Archive for the ‘Vegetables’ Category

I’ve been looking forward to this for 9 months. Last August, while looking for mushrooms and saskatoons, I came across a patch of wild asparagus and since have been dreaming of a spring feed of asparagus I didn’t have to grow myself. That day has come. It’s worth noting that I am doubtful this is a native species of any kind, but is more than likely better described as a ‘feral’ asparagus. Some remanent of an old market garden or homestead in the river valley, or seeded by a bird. Or something. I don’t care. It’s giant, awesome, free, tasty asparagus.

The top left photo was today’s score. I’ve never harvested asparagus this thick. Ever. And my dad’s patch is about 20 years old – it’s got nothing on this. The thick ones are as broad as my thumb. Because they’re so giant, they add up fast. I only have a dozen or so, but I think 3 would exceed a normal portion of asparagus. The photo below is what they looked like May 3rd, taken on a forage I led for a crew of crazy-cool Slow Food Canada and Slow Food International folks. It was the first I saw them, so it wasn’t hard to get excited about it. That, and the vast majority of what we harvested was white, the soil around it being loose, and easy to dig down a bit to harvest it while entirely blanched. We ate them shaved and whole, raw, atop fresh eggs scrambled in beurre noisette and wild onion. I am looking forward to a pig out of today’s yield – I’ve been abstaining since last season.

No, I will not tell you where this patch is. But I can tell you that there are other patches around the river valley, and legend is they are even more prolific.

I’ve been wanting to shoot video in a local greenhouse for quite some time. I know, probably sounds odd coming from the guy who eats asparagus in May and June and abstains for the balance of the calendar year until they’re in season again. I may be an idealist most of the time, but I also have a realist streak and know that the bulk of consumers want to eat their favorite veg year-round. I spoke last year at a UofA event at Sunfresh Farms and learned that although we may not know it, a serious % of the cucumber and pepper product you find in your local box grocer is grown locally. Apparently Alberta’s not only good at beef – we’re rocking the cucumber market too. Who knew?

Doef’s Greenhouses is a success story in agriculture, from finding a niche to navigating scale and growth, through to having done some wise succession planning to incorporate the coming generations of farmers. They’ve succeeded both in the wholesale and direct-sales [ie, farmer's markets] markets. Impressive stuff.

It blows my mind that I can shoot this video of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, then drive two miles and go ice fishing to shoot Episode 34, which will consequently be hot on the heels of this one.

It being February and quite possibly a particularly early spring, I was contemplating my annual seed potato order from Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes when it dawned on me that perhaps I should go check them out. So I did. I knew they’d be filling my order in the next couple months, so they had to be busy prepping for that busy season – which was exactly the case. More seasonal food action that you perhaps wouldn’t think is going on up north in February.

This farm should be celebrated by Slow Food and anybody who values biodiversity. While others are farming a single variety of potato in serious quantities, this 4th generation family farm is growing 40 or so varieties and counting. Potatoes need not be a boring staple. What struck me when listening to John was his focus on taste – choosing potato varieties because they have the best taste. What a novel concept for something we eat. John also offers some great advice for what varieties to use in different cooking applications. I thought I knew potatoes, but apparently I have a few things to learn. They also do a veg CSA, raise heritage laying hens and turkeys in a straw-bale construction coop, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Add to that a stunning location atop a high point with a view over the Rockies, and it’s quite the memorable place.

Their online catalog is here, if you’re in the mood for potato enlightenment and/or want to order from them. I will be, again.

Here’s something I wasn’t expecting. Back when building and planting cold frames I had written numerous times how I’d like to see a harvest from them in December. I thought that might be bold. I wondered if I’d have to eat my words. Then in early December, as my garden fork bounced off the frozen soil nearby, it slipped easily into the soil protected by the cold frame, and I dug up some carrots. Mission accomplished. But it didn’t end there.

