Harvest Monday - Winter heatwith overwintered peppers

I have written a tonne on overwintering peppers, so I won't bore you with a recap but here is the latest on my current hot pepper darling.


Scotch bonnet saved from grocery store seed. This is its second winter in the house.

You can see the last year's large, lush leaves are drooping and will probably drop though I am getting a new crop of leaves budding. I harvested most of the rest of the peppers today to pickle and dry.


Yummy but a bit much for one meal - this calls for preserving measures.

Aphids are plaguing this plant as they did last year but this year, I have some volunteers keeping their population down.


Rural properties have a lot of (lady)bugs apparently. Not that I'm complaining.

Happy Shortest Day of the Year!

May you see more sun in your near future.



My kiddies kicking off winter with a couple containers of wintersown seeds. This technique sure saves on time and space under the lights.

Happy Holidays!

Waste not, Want not - the story of crumbs - prt 1

Thank you to Colin Purrington on Creative Commons for this lovely shot.

Part 1 - Baby Flies

I have always been an avid composter - the kind that offers to mow neighbours fall lawns if I can take home the rich mix of grass clippings and shredded tree leaves in trade. Despite approving of the city's green waste recycling program, I didn't actually add much to it as I needed my compost for my own garden. That said, as we were preparing the house for moving, I did start to use it so that our composter wouldn't be too full for the new owners. And on several occasions I noticed a mass exodus of adorable fat, baby flies. Apparently, the appearance of these young insects has caused some of my friends to quit the green bin program because they were too grossed out. Signs have gone up around the city of a little child's hands holding some dirt and a seedling to encourage participation.

I think we can all agree that we love the Earth. Right? There are only a few that are craving its wanton destruction, the rest of us have converted to latter day hippies. Who among us has not felt shame when they have to apologetically ask for plastic bags at the checkout counter because they left their reusuable ones at home? Unfortunately, too many of us have been taught to step on ants, and feel faint at the smell of manure. We clutch our hand santizers and avoid thoughts of death.

The thing is that the wonderful biological film covering our planet is a dynamic system with parts growing and others dying and being recycled. We are all part of this green program. The man that eats the steak and defecates what his body does not need. The sewage bacteria that turn this 'waste' into fuel. The fungi that live in symbiosis with the forest and equally consume its dead limbs. The plants that thrive on the lightly textured, water retentive soil rich in humus. The person that eats a salad made from those plants and well...

Insects of all sorts are involved in consumption of dead organic matter - both of the square and round cell type (plant and animal). Of course, we associate maggots with bloated dead bodies which is just freaky so when we see our green bins crawling with fat little grubs, some of us feel a bit woozy. The usual fix is to put your waste meat in the freezer until collection day. However, I have to disappoint people by pointing out that I have seen maggots on entirely vegan fair - my lawn mower blades got clogged with rotting grass and grew a fine crop of baby flies. Fruit fly maggots are just as gross cute but more dimunitive in size. You can guess what they eat. Of course freezing your meat will also mean less smell in the summer - it freezes naturally this time of year. You could even freeze all your compost in those handy little mashed up and dried tree bags that they sell for lining your indoor mini bin OR you can learn to love baby flies.

I might be unpopular here.

But, the visceral reaction to seeing these harbringers of death can be changed into a wonder how Earth herself wastes not. Just keep telling yourself "Awe, baby flies. How sweet. Look at them," as you gag and quickly turn around.

Other methods include:

1. Add dry material
2. Freeze your compost
3. Make your kids empty the compost in the bin
4. Wear rose coloured glasses and sing an earth loving folk song
5. Pressure wash your bin once in a while*

And my no. 1 tip: Ignore them. Really, they will either die of dehydration on your driveway, get eaten by something else or pupate into flies. Assuming you are like most North Americans and have both screened windows and air conditioning, you probably aren't too bothered by flies inside the house. Outside, the sky is big enough to share.

* It won't really help either but your bin will be sparkling for a whole half a day. Cuts down on that hard to scrape crust of goodness too.
** Only 1 picture? Yes, I apologize but I was too captivated by the beauty of nature to remember to take pictures of the maggots that have graced my garden.

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What other people say:

cbc story about squirmy people and pressure washers
Ottawa Citizen's working mom encounters the adorable fly babies

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Stay tuned for: Part 2 - Binning the green bin compost style

Welcome Whiteness

Newsflash: Ottawa Gardener likes snow!


The problem with privacy is you have a looong driveway. The 600ft treed lane that leads to our new rural house.

Around these parts, winter is clearcut: when there is white, there is winter. The white falls, the wind howls and several months pass before the sun rises higher and the freeze is shredded by golden rays creating the rivlets, puddles and streams of the springtime melt. I have lived in climates where winter is dominated by cold, cranky rain or where the minimal snow shifts like sand in the frigid temperatures or where winter never quite takes hold and 20 centimetres of snow is followed by a week above zero. Though we do get our mid-winter thaw, this is really just a little bounce up from the normal minus double digits. It often happens as the path of the sun gets high enough to start the ice sweating even in subzero weather - sometime around winterlude.


