What the Heck to Do... part 1

... with all those crab apples!?

When +ADW and I bought this house, we didn't know what we were getting in terms of garden and yard flora. I knew that there are two cherry trees that blossomed in two different colours (spliced with a white branch on a pink tree) but I wasn't entirely certain about what else was on the property. I soon found out that I have a really cute little crab apple tree that is very hard working as far as a tree goes.

In the spring, I saw all these wonderful flowers and thought absolutely nothing other than "awwww look how pretty that tree is!" I'm a biology graduate... I should honestly know better: flowers lead to fruits! DUH. The cute little tree is now over-burdened with pink-purple-red fruits about 1.5 inches. I have no idea what to do with these things!! Ariel enjoys eating them, but isn't allowed to eat too many. My parents (who live across the street--yes, it's an 'Everybody Loves Raymond' thing) like eating them but again, only eat a handful every now and again.

As typical owners of crab apple trees think, what the devil am I going to do with all these apples?? I looked up some recipes to see what I could do... and they range from easy to a pain in the butt. I decided to try the easiest approach, slow roasting these babies with cinnamon.

You'll need the following supplies:

• Crab apples
• Oil for high heat
• Ground cinnamon

Then you follow the directions...

1. Wash apples and leave stem etc, intact
2. Lay them in a low walled baking sheet to dry
3. Pre-heat oven to 300F
4. Drizzle/coat the apples with an oil good for high heat
5. Hand mix the apples to coat with oil
6. Sprinkle ground cinnamon and again, hand mix
7. Pop them into the oven
8. Roast for 1.5 hours or until the apples look wrinkly or have split skins. I'd pull one out to test after the 1 hour mark. Also, you'll note that depending on the size of the apples, the time might change.

Unexpected bonus: the entire house just smelled of apples and cinnamon. That lovely aroma alone is reason enough to do this!

Glossy apples ready to jump into the oven!

Sprinkling on the cinnamon

Slow roasted crab apples!

I was chatting with my neighbour and they said I could have them with a pork roast (savoury) or drizzle maple syrup on them and have them like that, or add ice cream! I tried a few without and then with maple syrup. They are quite tart! It's a bit of a pain to avoid the core but not THAT troublesome. I will probably be making some more (since the tree hasn't stopped) this weekend and have these ones with pork chops or something.

The Late Garden Update

This is probably the first I've mentioned much about my garden. If you've been around here for a while, you'll know I have dabbled with vermicomposing and enjoy my time outdoors (however fleeting those moments can be). This is the third summer I'm gardening in the backyard through raised beds that my +brother built and put in the back breaking labour to get them set-up. It's been me and Captain Obvious keeping up the maintenance and growing. Sometimes I'm not as diligent as I could be, to ensure a very fruitful growing season. Plants require as much care as other living critters... the only difference is that you can plan to have more time to yourself.

Garlic Scapes

What did I grow this season? I planted garlic last fall with 75% germination success and I'm waiting to harvest. Uncle B has been really helpful to get some of the other things started like my beans and potatoes; I planted potatoes from "seed potato", which is an interesting process--one I'm not familiar with. The season started the same it has in the last year... with pests digging up my plants or outright killing them. I didn't have any insect problems but I must have a feline or squirrel issue; my bean seedlings were broken or things were all together pulled out. I did plant a catnip plant in one of the corners in hopes to lure feisty felines out of the other boxes but it hasn't worked as I hoped and early in the season before anything was planted, Bucky was spending his outdoor time rolling around in the boxes and eliminating himself on occasion. I let that be for a bit but have since had him cease the behaviour.

Last night's dinner was a testament that the food we get straight from our garden is by far several times tastier than the stuff you get at the supermarket. Things at the supermarket somehow taste 'cheap' and mass produced (that's because they are!). The beans were crisp and sweet. The tomatoes sweet and full of tomato-y flavour and the lettuce was firm, not bitter but flavourful (both from a small Brampton farm). I ended up throwing together a nicoise salad with chicken.

Worm Bin Winterization

I don't know about how the weather is where you're at but just north of me, they're getting snow. It's not even past Halloween yet! "Winter is coming" is the motto of House Stark (Game of Thrones). The words behind this motto is one of warning and constant vigilance. It's very reassuring for someone like me, actually. We don't get a winter quite like the characters of the story but regardless, us Canadians have a lot of winterizing to do before the frost sets in and the snow starts. I have been slowly working in the garden to clean up and get things ready for the winter and for next spring. I wanted to try my hand at planting garlic for next year and I have planted 10 bulbs and cleared out the remaining legumes. I still have a little left for clean up but the major items have been cleared up and I've also take in my vermicomposting bin.

