Garden Treats

This is a wonderful time of year, when the golden "Fall Gold" raspberries produce their second crop, with even larger and sweeter berries than the summer's crop.  The espalier apples and asian pears are starting to become ripe, and even some grapes are ready to pick.  Today I was able to bring in this harvest :

I washed and prepared them, and called the family to sample:

Look at the size of those raspberries :

My absence of posts this summer have not been indicative of the time spent in the garden.  I have been fortunate to have spent quite a bit of time in the garden this year, although never as much as I would like.  During the week I work, and even with taking Fridays off this year, I have spent most of my Fridays doing laundry, tidying and cleaning, attending to various errands and medical appointments and such.  So most of my gardening has been in the evenings (while the days were longer) or weekends.

Today I spent 3 hours tackling my hillside, which is difficult terrain, and full of challenges :  

This summer I started to climb the hillside to remove some blackberry vines which were shooting up from above my Gunnera (top right), very high on that hill.  On my first attempt, I discovered that the wasps had a nest in the ground, and was fortunate to escape (I didn't know I could run that fast!) with only one sting.  I have tried 3 times to eliminate them with wasp killer, and this last time, I finally was successful.  (I probably would have left them alone if I had any other way to approach that hillside, but it is getting too difficult to come from above.)  So today I climbed up, but after removing about 4 wheelbarrows full of weeds and plant material, I still hadn't climbed all the way up to remove all the blackberry vines.  So that will need to be another day.

This year was the first year I planted my giant sunflowers in the small "kitchen" / herb garden outside my kitchen window.  So it has been fun to watch them grow.  Although all their bright cheery faces are pointed in the other direction, I only see their backs from the window.

I think I will do that again.  There is good sun in that location, and I like the result.

I hope you are all enjoying your gardens, the fruits and veggies and flowers, the fall colours, the tidying up and preparing for winter.  It never ends, but that is what makes gardening such a wonderful pastime.

Grape Harvest and Juicing and Thoughts of Pruning

For their first year bearing fruit, my grape vines really performed well this year. Yesterday I decided to harvest the fruit, and make grape juice. There were a few indications that this was a good time to harvest...

#1 - The grapes tasted sweet - as sweet as they would get, I suppose. I actually have 3 varieties of grape, all unknown, but the most abundant one reminds me of the concord grape in taste and texture, except that it is green.

#2 - The past few days have been sunny and warm, and the nights cool, which I understand is good for harvesting.

#3 - The colour of some of the bunches had brightened from the green to a yellowish green.

#4 - The weight of the grapes had already pulled the vines off my trellis, so it was a good time to relieve that stress. This photo shows how some of the vines, which used to be tied to the upper horizontal slat, have sagged under the weight of the grapes:

#5 - It was a weekend, so I'd have some more time to make the juice.

#6 - My steam juicer had just arrived last week, so I was happy to try it out. Actually, I had already tried it out a few nights earlier on a batch of apples from my "mystery" apple tree, which were a bit too tart for my enjoyment, and the family was not helping me out enough with eating them.

#7 - The 2 clumps of dark grapes had already gone bad on the vine. When I went to pick them, they were already full of fruit flies, so they went straight to the compost.

I knew it was a good first crop this year, but I was surprised at how many grapes I was able to gather. Just shy of 20 pounds! Here I am, with my harvest:

The juice turned out really nicely. I got about 8 litres (8 quarts), pictured here on the left, with the 3 bottles of apple juice on the right:

Encouraged by my harvest, my thoughts are already on next year, and learning to prune the vines to maximize grape production. I have read many confusing descriptions of the spur pruning and cane pruning methods, and then finally encountered this one from Oregon State University, which is quite good, especially since it provides clear pictures of what to prune:

Good article on grape pruning

I am reading that effective pruning removes about 90% of the vegetation. That sounds severe, but armed with the information in that article, I'm already looking forward to trying this out, in the Spring. In the meantime, I am enjoying the few bunches of grapes which I kept fresh, and the delicious juice.

Signs of Fall and Fruit Harvest Sampler

Our family took a short trip to Las Vegas, and during those 4 days, the burning bush (Euonymus alata) started to turn red, a sure sign that Fall is approaching:

Although the crazy apple tree doesn't think so (see full story):

I still don't know what variety of apple my "mystery apple" tree is, but it is crisp, with quite a bit of tartness.

Some of the apples (the ones which got the most sun, I guess) are quite red:

My golden raspberries are back in fruit again:

This is poor photo, but it is curious to me that the late raspberry crop pollinator seems to be this large black wasp, which have been buzzing about the raspberries for the past few weeks:

My grape vines bore grapes for the first time this year, so I can finally find out what type they are. When I was given the cuttings a few years back, I happily took them, but didn't find out at the time. Well, I see now that my 3 vines are 3 different varieties of grapes.

I have a dark one, which only bore 2 bunches of fruit, and looks like it may be a wine/juice variety:

The most prevalent is a green one which also looks like it may be a wine/juice variety, with firm skin:

The third variety is also green, but the fruits look more delicate, like a table/eating grape, and when I sampled some today, they were already quite sweet:

I have room for a 4th vine, and hope to just buy a nice eating variety (or ask my neighbour who has a very sweet green one).

The espalier apple tree has borne 2 types of apples, neither of which is ready yet. If I look back, I'll see what the varieties are, but I'm too lazy at the moment. This is the "top row" apple:

...and the "bottom row" apple (the "middle row" one didn't bear this year) - I love the bright red of this one!:

The espalier asian pear bore a lot of fruit this year, and happily the fruit is very sweet even when small, so I have been doing some late "pruning" (sampling) of the fruit recently. Again, I am too lazy to look up the varieties, but this is the "top row" asian pear:

...and "middle row" asian pear:

...and "bottom row" asian pear:

I also picked another sample of the italian plum, which is not yet ripe, but also very sweet already. And some late strawberries. And a poor Bartlett pear (one of the two this year) which fell too early. The handfuls of blackberries didn't last long enough for the photo of my little harvest from my garden walk today:

It made for a tasty treat for the kids to sample with me:

Fall may be fast approaching, but this is a very delicious time of year in the garden, indeed.