Bush Beans

Posted in Harvest, Vegetables by Megan

My plan was to complain about how many sour cherries I had and all the work I put into picking, freezing, canning and baking them. But then this morning I decided I would head on over to the community garden and harvest the first of the bush beans. Good idea. I’ll come back to the sour cherries later on, I still have a bit of resentment towards them if you hadn’t picked up on that.

I’ve almost always had great luck with bush beans, except once. Beans need to be planted after all danger of frost has passed and when the soil has warmed up a bit – they do not like cold and damp weather. So I’ve learned that planting them in May is pretty much out of the question, so I usually end up putting mine in the first week of June. The reason why they failed that one year is because I planted them the May long weekend with everything else. That was also the year it snowed the first week of June. So the moral of the story is wait until June to plant them, but be prepared for disappointment because it might snow in June anyway.

So here is the haul from this morning – a 4L pail full of bush beans, every color of the rainbow.

Almost half of my plot this year at the community garden was bush beans – about 15 or so plants. I usually disregard the rules and sow the seeds closer than the packages instruct – real estate is valuable when you garden in small spaces! It doesn’t seem to affect the harvest though because I always get more beans than I know what to do with. For some reason no one has ever tried to steal my beans from the community garden – maybe it is because they are a little bit hidden underneath the leaves, or maybe because the unusual colors weird people out. My sister and I used to add food coloring to pancakes when we were younger and left to our own cooking devices and I remember once a family friend being completely turned off by eating green and purple pancakes upon offering, even though they still tasted exactly the same. Maybe it’s like that. Regardless, I am pretty attracted to vegetables that are not “normal” colors. Unfortunately all the colored beans, except the yellow ones, turn green upon cooking.

The other great thing to point out about beans is that while most other vegetables suck the nutrients out of the soil like little green vampires, beans enrich the soil with nitrogen. It is debatable how much nitrogen they actually add back into the soil – I’m not a scientist and I’ve never bother to do soil testing before and after planting beans. But if there is even a slight chance that they are good for the soil, it’s an added bonus in my books. I am really good about amending my soil at home with compost and manure, but at the community garden I am a horrible, neglectful gardener who fails to amend my soil. Shame on me. But if the beans help in any way, thank you little friends.

Here is a list of all the bush beans I planted and where they were purchased incase you were interested:

Blue Lake 274 (green) – Botanical Interests
Pencil Pod (yellow) – Botanical Interests
Royal Burgundy (dark purple) – Botanical Interests
Red Swan (red/light purple) – Seed Savers Exchange
Tongue of Fire (green/red striped) – Urban Harvest

So what did I end up doing with this haul? I made a few cans of mustardy bean pickles (photo below) using a recipe from my Mom. And I saved the rest for eating fresh this week. I expect to have another significant harvest next week so I’ll be making some more (different) pickles from a recipe made up by myself, although not completely original (I had a habit last year buying expensive jars of pickled beans, cauliflower and carrots on a weekly basis from the local farmer’s market and ended up forcing myself to figure out how to replicate the recipe). I will share that recipe at a later date so that you too can become addicted to what I refer to as “crack pickles”.

Mustardy pickled beans featuring onions, green peppers and turmeric

I don’t think that there will ever be a year that I do not plant bush beans. They are one of the easiest crops to grow anywhere (even in containers), don’t mind neglect and a little bit of drought, and are always prolific producers. Plus you can pick them, steam them, and be eating them in 10 minutes. What’s not to love?

7Aug2014

Cedarbrae Community Garden

Posted in Cedarbrae Community Garden by Megan

The Cedarbrae Community Garden was constructed in 2009 around the time a lot of other community gardens in Calgary were springing up. We started renting a plot in the garden in the spring of 2011 and have been renting the same plot since.

The empty garden back in late April

The community garden originally had its own blog but it only lasted for a few years – it is often difficult to find dedicated volunteers during the busiest time for gardeners. So this year I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind taking on this role. And of course, I got busy with my own garden here and my plot at the community garden (sort of, it is mostly neglected) and didn’t really follow up. So I figured the best way for me to do this is to write about my plot and the garden here.

The garden is operated by volunteers and gardeners who have rented plots (most volunteers are gardeners there). Spring and fall are the busiest times at the garden with set up and tear down. The garden runs from the mid/end of May up until October and then closes for the winter months.

