... taking a break

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let you all know that I will be taking a break from blogging for a while.

My male dog, Teally, is very sick. We do not even know for certain what is wrong with him but I want to devote all my free time to looking after him, especially if the outcome is bad. I can write about planting veg any time. I want to spend my time with Teally while I can.

Thanks for your understanding.

... potting on the tomatoes

Good evening everyone,

The time has come to begin potting on the tomatoes. They are being moved into 4" pots where they will stay until they are transplanted into the ground when all threat of frost is past.

They have taken the transplant quite well and I am sure they will thrive in their new larger pots.

That is it for tonight. Thanks for visiting with me. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... bursting into bloom

Hello there everyone,

I wandered around the garden to see how some of the plants are doing.

As you can see, the Rhubarb is growing just beautifully.

The 2 Black Currant bushes are about to burst into bloom. They are much too large and will need a thorough pruning after they have leafed out.

One of the Gooseberry bushes is now leafed out and doing well, the other is really not showing any signs of anything.

The daffodils that I planted under the 4 Apple trees are looking really well. I cannot wait until they bloom. They are all varieties that will naturalize well and in years they will fill the area under the trees. 

Unbelievably, the weather forecast is calling for snow tomorrow. It is for this very sort of reason that I have yet to plant anything in the garden, not even the cold tolerant plants.

Well, that is all for me for tonight. Thanks so much for stopping by. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... growing good garlic

Hello again everyone,

This is just a quick additional post for tonight.

Last fall we planted out several beds of garlic which we mulched heavily with straw for winter protection.

A week or so ago I removed the straw to allow the sun to warm up the beds. 

The garlic is now up several inches and growing quite well.

Since we use wood to heat our house, I have saved some of the wood ash and have used it to side dress the garlic. All members of the onion family appreciate the use of wood ash so I have saved the rest of it and will use it when I have planted out the leeks.

After a light sprinkle of ash around each of the plants I have replaced the straw mulch to help to suppress any weeds and also to help to retain moisture in the soil.

Thanks for stopping by again. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... weeding asparagus

Hello there everybody,

When we first put in our asparagus beds we had no idea what sort of plants were actually growing there. Frank grabbed the roto-tiller and cleared the area. I spent quite a lot of time forking through the area and removing the clumps of roots. After that we planted the asparagus.

Several years later we now know that those plants were in fact perennial weeds. Some of the worst of them are Sheep Sorrel and Tufted Vetch. Both are unbelievably difficult to eradicate.

 This year I decided to give it my best effort to clear out the beds. I have spent quite a lot of time weeding each bed, digging out as much of the weeds as I possibly can. 

As you can see from this photo, it was quite a challenge to get rid of the nasty little beggars. Each bed took from 4-6 hours to weed thoroughly.

After clearing each bed I have topped it up with a nice rich triple mix to provide a better growing medium for the asparagus crowns.

As each bed is finished I have to admit that I do have a sense of accomplishment. I know that a lot of the weeds will certainly regrow but now that I have the beds cleared I can keep an eye on them and dig out the new weeds the minute I see them.

That is all for now. Thanks so much for stopping by today. Have a great week.

  ~ Melanie ~

... tomatoes and lots more seedlings

Hello again everybody,

The tomatoes are doing just wonderful. They are sitting in a south facing window and I turn the flat 4 times everyday to keep them growing straight. I have also taken them outside for about 10 minutes a day for a good thorough watering. As it is nearly always breezy here, I think it is good for them to have the wind blow on them a bit to make the stems nice and strong.

I do find it quite interesting to notice the difference between the different varieties of tomato. Some, like Brandywine, are quite large. Others, like the Purple Bumblebee cherry tomato, are still only a couple inches tall although they were all started on the same day.

This second flat of seedlings is a bit of a mixed bag. Lots of brassicas. Broccoli, kohlrabi, kale (seed germinated very poorly), 2 varieties of cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, spinach and three varieties of beets. 

I have never grown beets in a pot to transplant before but I read about it in a gardening book so I thought I would give it a try to see what happens. I will still sow the seed directly into the garden as well but I am curious to see if these beets will do well and how much earlier they will be. They do not have to be pricked out and potted on, they will just be separated and popped into the garden bed.

The rest of the brassicas which are still quite small with just their seed leaves will need to be potted on into cell packs until they are big enough to be planted out. That will not be until they have their first set of true leaves.

I have also started more seeds. Celeriac, which I have never grown before, 3 varieties of lettuce, more Spinach, 2 varieties of Swiss Chard, 2 varieties of Courgette (zucchini) and 2 varieties of Cucumber. 

Well I believe that is all I have to report on for now. Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great weekend. Cheers.

