding the mice for the small amount of eggs they were producing - we need to solve the mice issue before getting more in the spring. These birds were fed really good (organic grain), so we know we are getting good roasting (soup stock) birds at a low cost ($5/each to process). All the same, we felt a little guilty about sending the birds 'bye bye'.
Finally, something new we tried this year was growing and harvesting Chickory - a healthy substitute for coffee! Now that we know what it looks like we can find it and harvest it from the wild (it grows along the highway!), as it takes up too much space in our garden to harvest enough for a pot of 'coffee'. For Chickory you roast the roots for hours, until they get nice and crisp & brown...then you grind them up (using a mortar and pestle). (Or you can buy it already roasted at the health food store for about $5/ small bag.)
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