BC Quinoa!

Quinoa is delicious! It is also from Peru, which is much closer to the equator than Vancouver, but I heard that Dan Jason of www.saltspringseeds.com was growing it, I decided to try it. I got excited, growing veg is expected of the city gardener, but growing grain!?! The self sufficient possibilities were endless...

The seed was very small, a grain really, I sowed it at the end of April, following the directions on the seed pack like a good girl. It sprouted really quickly, and soon needed to be thinned.

And then before I knew it, the plants were averaging 6 feet tall, with some of them reaching 8 feet tall! Crazy, and the seed heads were getting huge. The colours were amazing, really vibrant pinks, yellows and reds. But I was getting nervous, they looked top heavy to me, and very far from ripe.

Sure enough, we got hit with a rainy fall, and the plants started toppling over, but that wasn't everything...

  

 The Quinoa started sprouting while still on the plant. Boo!

In conclusion, I decided to try again, they grew like crazy on no extra watering, and they were beautiful. But I am not giving them a bed to themselves next year, instead I will work them in with the flower beds,  I think they will fit in more there, and be better supported by other tall items there, like Giant Sunflower.

It should be noted that I saved my quinoa seed only to grow it again, apparently if you are planning to eat it, you need to devise a means of washing it free of the saponine covering the seed, something I did not have the luxury to worry about sadly.

What does "Heirloom" seed mean?

Farmers Markets are usually great sources of heirloom tomatoes

I was shopping at Whole Foods with my parents, who are from Calgary this summer, and they seemed a little  bit startled by the selection of tomatoes, are Yellow ones ripe? What is with the weird shapes? How do they taste?  

Fear of new food is natural, evolutionary, really. It is odd, though, that to my parents Heirloom Tomatoes are new, because, as the name suggests, they are very old varieties. Food practices had already been industrialized through my parents lives and they were already totally accustomed to supermarket tomato varieties, who are bred to ripen slow, or not at all (for ease of travel and storage,) and be consistent in their colour and appearance. This way they can consistently offer the consumer a beautiful, sellable tomato. A few of the many things being sacrificed with this method are taste, variety and local small scale growers. 

SO WHAT ARE HEIRLOOMS ANYWAYS? Heirloom varieties are open pollinating varieties that have been kept around by the farmers and gardeners saving seed from their favourite and best performing plants through the years, resulting in a gradual adaptation of the variety to the area with which it is being grown. 

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF HEIRLOOM SEED? You can save the seeds from Heirloom plants, and the next generation will be consistent with the last, something that Hybrids do not do. 

-The seeds, if grown in your area, will be the absolutely best suited to your area, having thrived there already for generations. 

-There is a lot of variety, which gives us many options in case one crop fails. And gives your palate and plate a lot of interest.

Heirloom seeds are the buzz these days, I'm sure it will be easy to find a supplier in your area, or you can save the seeds from the heirloom fruits you buy at farmers markets. Here in Vancouver, my favorite seed provider is Salt Spring Seeds: www.saltspringseeds.com

Harvest Moon

Yesterday was both the Autumnal Equinox and a Full Moon, specifically the Harvest Moon, so named because, as with every full moon it rises at sunset, and it gave farmers extra light with which they could finish harvesting their crops. 

I love reflecting upon the moon and the changing of the seasons, it reminds me of all the natural cycles with which we are privy to. One cycle in particular that has captured my attention in the past few year has been the seed to seed cycle. Seeds that grow into plants that make new seed.

I experiment with seed saving, sometimes I make it out in time to save the seeds and other times it just rots in my garden. There are two methods for saving seed, the dry method, which is easiest and used with seeds like grains, beans, lettuces, carrots, etc.

The trickier method is the 'wet' method, which I am trying to use on tomatoes. The idea is to ferment or rot the seeds for a few days to break down a protective gel coating which would otherwise prevent germination. Here you can see one good one is rotting, the other sadly has dried up.

Then you rinse the seed clean of any material beside the seed itself (think rotting tomato flesh, bugs, whatever.)

