Last harvest, for real

I dropped by my garden one last time to pick some last little treasures:

Morning glory seeds	Dried valerian root
Rainbow chard	Random tomatoes

Bye-bye, urban organic garden! You will be missed.

Last harvest

I'm moving out in two days, so I spent today harvesting whatever was ripe (or almost ripe) before I leave, which included cherry tomatoes, ruffled red tomatoes, and sweet peppers. I hope I have a chance to harvest a few more ruffled reds on Thursday – there are so many big, bulbous unripe ones!

I also harvested all my basil, which I am in the process of putting into freezer bags to preserve over the winter. (Freezing basil seems to be the best way to preserve its flavour, in my experience. Though once freezers become too costly to operate, drying it is!)

I still have to harvest my parsnips, valerian root, lettuce seed and flax seed. My eggplants most likely won't be ready before I leave. They're really tiny things. Maybe I'll drop by at the end of the month (while I still have legal access to the property) to see how they're doing.

Piddling potato harvest

Here were my two potato stacks this morning:

From these I managed to excavate a mere 550 g of potatoes, which I think was actually less than what I planted:

Go figure. This happened last year at Everdale, too. I think potatoes really need a lot of soil depth to grow productively. I only mounded them once because I wasn't able to find any more tires, but had I mounded them at least three times, as I should have, I probably would have ended up with three times as many potatoes.

In other news, I harvested my onions the other day. They were smaller than pearls. Aww. I also picked all my barley, which I didn't bother hulling yet because I don't have the time, so I just put it all in a paper bag. The corn cobs I saved have finally dried out and I "hulled" the kernels off a couple days ago (what do you call the process of popping off the kernels?). They look great. Corn is so easy to grow, so I think it will be a big part of my future farm. Soon, before I move, I have to harvest my flax, lettuce seed, and parsnips.

Garden in the press

Have a look at this great article by Tor Sandberg. He interviewed me for this rabble.ca article a couple weeks ago, and in it he writes about the garden! Hooray.

Inspired folks go organic
"I think the emphasis on local is the new organic. What I'm seeing is the local interest in agriculture taking off."
		Photo>Paul Hoepfner-Homme
		Paul planting with a friend
>by Tor Sandberg September 4, 2007 Paul Hoepfner-Homme, 26, shows off his ripening cherry tomatoes, chard, zucchinis, and a myriad of other vegetables. It was only earlier this year that Paul converted a gravel parking space into a bio-intensive garden behind his rented apartment in downtown Toronto. Three years ago, while in the midst of his computer science degree at the University of Waterloo, Paul had an epiphany while reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, a book that criticizes modernity and its unsustainable relationship to the environment. “I couldn't help but agree [with the book],” says Paul, who a year later would begin volunteering on an organic farm outside Toronto, inspiring the creation of his backyard garden and thoughts of starting his own organic farm. Continued on rabble.ca...

Melon for the morning

Pride of Wisconsin muskmelon - harvest yours today!

For some reason the squirrels avoided this little beauty, thus giving it a chance to ripen to maturity. Fruit from the garden - so exciting! If I were going to live here another year, I think I'd grow all melons instead of pumpkins and other squash.

No shortage of tomatoes

My squash are all suffering from this mildewy thing. It's a little disappointing, but there doesn't look to be anything I can do about it. The cucumbers are still growing, albeit very slowly. I'm hoping to have my first lemon cucumber in maybe a week or so.

Both my pumpkins have been successfully destroyed by the squirrels. Whatever. :P

Tomatoes are doing fine, beans are basically done, peppers seem all right, basil looks good, flowering lettuce are going to seed, flax and barley are getting good and dry, parsley is a little paltry, eggplants are slowly maturing, chard is insane and I'm tired of harvesting it, potatoes are looking really healthy (I just wish I had more tires to stack them higher), valerian is slowly gaining size, and I'm sure I have quite a few other veggies that I've now completely forgotten about.

My beautiful pumpkins...

What's chomping on my pumpkin??

It's a narsty black squirrel!

And it's left my pumpkin hollow. :(

Moral of the story: Don't grow food in the city?

Real moral of the story: Be vigilant. I wasn't.