In this strange spell of warm January weather, when I’d long accounted the arugula and spinach in the cold frames for dead, I noticed that amongst the mature leaves that had clearly been beaten by the cold, younger leaves had emerged, or better survived, or something – whatever the case, what you see in the photo was harvested January 6. This is a deal changer for me. My ‘dream date’ of December harvest has now been moved into January. And with new plants about to be seeded to be transplanted into the cold frames [I'm hoping in February], the gap of non-gardening season is awfully narrower than I had suspected – all without having to use fossil fuels to heat a greenhouse. I suppose that’s the kicker. If it’s a non-energy consumptive solution to growing more of our own fresh, extremely inexpensive, organic food, the cold frame seems like a rudimentary technology that needs some major revisiting, and a serious pat on the back.

Strange. It’s mid-December, the soil’s frozen, plants toast – but counterintuitively, this time of year is one of the best times of year food-wise. The freezers are full of a variety of meats, fruits, stocks, lard, and more. The wine cellar’s full of apple wines, ciders, and dry cured pork and game, while the root cellar is an exciting world of veg – from squashes to parsnips, potatoes, beets, carrots, rutabagas, leeks, shallots, and more. It is a time of year rich in food in our home, and will continue to be for some time in fact – nearly all the way into spring when the veg starts to go sideways, the cider stash drops, and the freezers are once again navigable. All the way into the ‘spring gap’ that I’ve largely found ways to close.

Since my cellar seems to be desired stop number one for folks that visit my home, I thought it’d make a decent location to shoot video at a time of year when the food scene has moved from outdoors to underground. It’s a cold place to shoot video – about 2C at this time of year. So I grabbed some things from the cellar, put together a snack for my wife and I, and rolled some…SD card. Rolling tape sounds way cooler.

I seeded a cold frame today. Yes, that’s right, direct seeded in dirt, on November 27th.

I saw the 9C coming in the forecast and marked it on my calendar for seeding, just in case the soil under my cold frame lids was workable at all. Even if frozen, I had the furrows prepped, and a bucket of soil stowed in my cellar – but lo and behold when I pulled the lids today to expose the soil to the warm temperatures, it was completely loose. At the beginning of November I was having a hard time digging out my leeks because they were so frozen into the element-exposed ground. I’m wishing I’d checked under the cold frames when it was -25C to see if it was frozen then. I’m sure I’ll get that opportunity again very soon.

So out came the seed stash, and I seeded: 2 rows forono beet, one of napoli carrot, touchon carrot, nantes carrot, a row of mixed greens & arugula, a row of spinach, a row of red russian kale mixed with collards,with a big long row of homesteader peas along the back board – there’s netting behind it for them to climb. A lesson learned from last year was that although it was lovely to have loads of greens in the cold frame, when I started harvesting root veg in mid-June, I dearly wished I had planted far more root veg.

Jury’s out on whether or not this seeding will produce a successful yield of anything. My hope is that come mid-February when, according to Eliot Coleman, we have enough sun for vigorous plant growth this far north, they’ll have enough protection to get germinating and growing a good 4-8 weeks earlier than last year. Even if we only get 3-4 weeks earlier than last year, that puts us eating garden root veg in May – when typically the only thing we’d have eaten would be baby greens. And if that’s indeed possible, we should still have root veg in the root cellar by the time baby root veg is ready again. Hard to believe that’s possible here. We’ll see.

The snow is falling, it’s -3C, with -20C in the forecast later this week. And yes, still harvesting garden veg. Was last year too. Not because I have a greenhouse, hoop houses, or even stuff under cold frames [well.. I do, but not for this stuff]. Just planted cold hardy veg in August and let them tough out the elements. Even if the bounty is very limited, it makes the winter without element-protected garden veg short when December through February are the only months that don’t see fresh produce coming into the house from the garden. That’s 3 months that I’m forced to cook exclusively from the cellar without fresh yard supplementation. I can happily live with that.  I think the rule of thumb around here for many folks [which used to apply to me too] is to seed May long weekend, and then harvest in September. That means garden produce is available fresh from the yard June through September, or 4 months of the year. Instead of 9. I don’t like that math.

I used to think Kale was a trooper, and it is, but I have collards next to red russian kale, and the collards are winning hands down for cold hardiness. They look fantastic. Who knew. Guess I’m planting them again next year. You’ll notice in the photo below a broccoli side shoot. I love brassicas. They’re tough as nails, good for you, and tasty.