The viable seeds sink to the bottom where everything else floats making it fairly simple to separate

All the books suggest using screens, but I didn't have any around, so I am using a clean dish cloth to dry my seed out. I will do a germination test on these seeds once all my seeds have been saved to see how successful I have been. Tomato seeds are so pretty and furry, just like their sprouts and the large plants themselves.

How To Trim Herbs

I'm often surprised when I ask someone who I'm cooking with to go trim some herbs from my garden, and they don't know how to do that. Then I remember that I had to learn how to trim herbs too, and I learned it from a book, so I laugh, and go trim the plants with them. Its funny how intimidating a small task can be without the power of knowledge.

There are several ways of ripping plants apart, but if you want to take some plant material while still leaving the plant in good form to keep producing more leaves, then you better listen up. There are three usual ways that I trim herbs, we'll call them 'snipping,' 'pinching,' and 'cutting off.'

Snipping is taking a section of stem, of any length, right above a 'joint.' A joint being a place where either leaves sprout from the stem or two stems sprout off. Snipping encourages the growth of the plant to be directed into the joint, resulting in longer stems and more leaves. Best for the beginning to middle of the growing season, or for slow growing woody stemmed herbs.

Pinching off is taking the top growing leaves, or the leaders. This is best performed at the beginning of the growing season and makes for really bushy plants, and the top leaves are the youngest and most delicious, a nice thing to serve to your favourite people. Can be used on green or woody stemmed herbs.

Pinching is also the way of taking leaves off of trees like this Bay Laurel, except I take the leaf from the bottom instead of the top because I want the tree to be nice, tall and thin, right now, instead of bushy.

Cutting off is the way to harvest green stemmed herbs like Parsley, Cilantro and even Arugula and Lettuces. You cut the stems an inch of two above the soil, and in a little amount of time they will grow back, this method is commonly called cut-and-come-again. This also the way I do my final Basil harvest, when the season is done and I want to make my last Pesto.

Trying to consider how plants will repair themselves afterwards should be enough to guide you in how to harvest from them.

My Potatoes Have Scabies! and Worms

I got one of my friends, who happens to be studying Agroecology at UBC, to take a look at my potatoes. It turns out that my potatoes have common potato scab, caused by the soil bacteria Streptomyces scabies.  It is recommended that I rotate my crops to keep the bacteria from becoming dominant in the soil, rotation helps with this by having other crops bacteria compete with the S. scabies and keep it in check. You can read all about this and other vegetable diseases at Vegetable MD 

Sadly, that wasn't the only problem with my potatoes...

This little hole, looks so innocent. This is caused by a wire worm, a super prevalent problem here in the Lower Mainland of BC, it feeds off of grass roots and tubers. I remember seeing them when I was digging up the grass for the Mayan Garden, and they possibly could be the reason my corn did not succeed (other than a mismatched variety). 

Look at what they did. 

Thankfully both of these problems don't take away from the edibility of my potatoes, and since I'm not selling them, these pests are more educational than dire in their consequences. 

Basil, the peoples favourite

It never seems like I have grown enough Basil, every year the demand far outstrips the supply. So I was happy this year when I discovered that I can start Basil from seed. Herbs generally are suppose to be difficult to start from seed, but that seems to apply only to "woody" herbs, like rosemary, thyme, sage, those hardy perennials that probably are considered difficult to start from seed because they would take a long time. Basil is a soft stem herb, like parsley and cilantro, and therefore (as I recently found out) fairly easy. Whew, that is a nice way to get tons of basil while saving money on starts. The key to starting seeds is to keep them in constant contact with moist soil at comfortable (for them) temperatures. I do that by keeping them inside until big, and misting them with a spray bottle.

I didn't really believe that it would work, so I started the Basil in an egg carton to save on soil. I don't recommend this because there is too little soil to get a good root base before you have to disturb it with transplanting.

To avoid disturbing the seedlings again I transplanted them right into the container I intended them to live in for the rest of the year. I had to move it inside and put it near a south facing window because Basil is a heat lover and in my area should not really go outside until the middle of May.

By June they were big and healthy and we were already grazing on the plants.  I continually harvest my herbs through the year by trimming off just the top few leaves, only taking large amounts once they start to go seed.

