Refried Beans

I got a recipe for refried beans from GrrlScientist - a science writer I follow on the Guardian website. The original recipe is here. I just made a version from my garden produce - and it turned out great!

I used Hidatsa Red beans - an heirloom variety from the Hidatsa people of South Dakota. I bought the original beans from Heritage Harvest and have been saving seed. They even come up as volunteers in my garden, so I always seem to have a supply, even if I eat most of them!

I don't grow ginger or garlic in my garden, but I did grow the tomatoes (Martino Roma), peppers (Black Hungarian), shallots and cooking onions I used. Turned out delicious - and my mom has started asking when I will cook another batch. I make them without chilies for her as they bother her stomach. I substitute sweet peppers for the flavour which adds a lot to the taste of these yummy beans.

Stone Soup 2012

This year's stone soup party is on Sunday, September 23rd, from 2-4 at the garden. Bring something from your garden, Brian will bring his magic stone, and we'll make some great soup to share!

Stone Soup again!

It's stone soup time again at Hummingbird Garden!  Our garden committee has been trying to find a good day for a while - but it has finally come! This Sunday is the day! All the Hummingbird Gardeners are invited to come and join in the stone soup at 2 pm on September 25th.

Bowls, spoons, and the magic stone will be provided.  Of course the soup tastes better with a few vegetables. So if you managed to grow anything this summer, between the early rain, the late dry heat, and the vigorous weeds, bring a little something to throw in for flavour! Bring a lawn chair, too. We have a few picnic tables, but with luck and good weather we hope to have too many people to seat at one table.

See you there...

Another cleanup day at Hummingbird

We have all had to be very patient this spring at Hummingbird Garden waiting for the rain to stop and the ground to dry up enough to work with! It's looking like it's just going to be one of those wet years when we wish we were planting rice.

Sunday June 9 at 10:00 am we will be meeting at the garden for a clean-up day - time to mow, trim, and weed the common areas, and make sure everything is up to date. Everyone is invited to come along and pitch in. We're hoping the rain will hold off long enough to get it all done!

Stone Soup

Well, this blog has been very quiet this summer, since planting season. All the crops got planted, then it started to rain! I don't think the tap has been turned on much all season, and everything is growing just fine.

Now that we are all starting to have good harvests, it is time for our first ?annual? Stone Soup gathering. We'll meet this coming Sunday, August 15th, in the afternoon. Brian and Paulette will provide the stove, pot, magic stone, bowls and spoons. All the rest of us are in charge of providing the vegetables to turn the magic stone into soup.

Before we eat, it's also time for some garden cleanup. All this moist heat is bringing on the weeds as well as the crops - and things are getting a little out of hand. We will gather at 1:30 to share the labour of clearing weeds from the paths, mowing the grass, and generally tidying up. If anyone needs a helping hand with weeds in their plot, this would be the time to speak up too. We have noticed there are a few plots with as many weeds as veggies, so we'll try to get some of this under control too.

If anyone has weed clippers, shears, a mower, wheelbarrow, etc., feel free to bring them along. If you don't need them for your area, someone else might appreciate borrowing them!

At 3:30 Brian and Paulette will put the pot on to boil. Brian has a good story about the stone soup that he wants to share with us also. That will be the time for everyone to bring out all the vegetables they have to add to the soup - after all, stone soup is better with a few vegetables for garnish.

All the other supper supplies will be provided, including picnic tables. If your back won't take the picnic table for long, you might want to bring a lawn chair. And if you plan to stay and visit with your fellow gardeners, a little bug spray might be a good thing too.

See you all this Sunday at the garden, for a little stone magic!

Water update from Doug

Good afternoon everyone, the sun is shining and we are all excited to get our gardens going, right?

Well this week Brian and myself along with some able bodied helpers trenched in some new waterlines for our new plots along with a couple of upgrades for the old ones. We hooked almost all the taps up yesterday, we did find some leaks, so please do not close any holes, we need to do a couple of repairs first. The water system is functional as it is.

All you need to do is turn the RED handle in the main box (located in the south/west corner) this valve controls all the water now, and please make sure that someone is going to turn it OFF. The person who turns the water on is responsible, so if you want leave and someone else is still watering, just kindly remind them to turn it off okay? Thanks so much.

I'm not sure if everyone is on this email so please pass the word around, Brian and myself and other gardeners are more then willing to help you get started just ask someone.

Great thanks for now and happy gardening. Doug

April showers bring...

The first flowers of May - beautiful bergenia in full bloom already. This is the first flower in the perennial bed. Lots of other plants just starting to come up and leaf out.

