kalegrower

Winter kale – growing slowly but still edible

This freezing cold weather means that I have been mostly hiding indoors. I try to make sure I walk around the garden at least once a day; thanks to my in-laws, the garden is full of evergreen trees and bushes and there is much to look at and admire, even in the dead of winter. Most days I only dump the kitchen compost into the bin or cut some greenery, then run back inside. Today the weather was clear enough that I spent some time harvesting a big bowl of kale for dinner and doing some winter bed maintenance.

Although it is easy to forget about the veggies in winter, here are a few winter maintenance things that need doing:

1. Clear leaves, small branches and other debris that has fallen or blown into the beds.
2. Remove all the dead or rotting leaves. I cleared out the kale leaves that are discolored or starting to wilt. I removed any leaves that had died (chives, rhubarb). I didn’t touch the lettuce and chard leaves as the plants might miraculously come back to life in spring. The leeks are still growing strong.
3. Pull weeds. They grow all year and easily take over the beds when it gets warmer.

Last year I covered my winter crops with a cold frame to provide a hospitable winter environment for slugs and other insects. This year I left the plants uncovered, and even with the snow last week, the kale is surviving very well and seems to be growing.

Dinner!

The indoor winter gardening has been much more intensive. My lemon tree has been living in my bathroom since before the first frost in November and appears to be suffering. That plant now qualifies as a pet; every day I check the soil for moisture and pick up fallen leaves. Every day the tree spends some quality time with the SAD lamp to get some full spectrum light. Each week I spray the tree for pests.

My lemon tree is hoping to survive the Vancouver winter by living in my shower and getting artificial light from my SAD lamp.

On the bright side, I do enjoy having the lemon tree in my bathroom. I speak to it each morning. Every time it blooms, it fills my bathroom with a gorgeous scent that reminds me of Spain and gives my heart a lift. And I look forward to spring when I can take it out on my balcony again.

A lemon flower

The bees in their winter habitat. My hive is the green one at the far left.

Yesterday we drove to Langley to attend a honey tasting party and meet all the other bee-people who sponsored hives from the 3B Honeybee company. Art and Bryn had combined the honey from hives in each of the different localities (our was Kits/UBC) and provided samples of each one to taste.  There were about twelve different types arranged in a spectrum from the lightest to the darkest. We tried samples of each type and were surprised by the different tastes and textures. I wasn’t able to distinguish any individual floral notes or flavours, however I am not exactly known to have a discriminating palate. It all tasted great to me.

Kits/UBC honey. Fall larch in the background.

The Kits/UBC honey is the second darkest type. My hive produced 18 pounds of honey. This sounds like a lot until you realize that the highest producing hive produced over 200 pounds. I can’t complain though, as many hives didn’t produce any honey at all.

We headed home with our three jars of honey (that was the deal) plus a few extra jars for gifts.  It was fun to meet the other bee people and compare experiences. Every single person I spoke plans to host a hive again next year. I hope that I get the same hive (#32) back again in my garden again next year.

Anyway, big thanks to Art and Bryn for hosting the party and for making it possible to host a hive this last summer. It was definitely one of the highlights of my year!

Hive 32 in it’s winter home.

L’Automne by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593)

I absolutely love this painting of Autumn Man; he’s wearing a pumpkin on his head, his hair is made of grapes, he has a rosy apple cheek and he is wearing the slats from a barrel. Autumn man reminds me that instead of being sad about the end of summer, I need to focus on all the fresh fruits and vegetables available right now. Just this morning I picked up 80 pounds of organic apples from a grower who has decided to sell directly to the public; the apples are crisp and fresh and I am looking forward to eating many of them raw and baking some into apple crisps and other treats.

The apples are also distracting me from the garden. I don’t really feel like going out and working in the yard when it is this rainy and wet. However, some of the veggies are still waiting there to be picked (beans, kale, leeks, carrots) and others  have probably started to rot (tomatoes). I am glad that I finished the raspberries last weekend, and all the new canes are tied up and supported. I might cut the tops off some of the tallest ones as they’ve grown over 1o feet tall. Although the canes are bent over and I can pick the berries from the ends, I am worried about the longer canes getting damaged from snow loading in the winter.

This is the time of year that I start to do a critical evaluation of what worked and what didn’t and how this is going to change things for next year. First, flowers. This year I planted a lot of flowers from seed including sweet peas, calendula, nasturtiums, and cosmos. I am going to plant sweetpeas again next year as they  looked great and smelled gorgeous. Next year I am going to grow them against a trellis or another support; this year they all grew sideways and climbed up other plants and it was a mess.