Booming garden August 2014

On to our plot. We have a 3’x15′ plot (all of the plots are that size but some people rent multiple plots). Due to some serious issues with vandalism in the garden in the past, we are pretty careful about what we plant there – our plot specifically has just had some minor instances, but I’ve definitely seen a lot of heartbreak in other plots. Our garden is not fenced in and is located behind the community centre and beside a natural wooded area that is a bit secluded. So we try to choose the less tempting plants for this garden – beets, carrots, potatoes, etc. I’ve always had amazing luck with bush beans in my plot, so about half of the plot are these. The rest of the plot this year consists of beets, kale, leeks and a single kohlrabi (the only survivor). My plot neighbor has mostly summer squash and I’m a bit jealous, they look really good!

Our plot bursting with beans, kale, beets, leeks and a kohlrabi – it is hard to even see the dividing boards between the plots!

I should make mention of my horrible neglect for this garden. I mean, it’s really bad. The garden used to be set up on a drip watering system, so I really never went over there except for the occasional weeding. Then last year they decided to try out manual watering, so with a hose on a reel and watering cans. And I was much more diligent about going over there. Then this year something happened – I guess I was busy with other things or “out of sight, out of mind” – excuses. I think I’ve gone over to the garden a total of like 5 times this year. I’ve sent my husband over a few times to water and he always reported back that everything was doing well. So I finally went over this morning, after about a month, to see how things were progressing. I was happy to see that everything was alive and was doing very well! I pulled a few weeds (I think one of my plot neighbors has been pulling out a few unruly weeds because it really should have been much worse than it was – thank you!), watered and snapped a few photos. And I also noticed I have a million bush beans ready to be picked and one giant kohlrabi i’ll be bringing home soon.

We’re really lucky because the garden is literally just a hop, skip and a jump away from our front door (why do I neglect it?!). We’ve also met a lot of neighbors through the garden – and it gives strangers something to talk about other than the weather – and as any gardener knows; given the opportunity to talk about gardening, we will do it.

5Aug2014

Stay-cation Update

Posted in 2014, Garden Projects by Megan

I’m sure you’re all dying to know how much I’ve actually accomplished from my giant to-do list I created a couple of weeks ago. It seems so long ago that I was full of energy and ambition – but it was only a mere two weeks ago. I have been really busy, but maybe I got a little ahead of myself. Me? Never.

I was kind of thinking I would give a recap of what I said I wanted to get done, but lets not torture ourselves here – it’ll look much better if I just list the things I have gotten done and not have the original list to compare to.

The birdhouses my sister and I made. I wanted mine to have a “green roof” and my sister built the other one. We had a brilliant idea to shingle the plain one with cedar mulch shingles, but unfortunately it was a total fail so we stripped the shingles off before the glue dried and before anyone thought to take photographic evidence of our failure.

So here is the update on what I have accomplished on my stay-cation so far:
– Went to the U-pick. I wrote more about this in my last post on The Saskatoon Farm. But I did actually go back again for 8 more liters of sour cherries. So 12L in total. What the hell was I thinking? How am I going to deal with 12L of sour cherries? I really love making lots of work for myself, apparently.
– Weeded and edged the big perennial garden in the front yard. God, this was horrible. I did it on the hottest day too because I was tired of looking at all the weeds suffocating the poor flowers. Plus, I was in some sort of mad rush to get it done before I left for the long weekend. I think I felt mostly guilty because this garden edges along my neighbor’s driveway and the part facing her was the worst. I had also declared to my neighbor the morning I started that “I am going to deal with this awful mess today because it looks horrible and I’m sorry”. She said she didn’t care, but maybe she actually secretly hates me because of the weeds and is too nice to say. Or maybe she feels equally guilty because she let creeping bellflower come into my garden from her yard. Regardless, I filled the entire black garbage bin with weeds and grass so that might give you an idea on how bad I let things get – it looks great now though.
– Picked up the hoses. I’m not going to lie, they are not nicely curled up on a proper hose hanger, but at least they are no longer a safety hazard to anyone who enters my yard.
– Weeded the back yard. The whole thing took me probably 20 minutes – it is really easy to weed now that the entire back yard is covered in mulch.
– Put up the bird feeders. The chickadees are back! A few weeks ago back in July, my husband and I put up a 4×4 in the garden to hang bird feeders from. I finally got around to purchasing some inexpensive shelf brackets from Ikea, putting some metal hooks into them, screwing them to the 4×4 and hanging a couple of bird feeders from them. I only have two feeders hung so far because Ikea only had two brackets in stock, so I’ll buy a couple more to hang feeders from the other two sides as well. So far the chickadees and house finches love the feeders. And my cats love sitting at the patio window and drooling over the birds, wishing they were outside kitties.
– Cleaned the greenhouse and planted some fall seeds on the lower level. I planted lettuces, kale, arugula and radishes. Granted the weather doesn’t dip too low, I should be able to be harvesting these until about December.
– Started more hot peppers inside the house. My experience so far with peppers has been that they don’t mind being overwintered inside the house, so my plan is to keep these ones inside until next spring when they’ll be moved to the greenhouse. I am a wimp when it comes to hot peppers, but my husband loves to have his faced burned off, so I started some unbelievably hot peppers – scotch bonnet and bhut jolokia (the ghost pepper). I had started a few of these in June but the germination rate is really poor, so I’m giving it another go.
– Put up the random decor items – some bird houses, the rain chain, wind chimes, etc. My sister and I also built two new bird houses this past weekend for my yard, so those were added today (photo above).
– Cleaned the shed. I can actually walk in it now.
– Trimmed the lilac bush. Actually, I just supervised my husband doing this. It looks kind of bad – not because he did a bad job, but because it was planted in such a poor spot (by a previous owner, I will not take credit for this). Take my word, read the tags of bushes and trees before you plant them to see how tall and wide they will be spreading, otherwise you may be forced to give them terrible haircuts in order to be able to walk up to your front door. Poor lilac.

