Svalli gardening 63° N

[svalli]

This Big Bubba had a bit red on the bottom. I have two plants, but I do not remember which one this came from. None of the other ones ripening earlier have had similar color.

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Tomato and cucumber vines in the greenhouse have grown above the support pipes, which are at 2 meter height. I need now a step stool for harvesting.

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[svalli]

Yesterday was gorgeous summerlike weather, which is usually quite rare during autumn here. We started our trip to out to the country by going to our lakeside property to put a salt lick and some fallen apples for the roe deer. It would have been nice to stay there whole day and just relax, but after a picnic lunch we headed to our country garden.

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I started by harvesting potatoes, while my husband headed to the near by shooting range get his rifles sighted in for the hunting season. Potatoes this year have grown well and there were some huge taters in many varieties. Sarpo Mira had still so green stems that I let them grow until frost kills them.

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Here is link to an album, which has photos of all the dug up potato varieties:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO ... o4aURrM0dR

Apple harvest this year is exceptional. All trees are loaded with apples and bug free even without any spraying. We have not had time to cut the grass in our orchard this summer and now a small roe buck has moved in there.

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Yesterday just before dusk, we picked 3 50l boxes of ripe apples to bring home. I will use the cider press to make juice from some of them and maybe make a bit of apple sauce. I have already dehydrated a lot of apples from the trees, which we have growing in the city yard, but maybe I should make more of those healthy snacks too. In a year like this it seems that we have way too many apple trees.

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[bower]

How awesome to have such lovely clean apples.. Lucky little buck!

[GoDawgs]

Wow! Great potato and apple harvests! With a good harvest like this it might seem like too many apple trees but you never know when the next year will be not so good. I like the old saying here about "Get while the gettin's good!"

[JayneR13]

Doesn't it always seem that way? When a harvest of anything comes, we have 'way too much! But that's a good thing, and the time to prepare various dishes to preserve the harvest for later. Last year I had so many green tomatoes when the hard frost hit that I made recipes I'd never tried before! But I don't want to waste, and those recipes (salsa verde and pickled green tomatoes & peppers) turned out quite well.

That is such a beautiful lake! Do you fish in it?

[svalli]

That is such a beautiful lake! Do you fish in it?

Lake Lappajärvi is the biggest lake in our area. It is an old and eroded meteorite crater. The lake is quite good for fishing, but we do not have a boat there, so all fishing, which we have done has been from the shore or occasional ice fishing during winter and you can usually catch only small perch that way.

[rxkeith]

seeing apple trees loaded with fruit is very pleasurable to me. very few apples
on my property this year due to a late frost. usually there are always more apples
than we know what to do with. its been a different kind of year. good for you.


keith

[svalli]

@rxkeith that is very true about apples. Usually after a year like this the trees will have much less fruit the following year.

Last year we had very few apples and most of them were full of apple fruit moth larvae. Despite its name that moth prefers rowan berries instead of apples. This year rowans are also loaded with berries and that is good for apples.

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But all those rowan berries mean that next summer there will be a lot of moths to lay eggs also on apples.

[svalli]

Our roebuck has now a girlfriend.

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[bower]

I did not know that about rowan berries and apples sharing a pest! We have apple trees at my Mom's place but she also has a large stand of rowan aka dogberries. I believe our apples are not as plentiful and smaller this year, perhaps due to hot dry conditions all season. We had a strange thing happen with berries this year - both currants and blueberries ripened early and quickly disappeared. I started to pick my currants but found them still hard, so I left them for a couple of days and when I went back there was not a single one left. So I'm planning to get some of those dogberries before they disappear, and at least we'll have dogberry jelly for the winter.
Dogberry and apple (even crabapple) is also a delicious jelly.

[svalli]

I have made jelly using just rowan berries and that is too strong tasting. Some people say that the berries should be a bit frost bitten to be more sweet. I should try making jelly from them by mixing with apples and use just a little of rowan.

We had an old crabapple tree on our yard in Wisconsin and one year when it was loaded with fruit, I made jelly from them and it was good. I also made jelly from the wild grapes which our neighbor let me pick from their yard. Steam juicer is excellent gadget for making beautiful clear jelly.