A comforter for plants

Though apparently the antithesis of growing, a snow blanketed landscape can also be seen as a comfortable place for plants to wait out the winter. Not only is it stockpiling water (and some nutrients) for the spring soak, but it acts as insulation. Snowflakes jumble together as they fall, leaving spaces which trap insulating air. The windchill might threaten above, but the perennial roots, and dormant seeds, stay cozy beneath.

Overwintering

Hardiness zones are a crude estimate of whether or not a plant can survive in your garden. They are based on the minimum air temperature that a plant can resist before it keels over. However, if you live in a region with reliable snowcover then you might be able to grow more delicate plants than you first thought. I have had various interesting conversations with nursery people about using the snow to extend your zone. The first suggested that hardiness zones were most reliable for woody perennials as they tend to stick up above the snow blanket. Perennials were less predictable. In a well drained spot, you might have all sorts of things growing.

A father of a friend of mine apparently managed to overwinter globe artichokes near Montreal. The region he lived used to get early, consistent, heavy snow fall. This same person moved somewhere with slightly less snow cover and now can't even get parsley to overwinter which amazes me because my parsley seems to be able to withstand sitting in a block of ice. A nursery man, also near Montreal, gets peaches to produce by cutting them close to the ground. This protects the flowerbuds produced on first year wood from the ravages of winter and the fluctuating temperatures of early spring. Various favourite members of the prunus family can be root hardy but suffer from blossom / bud kill in late spring when the temps decide to freefall for a couple of days. This is the reason why some people suggest planting early blooming fruit trees midway on a north facing slopes that warm more slowly in the spring or even planting them on a buried rock.

My own experience is that I have often gotten zone 6 plants to grow well in my urban zone 5a home but not every zone 6 plant will survive. Bronze fennel is a total bust for me but cabbage often overwinters. Of course, whether or not a plant will be vigorous in your garden depends on many factors such as soil type, heat, humidity, rainfall, pH, day length to name a few. Hardy kiwi, often rated to Z. 3 may not fruit because the growing season is not long enough.

The choices would be more limited though if it wasn't for all that shovelling we have to do. So in between the curses as you get on your winter tires, remember to thank the snow.

Harvesting Horseradish Monday

I have noticed that the prefix horse is often put in front of what people consider coarse vegetables like horseradish, horse chestnut, and horsemint. Or perhaps it refers to a wild plant, found in fields like cow parsley or cow parsnip. Of course, adding field before plants is also common from field bindweed to field horsetail to go full circle.


On first inspection, not very promising - a bed of dead horseradish leaves.

The experts on wiki tell me that:

"Where the English name horseradish comes from is not certain. It may derive by misinterpretation of the German name Meerrettich ("sea radish") as Mährrettich ("mare radish"). Some think it is because of the coarseness of the root. In Europe the common version is that it refers to the old method of processing the root called "hoofing." Horses were used to stamp the root tender before grating it."

It is an exceptionally hardy member of the Brassicacaea family, considered if not invasive, then at least persistant. The roots, early shoots, and seeds can be used according to Plants for a Future. However, they are normally propagated vegetatively so you'll probably have to look elsewhere to seed your mustard mix.


Digging in the soil reveals roots and shoots.

Best known of its traditional uses is when the macerated root is mixed with vinegar to produce the piquant sauce bearing its name. I like horseradish sauce but don't use a whole lot of it so I thought I would follow up on advice given to me in several sources to boil the roots. This destroys the volatile 'mustard' oils producing a rather bland root vegetable. I'll let you know next time what it tasted like.


I love the soft focus of this picture - must have been steam forming on the lens after being outside in the ch-ch-chilly fall.

Despite its invasive nature, I tend to plant it In The Perennial Garden because I like the look of its large, coarse leaves. There is also a variegated variety sometimes available (you'll note most comments on the link are about locating it). These can provide a dramatic contrast with finer textured plants.


Picture of horseradish in flower with daylily in front if I remember correctly from my old garden.

A first Harvest Monday!

Now that a 50ft tower graces the back of our rural abode, we have internet. So I can bring you harvests. The garden(s) are mostly still about input what with all the bed shaping and seeding for next year's splendor but I have had some outputs.


Massive 3 pie butternuts, organic (spotty) apples, potatoes and a few of the many, many Fatali that the two year old plant produced.

Digging in the old vegetable garden unearthed a good helping of potatoes. And the owners were kind to leave us with a surplus of apples and giant winter squash. I'll cook some of these apples up with Fatali habanero that are finally ripe - not your kid's apple sauce.


Greens in the low, winter sunlight.

Not too much still growing in the garden (we'll change that for next year) but I did harvest some parsley, sorrel, dill and violets for a green sauce.

Okay, break's over, back to work.

In Loving Memory

To our baby boy that lived for 20 weeks in the womb and forever after in our hearts.