And the first signs of future crops to come. These are 2 spinach sprouts, planted in mid-April on a warm summery day. Here they are stretching out their seed leaves, and just budding their true leaves after a few days of cold, rain, and even snow. My spinach came up quickly in last spring's cold wet weather too. I think the damp and frost must make them happy!

More garden workshops coming

For those that have been enjoying the garden workshop series, and those that have not had a chance to check them out yet - there are 2 more workshops coming up in May.

May 8 - Compost Crawl - Compost scientist Katherine Buckley from the Ag Research Station will tour some of the gardens to show us how to make good compost out of our garden scraps. A chipper may be involved!

May 31 - Preserving - The first in a series of preserving workshops - how to save our precious veggies and fruit for eating through the year. Join us at 6:30 at the Brandon Friendship Centre. Meegwetch to BFC for giving us the space.

Next Gardening Workshop - Organics!

The second in our garden workshop series is coming up tomorrow, 6:30 at the Parks Complex Garage on McGregor. Linda Boys will give us the basics of organic gardening - hope to see you there!

Cleaned up gardens!

Garden Clean Up Day at Hummingbird was a big success - despite winds gusting to 70 km/h! A bunch of people turned up to pitch in and pick bricks, pull weeds, and move rubble. Brian brought his trailer and hauled all the bricks away, along with other miscellaneous rubble. Many hands made light work of picking up anything that didn't blow away.

We also moved some raspberry suckers from the side of the garden plots into the separate raspberry bed. Many of the plants from last year managed to grow legs and walk away over the winter, but there were plenty of suckers coming up in the beds to replace them.

The old plots are now tilled, and will soon be re-staked ready for planting (cold weather crops only!). The new plots have also been tilled over once but will likely need another tilling before they are ready to use. We hope to have everything ready to go by the beginning of May.

Hard work and silliness at garden cleanup!

Garden Cleanup Day - Saturday April 10

I know it's short notice, but at the garden meeting yesterday we decided to have a pre-tilling garden cleanup day this Saturday, April 10. Come around noon, bring a garden fork, shovel, pail, and anything else you might need to clean up your plots from last year. We will be tilling the ground for the new plots first, to get started softening the dirt, so we have a few days to get the perennial weeds out of the existing plots.

Now is our chance to get rid of the dandelions, move renegade raspberry canes, and generally get roots out of the way of the tiller. This guy above will just turn into more of his kind if he gets into the tiller, so we'd best dig them out before that happens.

Some of us have already done cleanup and are ready to go - but I hope to see many out there on Saturday!

Garden Workshop Series

The BNRC is hosting a series of garden related workshops this spring and summer. The first one - Gardening 101 - is coming up quickly! Details are in the poster (click on it to see a larger file). This will be a crash course on how to garden in Western Manitoba's climate.

The second workshop is coming up on April 12 - Introduction to Organics, for those of us that are new to using organic methods of growing veggies without chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

There will be more topics coming. I'll post details as I know about them. If you are on the garden e-mail list you should also watch your inbox!

Garden Season is starting!

Hummingbird Garden's season officially started with our gardeners meeting yesterday evening. Many of the gardeners met at a nearby school with the Healthy Brandon Coordinator and Brandon's Garden Coordinator. We had a few snacks, talked about what went well and not so well at the garden, and most importantly got excited about the new garden season!

We have filled the existing plots to capacity, and have a waiting list already. We had to make a tough choice - cut back on the space alloted to each person, or expand the garden space. OK, it wasn't really a very tough choice! We have some very able gardeners and some good connections to equipment and materials. So of course we will be expanding the plots to welcome more gardeners.

We also formed a garden committee to look after some of the day to day stuff at the garden. Neither of the coordinators is at the garden often enough to keep an eye on things, so we thought it would work best to look after it as a group. With a few of us working together, we should be able to keep things going all summer, even when some are away. So far the garden committee consists of Brian, Doug, Melissa, Terry, Fiona and Dana. We are open to having more as well.

The plan for expansion is to till a new plot area on the higher ground near last year's new plots. There are about 20 new people on the list so this will allow us to give everyone some space. Brian had already checked out the soil in that area to make sure it was going to be good enough soil. Of course the bricks are still free!

The first meeting of the garden committee will be in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Big carrots

I had an interesting time with my carrots this year. The first batch I planted didn't germinate. Not even one seed. I don't know what I did - wrong phase of the moon, too cold, too warm, too dry, too wet? Maybe even seed too old. After a couple of weeks it was clear that nothing was coming. So I got some seeds in seed tape, and planted those.

