Furry Munchers Galore

   After a short two to three week reprieve, we are again being visited by deer at least once daily.  I caught some pictures on August 28th, but have since stopped running to grab my camera when I spot them in the yard.  There are too many to keep up.   I didn't know whether to label this post with the tag 'wildlife' or 'pest'!  (Joking...)

   There have been the usual adult deer, but in the last few days, there has also been a mama deer visiting with her 2 little fawns (they still have their white spots).  While washing the dishes in the kitchen, I looked up and was startled to see a fawn, right there, looking back at me through the window!  What a sweet little soul.

   They are so beautiful and gentle.  Increasingly unfazed by people and vehicles, unfortunately.  They often stop and listen while I explain that, while I treasure their visits, the tomatoes, cabbage, and bean are off limits for eating.  Once I finish speaking, they smoothly and unironically resume their lunch.  At that point, I start slowly walking towards them, 'shooing' or clapping behind them as they reluctantly head back to the street.  Thankfully, for my sake and theirs, this is a quiet street with little traffic.

   The latest visitors (click on pictures to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, deer were here...

 

 

 

 

Crabapple Jelly & Green Tomato Chow Chow

   It is a mild (17 degrees C), rainy afternoon here today.  The garlic is on week two of curing in the shed.  I'm keen to get the bulbs trimmed up, labeled, and bagged, but there is plenty in the garden to occupy my attention until the garlic is ready to be processed.  

   After a few less-than-stellar years for our crabapple tree, this year it produced fruit tightly bunched along the branches, like grapes.  I made two batches of crabapple jelly this week.  The colour is so pretty!  

 

 

 

   In addition to the jelly, I was also able to can batches of Zesty Zucchini relish, Sweet Zucchini relish, Dixie relish, Dill relish, and Green Tomato Chow Chow.  I have memories of the delicious chow my grandmother used to make and have wanted to try making it myself for years.  The good news is that the recipe made a lot (10.5 half-pints) and it tastes great.  The unfortunate news is that the recipe called for white wine vinegar which, it turns out, I am sensitive to (are sulphites the culprit?).  I would love to make a second batch using another recipe.  We'll see how many green tomatoes there are to work with come harvest time.

 

 

 

Here is a very similar recipe for green tomato chow chow to the one linked above:

 

 

 

A walk around the garden...

Bellestar - While the tomatoes aren't as large as I expected, the plants are very productive and are early (unlike some varieties, which are described as being early but aren't...I'm looking at you, Dwarf Arctic Rose!).  Very compact plants, too.  We are already picking Bellestars as they ripen to enjoy in salads, stews, and on sandwiches.  The tomatoes are quite meaty.  I think they'll be great for dehydrating, sauces, and canning.

 

 

Dwarf Audrey's Love - I am so glad I gave these a second chance!  The plants are more productive than I expected and many of the tomatoes are larger than I expected.  Almost no BER at all.  The plants are compact, too, and seem to be doing well in containers.

 

 

Taxi - an early, productive determinate tomato variety.  Round, bright yellow when ripe.  Mild flavour, but it looks pretty in salads or on a vegetable tray.

 

 

Fiesta beans - a large variety of dry bush bean with runners.  The plants and runners are larger/taller than I expected, about 2.5 feet in height.

 

Galeux D'Eysines - I don't know what happened this year with my tried, true, and (usually) reliable Galeux D'Eysines.  We will only get 2 or 3 from the plants this year, and it seems like they are slow to develop.  Typically, we get around 8!  Funny how you come to just assume certain things will always do well.  Hopefully, the Burpee's Butterbush (planted in various spots around the garden) and Lower Salmon River (that I planted as an afterthought in a partially shady section of the south garden) pull through and make up for the lack of Galeux D'Eysines.

 

 

Giant Musselburgh leeks - so glad I finally mulched these.  They love it!   A small patch of leeks for our personal use, this year.  I learned the hard way, after planting loads of them in previous years, that they are somewhat labour-intensive to process for storage.  Also, the majority of people I offered to share them with declined because they'd never cooked with leeks before and were reluctant to try to 'figure it out'.  My city-dwelling friends and family were baffled when they heard this.  At $7-9 per bunch of 3 at their grocery stores, they would have gladly scooped up the extra leeks! 

 

 

Morning Glories 

 

 

Peach Melba nasturtiums.  The largest and healthiest of the nasturtium varieties in the garden this year.

 

 Bathtub pansies

 

 

Leek patch pansies
 

 

 

 Sage

 

 

 

 Teddy Bear sunflowers

 

 

I'm not sure what variety this sunflower is, but it looks like a lady with short, windswept blonde hair in this picture.