So I’ll polish off what’s left of the greens, check out the cold frame to see how late I can harvest from that for fun, then get ready to start seeding flats in January. Which really leaves December as the only month I get a full-on garden break. I’ll take it.

Harvesting root veg demarcates the border between fall and winter for me. Since September I’ve been watching the weather, waiting for the cold to come that would force my hand and make me get the produce into the cellar. It was an especially fun game this year with a remarkably temperate fall. I feel like I got away with something harvesting in early November, when many pulled their root crops back in September.

I have to focus on that for a minute, as it’s important. If you pulled root veg to cellar in September, you’ve already got 1-2 months more of storage on your crops than I do. That matters. Vegetables will only store so long. And if a vegetable will survive storage for 4 months, say, I’d rather start that 4 month clock ticking in November than September.

Which brings me to point #2. At the moment, my cellar is 6-8C. With the coming cold, it will soon be close to 3-5C. The veg I did harvest and put up in the cellar [a farm glean] in September got to enjoy some balmy 10-12C temps for a month or more. Not ideal. So the longer I can wait, the colder the cellar is when they go to their winter home, the better it is for the quality and longevity. A rare moment where procrastination pays dividends.

Although I haven’t weighed it, my potato harvest has to be about 3-4 times what it was last year. We have lots for the winter for the first time. Mostly a function of developing more annual veg beds where lawn once stood, partly due to better soil health as time goes on. My fall carrot, rutabaga, and parsnips [photo below] probably add up to 2-3 times what I had last year. Beets are about the same, maybe a bit more. My back’s done with forking. Time for a brandy.

This is a first for me. Normally this is a March/April job – prepping soil for the coming year’s planting. My recent adventure at my local organic veg grower reminded me I was a bit behind the ball, as they already had onions, spinach, etc coming up for wintering over. Their little cold-hardy plants will have roots prepped to send out new leaves when the weather breaks in the coming early spring, having a good jump on the days or weeks of germinating time seeds can take. So there I was, in October, realizing I was already late on getting my spring garden moving.

This fall I planted for a winter crop – I have a sparse group of carrots, some peas, and healthy crops of red russian kale and arugula ready to brave the first heavy snow fall tucked under a cold frame. You’re likely to hear about the harvests well into November, if all goes well, December. What I couldn’t anticipate was the ridiculously long fall. It was 17C today. We had our first kill-frost that toasted my tomatoes and beans on the 16th – a full month later than last year. I was wishing them a frosty death by the end, and happily ripping them out within hours of their doom. Apparently I was ready to move on.

So next up is seeding the cold frame – only partly. I’m going to seed some now, maybe half, and seed the rest in the spring as early as possible, and see which seeds win the race. R&D. A note on design tweak visible below. I lifted the frame up onto bricks on flat, just to get a couple more inches of height for the plants to have more room in there. They’re gonna need it.

Brussel Sprout plant – learned this year to top them to promote size. Looks like it didn’t work.

This year’s tomato vintage sports both pretty substantial fails and victories, but on the whole, it’s a win.

First, the good. I planted space that wasn’t in production last year, on the south side of my garage along the alley. ‘Aren’t you worried people will steal your crop?’, asked many. I figure if they need it that bad, have it. Turns out they did not. The tomatoes in the photo came from that otherwise wasted urban space. Another big win is that I have heirloom varieties like the yellow pear, chocolate cherry, and matt’s wild cherry that I’ve never enjoyed before – one of the yellow pear plants hitting about 6′ tall trained on a string. I also have the best crop of Roma’s I’ve ever had. Lastly: my toddler girls can pick a bowl of tomatoes like this when I had no intention of harvesting – unexpected food-wealth.

The cons. Wet, cold year. And we had a week of nasty brutal spring winds that pummeled my transplants. Later, I neglected many, many plants sprawling about on the ground, some strings broke under the weight of the vines, and all around the tomatoes just didn’t look that pretty or put together. Disheveled. A little like me, with a bit too much on my plate this year. Perhaps they were in tune with my energies. I joke.

I am already enjoying a moment gardeners get to revel in – planning what I’ll do differently and improve on next year. And I’ll take one thing away from this year: get some of the fundamentals right, and the details become not so important at the end of the day.