Preserving my Lemon Tree

After killing my Meyer Lemon tree last year, I bought another one. This time from a healthier nursery. Well, it paid off, very quickly my little Lemon tree bloomed, (the flowers smelled amazing.)

 And then little green lemons grew. I was getting nervous, they were still so small and it was August. The warmth and dry growing season would not last long.

 And of course, now it is cold and wet. I think I killed my lemon tree last year by bringing it inside, and essentially shocking it. It dropped all its leaves without even going brown. The little lemons keep getting bigger so I am motivated to try to save it this year.

I am experimenting with keeping the tree wrapped in clear plastic and against the south facing wall of my front balcony, right beside my Bay Laurel. The wall is white and offers the best light and possibility of warmth out in my garden. The plastic should help keep the roots dry, which I've read is even more important for Lemons than being warm. It looks a little ugly, but I'm interested to see if it works.

A Homemade Halloween

Has anyone else noticed how completely bonkers Vancouver is about Halloween? 

I think we can safely say that it appears to be a lot of peoples most beloved holiday. And who can blame them, the spookiness is all-inclusive, all religions are free to participate. And it demands people to be creative, to dress up as someone- or something else and play a part for a night (or week,) a un-expressed need many of us might have. 

There is no obligation to buy anything, and you're encouraged to feast and drink, or just watch scare movies.

Halloween can be homemade and be MORE awesome than store bought.  

Lets keep that going. Yes, all of us have caved to incredibly cheap and cool Halloween decorations (I have a great set of sparkly skeletons) but I want to display them alongside beautiful sticks found in the forest, a mini pumpkin from the Farmers Market and a mini witches broom from a local craftsman.  Nuts and dried poppies from the garden fit right in.

Homegrown garlic braids conjure up thoughts of Vampires and Witches, and maybe lonely cabins in the woods.

And homegrown pumpkins can stay out of the pantry for a few weeks and add to the decor of your home.  And once the holiday has passed, cook them for dinner.

The homemade aspect doesn't get more fun than with the costume. Putting ANY effort into a costume will make your Halloween more fun. Go to thrift stores, raid your closet, ask a friend what they have to spare and brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. I made this little skeleton costume for my girl using black pants and a shirt she already had, and a white dress shirt my husband was going to turn into rags. I sewed it with another mom friend for moral support, and my daughter loves it so much its hard to get her to take it off. To see her perform her skeleton dance for everyone who comes over is reminding me of why this holiday is so great. Hedonism unleashed, for once.

But there is a dark side to this holiday that I do not enjoy, and have a really tough time getting around. Candy.....

So much sugar, so many weird preservatives, and so much garbage. You want your kid to participate in the holiday and make fantastic memories, but you don't want them eating this junk.

This is a picture of my two year old's teeth. She has 7 cavities. We brush her teeth twice a day, and floss daily. She will be put under general anesthetic to get her needed crowns and fillings. We have HUGE reservations around Halloween candy. I am going to be handing out walnuts and gum to the kids who come to my house, and maybe a few apples....

Have you ever looked into the razor blades in apples rumour? I did, a little bit, and it seems like most of the cases were hoaxes, maybe with razor blades put in by the children themselves.  How tragic that this rumour has totally squashed a beautiful, local, seasonal, and waste free alternative to all the garbage we are currently feeding our younger citizens.

And lets not forget Halloweens roots. Samhain begins on the same night, and is the Pagan New Year. The time when the last of the harvest is brought in, and winter begins. There definitely is a little bit of magic alluded to, and a remembrance of all those passed. But mostly, it is a shift, to the inside, to the darker and colder time of the year, when the stakes are a bit higher as nature cycles beyond abundance to death, and ultimately, months later, renewal.

More Space to Grow

While planting garlic this week, I decided to extend two of the garden beds. I wanted to try a method called lasagna gardening, that promises to kill sod without digging. 

This is how it works.

Mark out the space you want to turn into a new bed. I was extending a bed, so I just moved out the boundary. Clear everything off the grass.

Completely cover the grass with cardboard or newspaper. Make sure to remove any tape or staples from the boxes.

Cover the cardboard with compost. 

And cover the compost with mulch, in this case removed squash leaves. I will also be adding leaves as I rake them up.
This method could work anytime of the year, but I think it works best in the fall, when the cardboard has the winter to break down. The grass will be killed and turned into compost too, so hopefully in the spring this will be a very fertile garden bed.

Celeriac; Better than White Meat

Celeriac is ugly, and it isn't very popular. But, I discovered this year that it still has many redeeming qualities. The first one being that you can squeeze it between bigger plants in the garden, and still get a pretty good amount of vegetable from it. Its nice to know a few plants that can still thrive in the shadows of the larger, more demanding plants (like tomatoes.)