Two of the bird feeders hung in the yard. So far the pesky squirrels have stayed away but I don’t trust them, so I’m keeping a close eye on these.

That is about all so far. I have about 5 more days left to get things done. I just received the load of cedar mulch about an hour ago so I’ll be working on that mostly – it is enormous. But I have to say it is probably the nicest cedar mulch I have ever had delivered so I am giving a shout out to Bulk Mulch Depot. It was also pretty reasonably priced – I’ve always just bought bagged mulch from the store or gotten those cubic yard totes delivered, which I recently discovered is way, way, way more than I should be paying for mulch. It is $45/cubic yard from BMD, plus $110 delivery within the city, so if you’re getting 2 or more cubic yards, it is worth getting it delivered in bulk.

So my plans for the rest of the week are dealing with the cedar mulch, painting the wheelbarrow, and staining and installing the privacy lattice on the fence. And of course doing something with 12L of sour cherries, I’ll be sure to let you know what I end up doing with them, I’ve got preserved cherries on the brain!

31Jul2014

Saskatoon Berries

Posted in 2014, Fruit & Berries, Harvest by Megan

It’s finally saskatoon season here in Alberta! I usually don’t expect it to be saskatoon season until around the August long weekend but it seemed to be slightly early this year – I have no explanation for this since everything else seems to be two weeks behind this year. I curse Facebook all the time, but had it not been for an update from The Saskatoon Farm, I wouldn’t have known the berries were ready for picking. So I woke up early on Tuesday morning and made my way to the farm for picking.

Picking berries is something that I love. I remember going out with my Mom and siblings when we were younger and picking wild berries – none of this u-pick business. I liked it as a youngster but soon became a cynical teenager who hated everything, including picking berries. Once I got over that horrible phase, I was an adult who loved picking berries. My husband on the other hand hates picking berries, so I don’t drag him out with me anymore – of course this puts a little damper on my dream of owning my own u-pick, but I’ve suggested that he can just ride his bike around the farm selling water and ice cream.

The Saskatoon Farm. I love this place. It is a u-pick farm, but they also have a restaurant, a gift shop, a garden centre, a animals running around, and sell vegetables grown right on their property (I always buy a few bunches of beets and a ton of fresh picked garlic). This place can get insanely busy, which is good for them, but not so good for someone like me who loathes crowds. So I try to go as early as I can to avoid people but to also get my picking in before the day gets too hot. The later of the two was a little harder to avoid – I arrived at 9AM when they opened and by 10AM I was dying of heat. I soldiered on and just dealt with it.

About three years ago I discovered that they also have u-pick sour cherries. So that first year, I picked a bucket and brought them home and made the best cheesecake in the world. I make this cheesecake once a year because A) I am not a huge baker. B) It has like a million calories. C) It has a truck load worth of cream cheese and therefore costs a pretty penny to make. Last year I was really excited to go back and pick two buckets of cherries. Unfortunately they had a crappy season or something because the cherries were dreadful looking – I came home with no cherries. So this year I asked before I went out if the cherries were ready yet. The lady I spoke to said not quite yet but she’d seen other people out there picking them. So I went out and got my bucket of saskatoon berries and was about to leave but decided to stop to check the cherries first. To my excitement they were ready – I ate like 5 of them to make sure. I quickly powered through and picked a bucket, all while dripping with sweat (yes, I’m sure you wanted to hear about my bodily functions – it was like 30 degrees outside already!). I actually wanted to pick another bucket, but I was dehydrated and dying, so I decided to just leave. Plus, by this point it was 11:30AM and the place was insanely busy. I will probably go back next week and pick some more cherries. Sour cherries are definitely for baking or preserving – they are extremely tart. I wouldn’t say they are unpalatable without being covered in sugar – I actually really like eating them raw, but they are nothing like the sweet BC cherries were eat throughout July.