The calendula was kind of “Meh”. They grew fine and produced a lot of flowers – many of which we ate in salads – but I was underwhelmed. Maybe calendulas are just kind of boring and I am expecting too much. The cosmos also grew well and are still blooming, but next year I am going to select a shorter variety; this year I intentionally picked the tallest ones and some of the ones in front of my house are over six feet tall.

The only flower that I am feeling ambivalent about are poppies. I am absolutely passionate about red poppies and am so excited about them when they are in bloom. But when they die, off they fall over and take everything else with them.

Next post, will be about what veggies worked and which ones didn’t.

Fall Salad Plate: cucumbers, dill, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce from our garden, with some Saltspring goat cheese and fresh bread thrown in for good measure.

Third week of September and life is speeding by at a frenetic pace. I have lots of contract work right now, which is a great thing as it means income and opportunities to work with some of my favorite free-lancer friends. All week I’ve been either staring at a computer screen or staring through a windshield, driving to meetings or driving kids to track.

My Friday morning wake-up call came to me from Pat, a fellow garden blogger. Her awesome post about  “Slow Gardening & Slow Living” is a reminder to slow down and be present in the garden and in life. Rather than give you a condensed version of her post to skim over, I request that you take a deep relaxing breath, click the link above and take a few minutes to read her elegant post in it’s entirety. Because of her, I decided to spend some time thinking about my garden instead of rushing into my next report.

Okay for more slowing down and for some inspiration this weekend, read my post about Winter Gardening 101 published by BCLiving.ca. Two weeks ago Farmer Cole came over and planted spinach and lettuce seeds, which are now starting to appear. I noticed that with the drop in temperature, seeds are taking a little longer to germinate, but should soon be large enough to make it through the winter.

Although most of my plants are slowing down, Swiss Chard and kale are still growing at a pretty fast rate, but are also getting kind of “buggy”. Last weekend I did a lot of kale grooming and removed many of the lower leaves from the plants to make space, removed any leafless stems (this happens when kids harvest kale leaves and leave the stems behind) and also removed all yellowing leaves. So far, the plants haven’t suffered the usual fall “aphidpalooza” and I hope that there are still many more meals ahead.

The big activity for this weekend is going to be “raspberry control”. The old canes are dying off, so I need to remove them and tie up the new ones so that they don’t collapse if it snows. I also need to remove the soaker hoses and do a lot of weeding because I notice that ivy and morning glory plants are sneaking in under the hedges from my neighbor’s yard.

Okay, another deep breath and then I need to speed up and move forward to my 11:30 deadline – a final draft to my editor, J-Dub.

Have a beautiful fall weekend everyone!

In so many ways, this was a fabulous summer: great weather, the most apples that we’ve ever had from our tree, lots of zucchinis produce and the bees. We all loved having the bees in the back of the yard. After having had a few conversations with Art and Bryn, even the reluctant son was less apprehensive about the bees.

Art and Bryn sent out an email to say that they are coming to pick up the hives this weekend, at dawn or dusk, when the bees are in the hive. I feel sad that the bees are leaving. I look forward to the honey-tasting in the fall, and look forward to hosting a hive again next summer.

Whats next for the bees

Beekeeping is a year-round operation. Once Art and Bryn pick up the hives and transport them out to Langley, they are going to have to treat the bees for mites. They’ve seen the mites in most hives so will be treating each of the hives with formic acid; the bees survive, but the mites do not.  Hopefully, the bee colonies will survive over the winter.

What’s next for the garden

Lots of things are starting to die back, other things are growing with great vigor. The over-winter veggies I planted a few weeks ago are growing rapidly have are being eaten by slugs. I  will plant some more winter seeds this coming week.

The beans are in full force, and I have to keep picking them small before they get big and tough.

Hedges need trimming and some of my shrubs did not survive the heat.

Finally, the lemon tree

This summer I bought a small lemon tree which has just THRIVED on our deck. It flowers almost constantly, so every time I step outside I inhale and smell Spain. Ahhhh…..in the last few months many of the flowers started to form lemons, and many of the lemons are several inches long, but still dark green. In the last week I noticed that many of the smallest lemons all started to fall off the tree; I gathered a large handful off the deck. I called the nursery where I purchased the tree, worried that it wasn’t warm enough anymore and they said:  (1) the lemon tree can stay outside until frost; (2) the tree drops the baby lemons when there is too much fruit.

Okay, that’s it for now. A season of gardening activity is starting soon…..