 The next thing I like about it is that you can eat both the stalks (great for soup stock or stir fry) and the root. I like things that work double duty, and the FLAVOUR is incredible, so I think Celeriac (also called Celery Root) actually improves whatever it is your putting it in.

 The biggest drawback is how hard it is to clean. Look at those roots! Because of the up-front labour required, it is easy to have mental resistance to cooking with Celeriac.

 Overcome this mental resistance (and maybe all resistance) with a warm bath. And then grab a veggie brush and scrub away.

Celeriac is wonderful in soups and stews, but I wanted to try it in the starring role. So, I braised it in butter, olive oil and veggie stock, with thyme, rosemary and sage. Adding garlic and a few coffee beans for drama (inspired by Rene Redzepi of Noma.)

 Once they were tender throughout they looked like little squid, so I drizzled them with lemon.

I served them cut in half and topped with black olives. With roasted potatoes and raw broccoli and turnip.

It was divine, the aromatic, savoury flavour got sweeter with braising, and it was melt in your mouth tender,  even my two year old ate all of her little celery root. But not her potatoes....

I like meeting new vegetables like this one, not fussy (except for the cleaning) but strong enough to be either a great team player, or the headliner. And easily loved by everyone.

A Bean Miracle

"There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is robbery. The second is by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third is by agriculture, the only honest way; wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground in a kind of continual miracle."

-Benjamin Franklin 

The 2012 growing season is winding down now, the harvest moon has passed and the fruits, seeds and veggies are being picked, eaten and preserved. This year, one of the major success stories in my humble garden was the beans.

Deciding to really try to maximize the space in my small garden, Pole Beans became an obvious choice. To easily store the harvest for a long time without too much work or energy, dry beans were the best choice. The combination of Pole Dry Beans is not too common, but I did find two lovely varieties.

Pole Beans climb up high, some get to ten feet, and they set pods all along the plant, so one plant produces many beans, without a large foot print in the garden. Once it is time to harvest you either let the pods dry out on the plant, which works really well when it isn't raining, or if it is beginning to rain, pull the whole plants out and hang them upside down under cover until they are dry.
The beans are ready to harvest once the pods are dried out and crisp.

The Cherokee Corn Field bean that I found set many pods along the central stem of the plant, which substantially increased the number of beans it produced. It really amazed me, this bean seed has become one of my more precious possessions, I bought it from Salt Spring Seeds. The other type of pole dry beans I found was Burlotti Beans, and Italian dry bean that looks to be good in soup, I bought it from West Coast Seeds.

With 30 Cherokee Corn Field seeds, and 30 Burlotti Bean seeds I was able to produce all of these beans. There was an average of 10 pods per plant, with each pod holding on average 6 beans, so approximatly 60 beans from each plant, each bean with the potential to create one more plant and 60 more beans. I need more land I think. Or maybe I'll save some and make some nice soup with the rest.

I had to do a race of course, I'm hyper competitive. The Burlotti is on the left, the Cherokee Corn Field on the right.

The Burlotti's are about the size of kidney beans, and I like their speckled appearance. I gave them 10ft by 3ft of growing space, and plenty of stakes ( pruned tree branches and actual stakes too.)

They took off the fastest, and were less affected by the slugs who began assaulting the other beans in the wettest June I'd ever seen.

The Cherokee Corn field beans are so varied in appearance, which makes it really fun to husk them and just stare at them once they've been harvested. 

They are smallish, about the size of mung beans. I gave them 12ft by 3ft growing space.

They started out slower, and I was really worried because the slugs were really starting to take them down. I began to sprinkle egg shells around their stems and manually removing the slugs as I saw them. Once we were into July they were big enough that the slugs no longer affected them and they did eventually catch up to the Burlotti's in size.

The Cherokee Corn Field: 1.25 Kg from 12ft by 3ft

The Burlotti Beans: 1.25 Kg from 10ft by 3ft

And a winner? Well the Burlotti produced more weight from a smaller space. But I LOVE the beauty of the Cherokee Corn Field, and it produced more beans overall, so more potential plants next year.

I guess, I am the winner. Ha.

I'm actually surprised that there are not more Pole Dry beans for sale in seed catalogues. By far the most popular pole bean in Vancouver is the Scarlet Runner, it is possible to eat it as a dry bean, but I'd say it's favoured form is the immature green pod, which tastes somewhat like cucumber. I hope more people get on board this Dry Pole Bean kick, and hopefully find and share some other amazing seeds from this productive group.