I'll go through the steps I took, to get things ready:

1. I made space for my bin in the basement. It is returning to its old spot.
2. The bin was cleaned up by washing the exterior with a powerful spray of water and sifting through the compost to ensure that everything is still healthy.
3. I do the clean up outside.
4. While sifting through the compost, I am looking for ear wigs (ugh) and other critters that are not desireable to be found in a worm bin. I pull these out and dispose of them back into nature.
5. I washed the outer bin that acts as a catch all and the lid.
6. I notice a lot of mites in the bin. These look like tiny brown specks all over the walls of the bin. I make the effort to wipe down what I could see and get rid of as many as I can.
7. All washed parts of the bin are left to try and then put back together and brought inside.

My worms seem to be pretty happy but the quality of compost is questionable in my mind. I see that they have eaten most of what's there and there is really only very fibrous items still remaining but the paper doesn't seem to break down enough. I envisioned that there would be a lot more "dirt" and less of the broken down paper bits. I'm not sure what I should be seeing here but I thought it should be more homogenous. I've since mixed things around and added a dry layer of newspaper shreds. I haven't had to wet down my shreds anymore because the moisture from the bin is enough to get new paper wet.

Next steps? It's becoming more self-sufficient but now I have to do some research about what the ideal compost should look like and what I need to do, to achieve that.

I'm Allergic to... Nature?

I was working out in the garden this weekend. Mostly propping up my very fertile bean plants and trimming back my perilla leaf plants. It's been quite warm and I've started working in the mid-mornings to stay cool. As it was coming to 11am, I decided to head in since the heat was starting to become bothersome enough.

When I got inside, I was scratching and itching on my forearms. I noticed that the same thing happened last year when I was working with the tomato plants. I think the tomato plants gave me a far worse rash but this one from beans was pretty bad too. I was curious if there was something that caused the rash because I'm generally not allergic to much of anything. However, I have a history of skin sensitivities to wool and now, I know, to certain garden plants!

I found this article which explains plainly, what happened to me: allergic contact dermatitis. It's good to know that I probably won't die from this but that I might need to get me a pair of sleeves to work in the garden with or just suck it up and tolerate it seeing as it doesn't last too long and I'm good as new in a few hours.

Earthy Updates

I haven't written about my little wormy friends in a while now. Seems appropriate time for a quick update! I've moved the worm bucket outdoors at Captain Obvious' suggestion (worms creep her right out) and I've moved them to a shaded area in the car port away from sun. I have to admit, with my summer schedule in full swing, I have less and less time to regularly monitor the bin. So, I end up periodically going in there. They're not thriving, let me tell you. But, they're not dead either. Some baby worms are being born but I'm not "swimming" in the wormies.

I have been loosely monitoring what I put in there and seeing what's eaten quickly and what sticks around for a while. Here are some things I've noticed about my worm bin:

1. Peels are eaten at a much slower rate. And it makes sense since skins are meant to protect the fruit/plant from the outside
2. Root vegetables are not the favourite food of worms
3. Worms love leafy vegetables
4. There is no such thing as having too much newspaper bedding because they'll happily go through it quickly for you
5. If it's too damp, add dry shredded news paper and close the top--the moisture is absorbed by the dry paper
6. Regular feeding is preferred but you can easily overdo it if you're not careful
7. Daily feeding isn' really necessary and if you have a pile every few days, that's really ok
8. Chop up what you have--especially if it's fibrey. The worms seem to have a better time when things are in smaller pieces

Possibly things people already know but I'm still learning about what's acceptable to put in there and what isn't so it's all still new to me! At least I didn't kill them this time so I'm in good shape. I'll need to check in about egg shells because I was putting them in whole but I read that worms need some "grit" to help them digest their food and that egg shells are really only good if they are added in a fine powder. Who has the time for that?! I've done it before but it's rather time consuming.

My next major goal with this project is to increase the population of worms so that I can dig my hands in and pull out actual worm castings and worms. Right now, I'm still getting recognizable pieces.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

I picked up some worms a few months ago, in order to start vermicomposting but was quite unsuccessful. However, failure has generally not defeated my morale enough to stop so I got some worms from a local source (thanks Alice!) this time and went all out and upped my bin size and style. I now have a 30L+ bin with holes drilled in the bottom and lid. It's been a few weeks and while it took a little time to understand exactly what it was that they wanted, I think I've gotten it down now.

I've left the bin open and sprayed it daily with a mister and continued to add vegetation. A lot of the stuff is being eaten quite slowly. I'm not quite ready to experiment with types of foods that wormies like or do better with but I'll get there. For now, I intend just to get a good population going and fine-tune the care which I need to maintain.

A few things I've learned so far...

