Playing in the Dirt

Oh, dear, it’s been over a MONTH since I posted here! I can’t believe it. My only excuse is that I’ve been busy gestating. Our baby is now officially three days overdue, actually.

There hasn’t been much action out in the garden since early autumn. My husband, Graham, helped me out a lot this year in getting things cleaned up out back. We actually managed to clip back all of the perennials and he helped me pull the finished plants from the vegetable garden after we harvested the tomatoes.

This year we didn’t keep all of our harvest to ourselves, preferring to keep things simple and give a lot of it away to friends and family members. (Although we did, of course, manage to roast several big baskets of tomatoes and froze four large ziplock bags of roasted tomato sauce.) Our next-door-neighbour traded us some nice little potatoes that he grew for some of our tomatoes, too.

Baskets of homegrown tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for our friends and family.

That little veggie trade had me thinking, actually, that since there are three of us now in a row on my street who grow vegetables, we should try to co-ordinate a little bit, and share our harvest.  We could collectively grow more food than we could individually.  I’ll have to give this some thought over the winter!

But now here it is, late November, and it’s been an unseasonably mild autumn this year, for which I’m grateful. Now there is the potential for snow flurries this coming week, the same week our new family member is expected to arrive (we have an induction scheduled for Monday).

I hope that although we’ll be busy with the new baby, I’ll have more time in general to devote to writing online over the coming year. We’ll be sure to post when the baby comes!

5867 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/11/19/fruits-for-friends-and-family/Fruits+for+friends+and+family.2009-11-19+15%3A41%3A43Amy

I bought several varieties of peppers for the garden this year, and of course when it came time to harvest them, I didn’t remember which ones I planted where. This isn’t usually a problem because although peppers are similar, at maturity they are different enough to be able to identify. However, I think I bought mild AND hot banana peppers which was just silly of me. You know what this means, don’t you? Yes, we had to taste the pepper in order to know which one was ready for harvesting first. I was the guinea pig. And yes, these are hot!

Graham and I threw one on the barbeque to roast it and mellow out its flavours, chopped it up and ate it on some nachos we had for dinner that night.

5587 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/08/16/whats-ready-to-harvest-hot-banana-peppers/What%27s+ready+to+harvest%3F+Hot+banana+peppers%212009-08-16+11%3A28%3A35Amy

One of the tasks on my weekend list of garden chores was to harvest the catnip that was doing its best to go to seed in the back yard.  This was one of the things I actually got done, and now there are about a dozen large bunches of the stuff drying in my laundry room.  Suddenly the cats are very interested in the laundry room…

They were also very interested in the plants I cut back on Monday morning.

Rudy stuck around the vegetable patch, where the majority of the catnip plants grow.

Farley stayed close to the deck, where I was bunching and tying the bundles for hanging.

Even the neighbourhood cats wanted in on the action!

All the cats want to party in our yard…

5486 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/08/06/harvesting-catnip-our-cats-favourite-day-of-the-year/Harvesting+catnip%3A+Our+cats%27+favourite+day+of+the+year.2009-08-06+11%3A48%3A19Amy

My friend Kelly gave me a cutting from her blackberries and I planted it outside the kitchen door, near the herb garden.  I realize this means that someday soon I’ll have to carry a machete to hack my way through the patch into the kitchen, but with the fruit growing closer to the house, I really think it will be harvested more regularly than oh, say, the raspberries, which are currently at the very back of our yard.

These berries have a much milder taste than the raspberries but are just as lovely.  I simply eat them raw, so far, but I have visions of blackberry wine someday…

5455 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/08/05/whats-ready-to-harvest-blackberries/What%27s+ready+to+harvest%3F+Blackberries%212009-08-05+11%3A16%3A17Amy

As I sit in my living room this early morning drinking my coffee, I can see the vegetable patch out the back windows of our house.  One of the most prominent features of the garden right now are the brightly coloured blooms on the zucchini plants.

I always grow zucchini in my garden as I find it one of the most rewarding vegetable plants to grow.  In a very wet growing season, some plants can be lost to rotting, but generally the plants require little fussing and produce more fruit than I know what to do with.  I’ve made zucchini pickles zucchini soup, stuffed zucchini, zucchini bread and my favourite zucchini recipe so far, zucchini fritters.

Staying on top of the harvest is the trick to keeping my husband (and myself) from getting totally sick of zucchini.  I try to pick the fruit when it is still small and sweet and at its tastiest.  I throw chunks of it into salads, curries, pastas and soups.

What throws a wrench into this plan is that every year around this time, I take an annual trip to meet my blogging friends at the BlogHer conference, which is taking place in Chicago again this year.  This is what I found when I returned from that trip two summers ago:

Lots of big, impressive-looking fruit with very little flavour and not of much use other than as a door stop (or perhaps entering a contest in the county fair).

So this morning, after my coffee is done I’ll be harvesting the zucchini that’s ready to be picked. I’ve had to add “harvest zucchini” to my list of pre-conference tasks so that when I return on Sunday, I won’t be plagued with monster zucchini that I’ll have to pawn off on neighbours and friends!

4942 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/07/21/staying-on-top-of-the-zukes/Staying+on+top+of+the+zukes.2009-07-21+11%3A27%3A48Amy