 ~ Melanie ~ 

... and using those sausages

Hello again everyone,

This is sort of a continuation from yesterday when we made all those sausages.

Because we used venison meat that had been in the freezer we could not re-freeze them unless they were cooked first.

I made us dinner from 5 of them. Nothing fancy, just cooked up with some gravy and served with mashed potatoes and beans (frozen from last years garden). Who does not love Bangers and Mash?  :)

We still had quite a lot left so Frank cooked all of them on the BBQ. They did smell wonderful. When they had cooled I put them on a cookie sheet and froze them. After which I popped them into a zip-top back and back in the freezer. 

That is it for this post. Back shortly with an update on the veg plants.

 ~ Melanie ~

... making sausages

Greetings everybody,

It is a rainy day here in eastern Ontario so we could not get out to work in the garden so we decided instead to make sausages. 

We had a bag of venison in the freezer that needed to be used up so we combined that with the last of the bacon from the pig we had ordered last year.

Frank put all the meat through the grinder attachment on my KitchenAid stand mixer. It occurred to me after we had begun this process that perhaps this would make a good blog post so we ran to get the camera and started taking photos. 

After the meat is all ground we added the herbs and spices and mixed it in really well.

Then we have to deal with the sausage casings. We do not like the "fake" casings. We like to use real hog or sheep casings. If you are the squeamish type you may not like to know that basically they are the animals intestines. They are thoroughly clean and I pick them up at the butcher shop in my nearest town.

When you get them home you soak them in some warm water with a wee bit of vinegar added. It makes them nice and soft and pliable. 

The next step is to wash them. This is a little bit like filling a water balloon.
First of all you have to find the end and then get it open. 

I fit the end over a funnel so I can run the water through the funnel and give the insides a thorough washing out. It is a little bit like making water sausages. :)

After that we fit the casings on the sausage stuffer attachment on the mixer. They generally slide on pretty easily.

At this point Frank begins to put the meat into the hopper and push it through the mixer with a plunger. I handle the casings and gently move them along the funnel as the sausage meat begins to fill them. It does not take all that long to get the hang of it. When you have filled the length of casing (we never make it more than 4 feet long), then you twist them into individual sausages links. 

We managed to make quite a nice pile of sausages. Some we gave away to friends as they all need to be cooked as the meat was previously frozen. There is still far too much for us to eat in one sitting but we will cook all of it tonight and then we can freeze the cooked sausages for later use.

That is it for me for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I would love to know if you have had a chance to try sausage making for yourself. Leave me a comment. Cheers.

 ~ Melanie ~

... leeks and tomatoes

Hello again everybody,

It is the beginning of April and although it is still cold and we still have snow on the ground here in eastern Ontario I have been thinking about the garden for some time now.

Back in February I started off two pots of Leek seeds. The variety I am growing this year is "Large Musselburg". They started off quite well and have never looked back. They are doing simply splendidly. In the past I have trimmed them down but have not done so this year.

 I am planning a new method of planting them, one that Eliot Coleman uses and I am hoping for great things from the. I will do a post on the planting when the time comes.

In March I stared seeds for 11 varieties of Heirloom tomatoes from seed that I saved from last year. All of them germinated quite quickly and did very well.

As soon as they had their first true leaves I pricked them out and transplanted them into individual cell packs. I will transplant one more time into larger pots for their last 3-4 weeks of growing before they go into the ground.

As you can see from this photo, they took it very well with no shock and have already put on some growth just in the last couple of days. I will follow their progress as the season advances.

That is it for today. Thanks for visiting. Have a wonderful weekend. Cheers.

~ Melanie ~

... update on last years squash

Hello everyone,

I wanted to stop by to give you an update on the varieties of squash that we grew last year and how well they are keeping.

We have been keeping them in the boot room which is on the north side of our house and it has a stone floor with no heating in the room. This is where we piled up almost all the squash when we harvested it in October.

We are now down to a smaller pile which includes two Kabochas, 6 Butternut and that last of the massive Hubbards. I got on the scale with this monster today and it weighed in at 28.8 pounds. 

Although the seed cavity will be very large, it will still provide a great deal of flesh. We have been cutting them up and steaming or roasting all the flesh and then storing it in the freezer. Frank took a photo of me with it and I could barely hold onto it.

The Butternuts are keeping perfectly and we will use them last. At the rate we are using it, we should have squash to eat likely up until June at least.

I have already worked out this years planting plans with regards to the squash and considering how very well they did this year, we will repeat again for this season. I would like more Butternuts though so will plan accordingly.

Thanks for stopping by. Will be back with a post about leeks and tomatoes.

Cheers.

 ~ Melanie ~