I companion planted them in between green beans. I have read that they go well together, so I decided to try. Once the beans got big, I could barely even tell whether there were any carrots there! Then once the beans were done, I started poking between the leaves to look for carrots.
They hadn't come up that well, but there were a few carrots, maybe once every 6 inches or so. And this is how big they were! Big, solid carrots, with lots of root and only a small amount of leaf. They're nicely formed as they weren't touching each other.

They tasted great, too. Nice and sweet. Don't ask me what variety, I can't remember. I didn't keep very good records this year.

Gardening Lessons from my Grandfather

If my grandfather were still alive, he would be 100 years old today. He was a man from another time and place, but his life had a profound impact on mine, and he continues to influence me to this day.

Granddad was born in London, a true cockney and shopkeeper's son. I don't know when he learned to garden, or where, as I can't imagine his family growing radishes and raspberries in the concrete jungle. Perhaps he only began to cultivate as a war measure, along with thousands of other Britons (and others) who grew Victory Gardens. Just before WWII, he moved his new family to the commuter suburbs of London, to a semi-detached home with a back garden. He planted a fruit and vegetable garden there that grew to occupy most of the back garden, and enlisted his family's help to look after it.

My mother recalls spending hot summer afternoons there as a child. Weeding and harvesting were chores for her and her sister after school during the week. On weekends, Granddad would lead the work party, and gardening became fun! Together they grew much of the food they ate during the war and the decade of rationing that followed during the post-war rebuilding period.

After all that back-breaking labour, Mum was pretty much done with Victory Gardens. When I was growing up in Canada, there were always flowers and shrubs in the garden, but not much in the way of veg or fruit. Maybe some rhubarb, and a tomato in a pot.

So, where did I get my interest in gardening? Maybe it's a recessive gene! I spent a few summers with my Granddad, when he visited us in Canada, or we visited him in England. This gave me the chance to learn a few things from him directly.

Lesson #1: always put a way your tools when you are done. I have not internalized this lesson very well. Gardening at Hummingbird Community Garden helps, as I pack all my tools into the car to bring them home.

Lesson #2: How to air-layer a Schefflera. I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say that it's not really necessary as you can throw a Schefflera cutting near a pot of soil and it will root.

There may have been more lessons he threw my way, but I was a teenager and not listening very carefully. By then I probably thought I knew better.

This summer I brought my Mum to see how my garden was growing. I gave her a quick tour and then left her to visit the rest of the plots while I caught up with weeds and water. After a few minutes, she called out, "Your lettuces need thinning." "I'm sure they do", I replied, "but I never have the heart to thin them properly."

"Here, let me show you," said Mum. "You just reach in here above the soil, grasp one by the stem, and gently pull it out. That way you leave the rest with more room to grow, and you don't disturb their roots much. That's how your Granddad always taught us." So Mum and I thinned the lettuces a little, just until we had enough baby lettuce for a salad.

All summer I kept reaching into the densest clumps of lettuce to pull out a few little lettuces for dinner. By mid-summer I had only a dozen or so lettuces left in my row, huge heads, just beginning to think about bolting. These last few I cut for a couple of weeks of nothing but salad.

So this summer I got the chance to learn one more gardening lesson from my Granddad, even though he passed away 14 years ago. Happy Birthday, Granddad!

What do gardeners do in the winter?

We had a long fall gardening season this year - summer was slow to get started and then we had warm weather as the days were shortening. I had a number of long season vegetables that I was still harvesting well into October. I finally cleaned everything out as we were about to get frosts, just before Halloween!!!

Once the harvesting got busy I got behind on posting, but I took lots of pictures so I plan to catch up over the winter. That will prevent me from starting seeds in my basement too early! Watch this space for more memories of summer flavours!

Swiss Chard Update

Earlier I complained that I had spinach coming out my ears. Now the Swiss Chard has officially caught up! I planted two packages of seeds, some in the raised bed and some in the ground plot. Both are doing well.

As usual I planted them too close together. Some time I will get wise enough not to do that! The seeds are just so small! I always think some of them won't come up. Then they all do!

I always plant the variety called "Bright Lights". They come in all the colours of the rainbow - mostly green leaves, with some streaked with red, and a few dark burgundy. Then contrasting stems in red, orange, pink, yellow, white... The most striking one so far has a burgundy leaf, with a fine line of green around the stem and ribs, and a broad bright orange stem.

I've noticed they seem to come in different sizes, too. No matter how much room they have (or don't have), some grow large leaves and broad stems, and some are small with pencil thin stems and a modest leaf. The largest ones all seem to have red or pink stems, and the yellow ones all seem to be small. This must be a byproduct of all the genetic variety that gives them such diverse colouring!