So what do I do with the saskatoon berries? Well, I eat a bunch of them raw – they have a really delicious nutty flavor. Then I preserve or freeze the bulk of them, which is what I did this morning. Freezing is easy – I don’t bother freezing them on cookie sheets before I put them into freezer bags because I’m lazy, but you can do this if you want. I pull them out during the winter to add to yogurt or baking. And sometimes I make little hand pies using the best pie crust in the entire world (I’ll have this for another post!). But my favorite way to eat saskatoons is just plain old canned. You’ll need to have basic knowledge of the hot water bath canning method, but it is so easy that you can just look it up online or consult a canning book. And my favorite part about canning? Hearing the popping of the lids sealing. Yeah, I’m weird.

Quick Canned Saskatoon Berries

Ingredients:
– 2 litres fresh saskatoon berries
– 1 tbsp lemon juice (bottled or fresh)
– 1 cup white sugar
– 3 cups water

Instructions:
– Prepare berries by removing stems and washing in cold water
– Prepare hot water bath and sterilize jars and lids (I used 250ml jars and was able to get 7 jars in total)
– Prepare syrup by stirring together water, sugar and lemon juice until it boils
– Cold pack berries into jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space
– Ladle in syrup, leaving 1/2 inch head space
– Wipe rims, add lids and process in hot water bath for 10 minutes
– Remove from bath and sit on dishtowel on counter – listen for popping! Check to ensure all lids have sealed after a couple of hours (if they have not, you can put them in the fridge and eat them in the next couple of weeks). Do not disturb the jars for 24 hours.

The Saskatoon Farm is located an extremely short drive south of Calgary off of Highway 2. This year they introduced a “grazing fee”, which means you can pay $2 to get into the u-pick and just eat to your heart’s content without feeling obligated to pick an entire bucket. They also sell pre-picked buckets if you hate picking berries but want an entire bucket to take home. Or if you’d like to buy your own saskatoon bush to plant at home, they also sell those! And people say Disney is the happiest place on earth – I call BS.

28Jul2014

My Stay-cation Plans

Posted in 2014, Garden Projects by Megan

Back last fall, my husband and I decided that we were going to do some renovations inside of our house. We’ve done some small improvements over the last 9 years of living here, like painting, adding electrical to the basement, adding real doors to the master bathroom, switching out light fixtures and doing a ton of work in the yard. But we hadn’t done anything major and it was starting to show – the door leading to the side of the house was in bad shape, all the tile floors were in horrible condition and ugly and we had a non-functioning 1/2 bathroom on the main floor (it was in working order the first 4 years we lived here and then died about 5 years ago and was used as a storage closet since its death up until its recent resurrection). So we spent a few months planning and somehow managed to get my husband’s dear father to fly out from Ontario and help us rip apart the house and put it back together. So since we spent all our money on that, we felt like maybe we should probably do the responsible thing and not go on a vacation this year. I will admit that it is a little disappointing for me – the last couple of years we’ve been doing a drive down to Washington and Oregon and spending a week in Portland where I can dream about living in a city where people grow vegetables in the hell strip and keep chickens in their front yards. Sigh, oh well. So instead I decided to take 3 weeks off of my job and get some stuff done around the house.

The first few days were spent doing boring adult things, such as cleaning the house, doing laundry and taking my car in for servicing. How exciting. Then we took 4 days to drive through Saskatchewan into Manitoba for a family reunion for my husband’s step family. On our way to Manitoba, we made a detour in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan to eat at a friend’s restaurant called Harvest. The meal was amazing and afterwards we got a night time tour of the Historic Shaunavon Hotel – which we were told may or may not be haunted (unfortunately we did not experience any paranormal activity ourselves). The most exciting part of the tour was just hearing some of the history of the hotel – there was a bootlegging operation there at one time! The rest of the weekend was good as well – we got to experience some real Ukrainian tradition, mostly through food, got lots of family visiting in and had some really nice weather (people kept apologizing for the “crappy” weather (typical Canadians apologizing for things out of their control), but frankly it was nice to have some cool overcast days after the heat we’ve had in Calgary). I can’t say the drive was particularly exciting – my favorite parts were seeing the mustard and flax fields.