Because Basil smells so nice, and I think about things like that, I put the pot between my benches on my south facing balcony. Here the fairly simple yet delicious pesto I made once the plants started going to seed.

Herb Garden Pesto

Process:

Handfuls of Basil

Sprig of Rosemary

Clove of Garlic

Pinch of Sea Salt

Enough Olive Oil to gel

Stir into cooked Pasta, add Garden veggies if you have them

for the love of Kale

Kale and I have gotten pretty committed to each other over the years. It was one of the first plants I was drawn to growing because its easy to grow, it grows through the winter in my area, and it is incredibly healthy eating. 

Of course in those early years things weren't so easy between us, I found its taste to be fairly strong on the green side, so I grew it, but *gasp!* wouldn't eat it. It took me two years to find a variety I liked, a variety with several different names, I've heard Tuscan Kale, Dinosaur Kale,  Black Kale or Lancinato Kale, it all is the same tasty and beautiful plant. This was my gateway eating Kale, but still for a couple of years I would only eat it cooked, chopped and thrown in a pasta sauce, or, when feeling very brave chopped and sauteed only with oil, salt and chilli flakes.  Then after eating fresh garden greens through the winter for a few years I came to LOVE the taste, maybe because it was making me feel so good, or maybe I just got used to it. Now, I eat it raw as well, and have expanded my Kale selection to include Curly Kales, which lend themselves nicely to raw winter salads. 

The winter gardens are one of the payoffs for living in the rainy climate. I will always start Kales and Chards in the Spring for Summer eating, and then start more seeds in June, plant them out in July and let them get big so that you can eat those all winter long.

This is my "Winter Garden" before I dug it, I chose this location because it faces south, is somewhat sheltered from the rain and is really well drained.

Here it is dug and planted, I actually emptied out the soil from some of my super large containers into this bed to hill it up a little, and to reduce the clay content a bit.

One of the Tuscan Kale transplants. You can direct sow Kale, but I like to start the seeds indoors to help differentiate the seedling from weed seedlings. This may change as I become more experienced.

 Swiss Chard on the left, Kale on the right. They are getting bigger, I usually start eating off them at this point. Just taking one or two leaves at a time, giving them lots of time to rejuvenate.

Happy times in late June, the plants are really established and the eating is good.

Late July abundance. I have intercropped on a big scale, there is the tall sunflower at the far left, two Kales, and a Brussels Sprouts plant on the right. This is the first year I may actually get Brussels Sprouts. You can't even see the Chard anymore amongst all this green. Planted throughout the bed are bush beans like kidney and black, planted to fix nitrogen in the soil, and maybe even to feed me. 

Finally here is a recipe for a dressing to try with raw kale, something hearty to compliment it:

Miso Orange Honey Dressing

Blend together:

2tbs Miso

1 Orange, peeled and seeded

1tbs Honey 

2tbs or more Oil (like flax or sesame or olive oil)

Black or Tan Sesame seeds are also great to add.

Eggplant Experience

I tried growing Eggplant for the first time this year.
Generally, Vancouver is considered too cold to grow Eggplants without protection.  I, however, have a south facing balcony, with a black floor and a white wall, which I theorize would create a balmy microclimate, perhaps more similar to dreamy California than gloomy Van.
Since this was my first time growing Eggplant, I bought seedlings instead of starting from seed, I decided to try two different varieties, a small "Japanese" variety, and a bigger variety called "Dusky."

This is the Japanese variety (far left, sage in the middle, and rosemary on the right)as I was hardening off the seedling, this is the pot and place it was to stay all summer long.

This is the flowers the Japanese variety made

This is the "Dusky variety, it is much larger, sadly the season either wasn't long, or hot enough for it to do anything but create a golf ball sized fruit.

Here are the small japanese eggplants, YES!

And here are half of what the plant produced, ready to be cooked and eaten. My partner loves Eggplant, I grew this more for him than me, but I love growing new plants, and eating stuff that I grew. Here is what I made with it.