The best part is, no matter what they look like, they taste great! Swiss Chard is one of those vegetables that I used to hate, but now that I am not a "youth" anymore, I just love. When I was 19 I used to work at a market garden, where we sold every kind of fruit and vegetable known to local growers. I used to shake my head at the crazy people (mostly with a few gray hairs) who bought greens like Swiss Chard. Once I had gray hairs of my own I tried Swiss Chard from the Farmers Market and discovered how delicious it is. I think taste buds have to mature before they can appreciate chard, spinach and other greens with their faintly bitter flavours.

We have been making Chard Cheese Pie (see last year's archive for a recipe), and this year we discovered the joys of chard steamed in foil packets over a campfire. It also works on the BBQ. For extra flavour, a bit of onion or herb is also welcome. I put the stems in a layer on the bottom and the leaves on top. The edges singe a little and this gives a great caramelized flavour to the rest of the chard. It turns out a little different every time but it's always good!

Stone Soup

Is everyone ready for a big pot of stone soup? Last time I saw Brian he asked me to let everyone know it was just about time to get together and make a big pot of stone soup to share.

You know the story... A traveller shows up in town late at night, and the suspicious villagers won't give him anything to eat. "Nope," they say, "we don't have any food here." So he says "No problem, I'll make my stone soup, out of this magic stone here." And he puts his stone in a big pot of water.

All the villagers gather round. "Is it ready yet?" they ask. "Is it good?"

"Just about ready," says the stranger. "It'll be fine soup. My magic stone is working. It will be even better with a carrot, though. Too bad I don't have a carrot."

"Hmm... I think I might have one small carrot left" says First Villager. And she scurries off to get a carrot. The villagers crowd around and watch the carrot go in.

"Great!" says the traveller. "Now it's just about perfect. The stone is working its magic. The only thing missing is a potato."

"Wait, I have one potato left!" says Second Villager. And she runs to her cellar for a potato. Plop - in goes the potato.

And the villagers look curiously at the soup. And wait. Then the stranger says, "I can smell the magic working. It is nearly ready. All it needs now is a bit of bone for some flavour."

Third Villager slips off to her cupboard and brings out a ham bone. "Here is a bone, it still has a little meat left." In it goes, along with the potato and the carrot and the magic stone.

The stranger stirs the soup and says, "Good thing I brought this magic stone along. We'll all have soup soon. What fine soup it will be. If only there was a little bit of celery, it would be just perfect." The villagers all look at each other, and Fourth Villager says quietly, "Well, I have a piece of celery. If it will help the magic work, I could spare it." So he goes to get his last piece of celery and throws it in the soup.

The traveller stirs the soup again and they all wait. After a little while, the magic works, and the stone turns a pot of water into a big pot of soup. With only a little help from all the villagers and their cupboards.

So Brian thinks it is time for a little stone soup at the Hummingbird Garden. There are plenty of magic stones in the earth, and each of us villagers has one or two vegetables we could throw in the pot to help the magic along.

Maybe it will even be this weekend! Watch for magic happening at the garden...

Sage

When I was cleaning up my garden last fall (in mid-October), my sage was still standing. I couldn't bear to just dig it up, so I thought I would leave it and just see what happened. Many herbs are annuals, so I really had no expectations. I just thought it wouldn't bother anyone over the winter so I would leave it there. It's in a raised bed, so it didn't even get in the way of the tiller.

When I came to check it out in the spring, there was nothing much going on - the stems and leaves had dried up and gone brittle. I broke off most of the top part, but the roots still seemed well attached. So, I left it some more. Still not expecting anything, but...

On May 17th I came to check the garden, and to plant a few seeds. I was prepared to dig up the sage and turn it into compost at this point, just to clear the space for something else. But when I looked closely - here's what I found! Tiny shoots of sage emerging into the cool sunlight!

So of course I planted around it and used it to anchor the "herb corner" of my raised bed. I put some parley, basil, and chili peppers growing around it. And it came on strong! It has gotten far bigger than it was last year - over a foot across, and by mid-July it was starting to send up mauve stems of flowers. Here it is blooming away on July 20.

By now the first flower stalks have faded, and seeds were starting to form. I cut them off - one perennial sage plant is quite enough, thank you! And more flowers are coming. I had no idea that garden sage could be so pretty!

Garden Guardians

These bright birds were up and watching over the seeds early in June. I wonder if the pinwheel wings are supposed to scare off real birds or other beasts that might eat the seeds or sprouts? I wonder if they work?