 

 

First Week of August

   Where has the week gone?  It has been busy with making preserves and pulling garlic, among other things.

   Early morning, August 3rd, was cool and misty.  It's not uncommon weather for Nova Scotia, where I grew up, but it is a far less common sight here.  The air felt and smelled soft, and everything was covered in tiny pinpoints of water.  Pretty, still, and atmospheric. 

 The South garden, on that misty morning...  

 

 The North garden

   Little Lou, sitting on the nice, warm rain barrels, watched the sun rise and the mist slowly disappear.

 

   

   The first tomato of the season to ripen was Bellestar, a determinate Canadian variety (picked August 1st).  It was soon followed by Katja, a semi-determinate Russian variety (picked August 2nd).  Both varieties have been early and fairly productive with no blossom end rot.  I think these will be added to my "grow-again" list.

 

First Bellestar 

 

First Katja

And the second Katja, picked August 4th.

 

 

They are meaty and flavourful, especially for an early tomato.  

 

   The Indigo Pear Drops tomato plants are loaded with flowers.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

   The garlic.  Interesting year for the garlic.  After last year's "Garlic Apocalypse", I was determined to see a reasonable number of garlic through to harvest this year, healthy and intact.  I planted the cloves deeply (3-4 inches, in some cases) and covered the patch with a thick layer of leaf-and-grass mulch (MANY weeds resulted from the presence of mowed grass in the mulch, but that's another story.  You do what you have to do when there aren't enough leaves to use as mulch).  

   Long story short, we have a lot of beautiful looking garlic this year.  Some of it - particularly Baba Franchuk's, Kiev, and Russian Red - is quite large.  Unfortunately, the period during which it would have (under optimal conditions) dried down, we had several days of rain.  The soil in the patch was already damp, so the extra rain did not help.  Looking at the condition of the leaves on the garlic plants, and looking at the weather forecast for the first two weeks of August, I finally decided to harvest.  I did so between July 31st and August 6th.  While the garlic looked healthy, the outer papers had disintegrated/rotted/pulled away from the stem due to the dampness.  The garlic will still be wonderful to eat, it just won't store as well as it would have if the patch had had a chance to dry down and if it had been pulled a week or two earlier.

  It didn't occur to me to consider harvesting the garlic near the end of July.  In the past, I harvested it in mid-August, sometimes later.  The seasons/weather used to be so predictable that I could always plant the garlic (~ September 25th), cut scapes (mid-to-late July), and harvest (~August 15th) based on the dates alone and a quick glance at the plants.  The season follows a different, less predictable timeline than it used to and the weather during the growing season is more erratic than it used to be.  Keeps us on our toes, and it sometimes makes growing crops that were dependable no-brainers (like shelling peas, which we didn't even bother planting this summer) a challenge.

   The garlic is now hanging in the shed to cure, and should be ready to trim and clean in 4 weeks or so.

Baba Franchuk's (a rocambole variety)

 

Some of the garlic hanging to cure...

 

 

   The cooking peas ('Gold Harvest') have started to dry down in earnest.  They are always one of the earliest things in the garden to harvest.  Here is the first picking drying in the plant room.  This is such a tasty variety.  It would be tempting to plant an entire field of them, if one had that option.

 

 

Strolling around the garden...

Sunflowers in the pumpkin bed ('Galeux D'Eysines')

 

   The shady herbal bathtub!  Peppermint, catnip, parsley, rosemary, pineapple sage, oregano, kale, and Swiss Giant Pansies.

 

Some not-tomatoes ('Skywalker')

   Another cabbage ('Copenhagen') ready to be harvested.  I've made two cabbage roll casserole, two litres of sauerkraut, and a small batch of Dixie relish (that includes cabbage).  The patch is the gift that keeps on giving this year, thanks to the floating row cover being used as deer-deterrent!

 

Frilly kale by the cosmos ('Sensation Mix').

 

   The 'Fisher's Earliest Paste' tomatoes are coming along.  A bit slow compared to other varieties, but no sign of BER.

 

Asters ('Early Charm')

 

Dahliettas ('Unwin's Mix' dahlias)

 

 

Pansies ('Springtime Mixed', a Burpee hybrid)...

...and more pansies ('Swiss Giant', an heirloom variety). 

 

 

The volunteer poppy in the string bean patch is ready to shed it's cap.  

 

   The Morning Glories began to bloom this week.  Some have pink streaks and others have purple streaks.  I think the variety is 'Carnevale di Venezia'.

 

Cosmos ('Sensation Mix')

 

This one is a volunteer growing in a potted aster!  The aster has yet to bloom.

 

 

A fuzzy, early-morning visitor snoozing on the dahliettas.

Little Lou on the window ledge next to the asparagus fronds, pondering cat-things.