Eggplant Tomato Pasta Sauce

Saute

Eggplant approx 1 cup, cubed

1 Onion diced

1tsp Garam Masala or Vij's Masala if you know what that is

Add

2 cups diced tomatoes, or 1 can if you want, who's judging

1 clove garlic diced

a few leaves of chard, kale or maybe some spinach

Herbs if you have them

Serve on Pasta of your choice, garnish with Parmesan Cheese or Nutirtional Yeast

Enjoy!

To Begin

The garden in February, two months after we moved in. The garden had obviously not been cultivated for several years, there were even two composters that had cooked themselves "dry." The full sun potential of the grass at the back of the yard was my inspiration for digging a new bed, the neglected fence was my excuse.

Such a messy garden. Mind you the gardens that I like are usually messy in the winter, but this one looks neglected. I love a project, and this one came with so much material, like these boards and bricks to work in.

I love starting seeds, I start tomatoes from seeds every year and give the plants to my friends. I usually start them around the spring equinox (Mar 20), which seems to give them a long enough season in my area. I started these guys under fluorescent lights in my living room.

In March I also ordered 10 bags of composted manure from a local sports stadium, I put them against the fence that I was preparing to tear down, to kill the grass I was thinking. 

 I used a warm day to take a shovel to the soil of the vegetable bed, of course that soil was wet so I had to till it again to de-clump it, but I enjoyed the activity and it helped me to sort out the sections I was planning on planting.

This photo is my defence in case my landlord, whom I did not consult, complained. The neighbours downstairs had requested the fence get taken down, but the landlords did not see it as a priority. I like to envision that absentee landlords give freedom to the tenants to make positive changes to the property.

On April 5th I planted my potatoes in trenches, they started coming up immediately. I also planted spinach, lettuce and Gai Lan, but none of those came up at all. Maybe the soil was not tilled properly?

In May the positive changes began. This is after the first day of digging. I used the double digging technique to deal with the grass, with this method you dig out the grass, put it in a pile, dig  a shovel head deeper in the hole you just took the grass out of, piling that dirt in another pile, fill that hole with the grass and then pile the dirt you just got from under the grass, over the grass. pretty hard work...

This is after two more days of digging, with lots of help from friends and neighbours (i was 8 months pregnant at this point and could not do it all alone.) The red tinge comes from coconut coir, I also added sea soil to help condition the soil.

I divided the bed into four and used bricks that we dug out from the right corner of it (city dirt is filled with interesting things, once I found a bedpan in a bed I was digging) to create paths through it. I had started pumpkins inside and they were getting big fast, I was happy that I could finally get them into the dirt. On the far left I direct sowed a different variety of pumpkin to see how it performed next to the transplanted variety. The transplants way out performed the direct sowed pumpkins. I was originally trying to make this a mayan garden, which is an intercrop of beans squash and corn. Sadly the corn never got the heat it needed, so it didn't do much at all, and so the beans had nothing to climb, they still produced, but harvesting them is kind of crazy. The pumpkins though...

This is the end of May, the potatoes are huge, the tomatoes and zucchinis are still little baby plants.

The pumpkins are getting bigger, this is taken in the beginning of July, as that is my parents van, they came to stay during the month of July to help take care of the baby.

Here is a early July shot of the tomatoes and zucchinis, which exploded in a matter of days.

Within two weeks, the pumpkins were on there way to taking over.

And the tomatoes were choking themselves out.

Here is a photo of the pumpkins in the beggining of September, when I decided to harvest them, because it suddenly got really cold and wet, and they looked mostly done anyhow.  Its hard to believe there is only 4 pumpkin plants in this patch.

I got 9 huge healthy  Rouge Vif D-Estamps pumpkins (seeds bought from West Coast Seeds) from three plants. I also got a couple small dwarf and diseased one that didn't make the photo or my plate.

I looked up what Estamps is, and it is a town in France, I like to imagine that is where this varietal was developed.

This is September in for the potatoes, which we are still harvesting, one row gave us over 5 kilos, and we still have one more to harvest.

This was the last and the largest zucchini I harvested, it weighed 2.5 kg and was dinner for three days.

I will plant Zucchini every year from now one, it produces so much it is very rewarding, and it is very versatile to cook with.

Finally, a picture of Juni, our little June baby,