• These systems are always much less finicky on a grand scale. It's when you try to mimic it in a small closed system, you're bound to be required to be more attentive and slight changes can really wreck havoc on your little system.
• Plastic containers are pretty air tight and while you don't even need air holes on the sides, just leaving the lid open does wonders.
• The compost should be wetter than you think. I mean it's also easier to dry out a wet system by just leaving the lid open for a few hours.
• Another thing I encountered was these little shiny mites on my first few days (when I snapped the lid shut) which were all over the sides of the bin where there was condensation. My solution? Leave the lid open over night to release excess moisture. And nothing to worry about as the mites wouldn't survive outside the bin anyways.

I feel a little more confident that I'm doing the right thing now that my worms don't look like they're dying every time I go digging to check on them. Just some more patience and soon my bin will be full of compost and worms!

Spring's Sprung!

How was your weekend? Did you get the chance to head out, today? I live in Toronto and Sunday's weather was a great introduction to our long-awaited spring! It finally felt like I could bring out my spring jacket and shed my Canada Goose parka. And, with this much improved weather, it's only natural for me to start thinking about the garden and all it's glorious garden-y goodness.

The past 2 years I've had 4 boxes to work with on the south side of the backyard and we've been growing kale, swiss chard, chinese chives, tomatoes and carrots. Some vegetables have been more successful than others but I did some research about rotating the different crops and based on the veggies I planted, the next best thing to plant into the soil are beans and peas.

Beans and peas can be planted directly into the ground but since the ground's not ready, I started some of the other seedlings that I plan on putting out there this season:

Seedlings warm and cozy in the mini green-house

My make-shift seedling box :)

I feel like vegetable gardening should cost minimally or there isn't really a point... It doesn't make sense to pay more for a tomato that you grew in the garden than picking one up from the grocery store, right? I'm all about local and sustainable but like anyone else, I've got a budget and I make compromises. Seedlings typically cost $1-5 and a packet of seeds costs around $2 with several dozens of seeds. You do the math. So, needless to say, I didn't feel like paying for coconut coir pots and thought to make the seedling pots with toilet paper rolls and a round tofu container. I prepared potting soil and filled the half toilet paper rolls and then planted as usual with a good misting over the top. Now, just wait.

Detritus Catastrophe

This has been a long winter. It even snowed earlier this week and it's nearly spring. I got started on some gardening related activities indoors this year: I got worms! I've started vermicomposting and it was pretty easy at the get go. I would take some kitchen scraps and bury them into the bin and then close it again and go to bed. It was really low maintenance and they were going through the vegetation pretty quickly. In fact, it seemed like they were even multiplying quite quickly.

Captain Obvious was at first a bit put off with this new addition into the house and was not particularly helpful; especially when I told her how much my pound of worms cost. But, she soon realized that they would have to multiply and then I would have more and more offspring coming to age. Which meant that I would in essence obtain more and more worms and might be able to make a side business of this!

The other day, she gave me some broccoli that was kind of off and we both shrugged and added the food into the bin. A few days later, my brother came home and told her that things smelled a bit iffy. She didn't notice but told me to check anyways. The bin smelled pretty bad and I noticed that the worms were trying to crawl out and there was condensation on the bottom of the lid.

  

It was all out war with this rotting vegetation which has now ruined my worm bin! I spent the better part of the evening clearing out the old stuff (even tossing the castings I did get :( ) that was wet and/or dead and then creating a new bin with newspaper and a spray bottle. 

My next steps will have to be to monitor the worms that I do have left since I don't want them all to die and I really need to figure out how to do this right. I will get around to photographing my efforts but at this point, it feels pretty futile since I'm struggling to keep them alive. Seems like keeping non-mammilian pets is not something I'm excelling at.

New Family Additions

I love playing in the dirt.

Last year, I started a raised garden with my brother; we have 4 boxes situated on our south side of the property. While it's not a lot for a hard core gardener, it was a good start for us when we decided to undertake the task of growing some of our own food.

I've had gardens in the past. My parents supported our first garden attempt in a corner where the morning sun was warm and wonderful. We grew beans, peas, eggplant, tomatoes and a futile attempt at lettuce. It was an enjoyable project when I was younger but as life goes, things come up and that went on hold.

When my brother and I decided to undertake the garden, we visited the Home Show and met some garden guys who specialized in a) duck poop tri-mix and b) a new discovery: worm castings. I always knew that worms are good for your garden since they aerate and eat the dead stuff but I didn't realize that their poop is even better. In fact, people do a special kind of composting called vermicomposting. This got me thinking that I could do this at home; afterall, worm food is practically free. So, I bought a pound of red worms to help me with the home composting since we have a lot of kitchen scraps.

My mom wasn't too keen on the idea at first so I was surprised when she told me she added stuff this evening. I've had some trouble keeping pets that are not of a mammalian background so this will prove to be an interesting and challenging endeavour.