Now back home, I have two weeks left of my stay-cation and lots of things to do, especially around the garden. It is a bit of a jungle out in the back yard and I need to deal with it immediately. I haven’t done any weeding for weeks and those hoses strewn all over the yard are going to seriously injure someone. I have a few obstacles that I need to address though:

#1. It is so hot outside that I don’t have any desire to step foot in the yard past 11am.
#2. We have some temporary but horrible neighbors living next door who have decided that instead of taking out their garbage, they would prefer to chuck it out their patio into the back yard and let the magpies have a garbage feast. So that is pleasant. The garbage is truly the tip of the iceberg but the good news is that they will be gone at the end of August so I really only need to deal with their horrible-ness for another month.
#3. I’m leaving my husband for a few days during the long weekend to escape to my sister’s place near Edmonton where we will build bird houses, enjoy the air conditioner in her house and visit Devonian Gardens (yay, finally!).

Putting all of that negativity aside, I have some real ambitions for the next couple of weeks:

– Head out to the Saskatoon Farm for berry picking. The one thing a year that I love the most and my husband hates the most (besides Christmas).
– Finish staining the fence. This has apparently turned into a four year project.
– Drastically trim back the lilac bush in the front. This lilac is a monster that we severely cut back annually but it just grows back the next year even bigger. It currently tries to murder you as you walk up the front steps and likes to annoy pizza delivery people by hiding our house number.
– Paint the wheelbarrow. The poor rusty wheelbarrow.
– Purchase, stain and install privacy lattice to attach to the fence. Back to the awful neighbors that I would like to pretend do not exist. Of course, I’ll still be able to hear them, but the less I see them, the better. I’d also like to plant some alpine clematis to grow up this lattice to provide even more privacy.
– Finishing laying cardboard and cedar mulch on the front beds.
– Top up the cedar mulch in the back garden (obviously I’m getting a huge truckload of cedar mulch delivered)
– Clean & organize the shed. You currently can’t see the floor.
– Clean & organize the bottom of the greenhouse and possibly plant a few things in there for the fall garden.
– Squirrel proof my bird feeder pole and install the bird feeders. The pole is up, but no feeders yet.
– Install a few decor items (I have a rain chain that I got for Christmas last year and some other things waiting to go up).
– Paint the front door.
– Plant two new trees in the back yard. I’m thinking another dwarf sour cherry and a columnar crab apple. This one is dependent on my wallet.
– Repair the rain barrel. It decided to crack during one of the huge rain storms in June and I haven’t bother to fix it yet.
– Work on finishing up some final touches on the indoor renovations I mentioned earlier. We have some painting to do, installing the light fixture, mirror and hardware, and putting up the baseboards and other moldings – you know, easy stuff (not).

Of course in my imaginary world I get all of these things done and more. But reality is usually a different story – what with the Netflix and the afternoon naps and all. Since I love to make to-do lists and pretend that we have all the time and money in the world, here are some of the “more” things I imagine I would get done:

– Build a “catio”. I really hate the term catio. Thank you, Jackson Galaxy. Anyway, we live on a busy street and therefore I keep my cats locked in the house at all times and they secretly (or not so secretly) resent me for it. So I’d love to build a little fenced in area where they can hang out in. Ideally, it would be attached to the basement window so they can go in and out as they please.
– Rip out the remainder of the sod in the front yard and install some more raised beds for vegetable growing. Yes, I want to be one of those weirdos growing kale and squash in my front yard.
– Build a new front porch and front walkway.
– Build a privacy pergola in the back yard on the deck.
– Put together a little sitting area at the side/front of the house – a little gazebo or something would be amazing.
– Build a raised bed cold frame (I have a spare polycarbonate sheet left over from building the greenhouse that I kept for this specific reason).
– Build and install a window box planter for my kitchen window.

Everything on my “more” list are actually things we will probably eventually do – but we’re talking 5 year plan here. Do you ever take a stay-cation to get things done around the house? What kind of big or small projects are on your radar for this summer? Wish me luck on my crazy list of things I think I’ll be able to accomplish – I’ll be preparing a full progress report, or at least snapping some photos as little things get finished and posting them on my instagram account.

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Author Archives: Megan