[bower]

We have two species here - the Rowan Sorbus aucuparia, which is a larger tree, and the Mountain Ash Sorbus americana. There is a little difference in the berry taste as a jelly, with the native Dogberry having a smokey note in the flavor. I do like both of them.
I don't have a steam juicer, it sounds great. But the Dogberry jelly tends to be very clear anyway since this berry has very little pectin.
My basic recipe is 7 cups of dogberries to 4 cups of water in a large pot, brought to a boil and simmered for 10 minutes. Sometimes I leave it to steep overnight, and if there is still orange color in the berries I will simmer again for another 5 minutes before cooling and straining the juice to get about 5 cups of liquid. I don't crush the berries at all so it's an easy process and perhaps extracts less bitter flavors? IDK. Since there's so little pectin in dogberries, I also tried adding the pulp of an orange when boiling the juice, and this results in a firm and clear jelly. We didn't have any apples until the past couple of years, so I haven't tried making it with apples, but I'm sure they add the extra pectin too. The orange pulp did not change the flavor at all but the one my aunt made with crabapples was lovely and a blend of those flavors. If I can get find some ripe apples I will try this season. I usually wait until it's cool and even frosty, as you mentioned, but TBH with so many things disappearing from the bushes this year, I'm thinking to get them early, as they are nearly ripe already. Perhaps some of the apples will be early too.
The remaining recipe is the same as other basic jellies: adding 1 packet 57g dry pectin to the 5 cups of cold juice, bring that to a boil, add 7 cups of sugar and return to boil for one minute, then skim and bottle.

[svalli]

I started to empty greenhouse today by cutting down cucumber vines and bigger fruited tomato vines, which had only few green ones left.
Cherry tomatoes are still loaded with ripening fruits so I still left those, even I do not heat the greenhouse and weather is cooling rapidly.

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[bower]

That's a lovely crop of late cherries. I expect they will ripen if you get sunny days - although your days may be getting short soon.
We had a lot of overcast weather and drizzle since the temperatures dropped, but just a few rays of sunshine really bring up the greenhouse temperature.

[svalli]

Last Saturday was sunny so it was time to drive out to the country and plant garlic, when the weather is still nice. I planted total of 392 cloves from 16 varieties and couple of rounds from 2 varieties. I had all separated cloves in bags and the markers ready which made planting quite easy and quick after the bed was rototilled and the plastic ground cover in place.

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Since I do not know when is the next time we get there, I lifted all leeks. Those are now in buckets in cool garage with a bit of water on the bottom of the buckets. I found out few years ago, that this is the way to keep them fresh longer. I may chop and dehydrate some for even longer storage.

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I picked also some of the kale and it is now dehydrated. I like crushing dry kale to soups and stews. Sometimes I add it to my tomato sauce when making lasagna and it disappears there and even our non-kale-loving son used to eat it without knowing that there was kale hidden in.

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[bower]

I love the idea of dehydrating kale to crush into soups and stews..

[worth1]

Not kale but I love curly leaf mustard greens but I haven't seen them in the stores for years.
I liked putting a little in a salad raw to bring on the heat and they are so flavorful.
If y'all haven't had them they're like a horse radish hot and very good for you.

[svalli]

Winter hibernation is now over and I have sown my tomatoes yesterday. Seven of the 23 varieties I picked for this year are new to me. I am also trying to start some old seeds from my stash before tossing them. If these will not germinate, there is still time to sow some other varieties.

I found a place locally here selling seeds from a Lithuanian company. The seed packets were only 0.75€, so I had to buy some of them. There were a lot of seeds in the packet. The Sungold and Umamini packets, which I purchased had just 5 seeds and cost was 10 times of that one.

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I have started some flowers and strawberries already in January and peppers in February. Slowly my shelves are filling up with seedlings and I have to keep setting up more grow lights to fit everything under them.

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[rxkeith]

time to start going, sari is out of hibernation.
i have peppers just now starting to come up. tomatoes won't be started until april.
baby basils are also up. one nice benefit of having a green house is the ability to start
plants earlier than normal. i should get me a green house at some point.
nice to see you are kick off the garden season with a running start.


keith

[svalli]

Tomatoes are sprouting and to my surprise 2007 from Tomato Growers Supply Company purchased Jersey Devil and Lime Green Salad have started to grow. I sowed the seeds into moler-clay granules and the seeds starting tray was on a heat mat.

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Starting flower seeds already in January may have been a bit early because petunias and celosias have started to bloom indoors under the grow lights. First alpine strawberry has also a flower.

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Tomorrow is March equinox and the amount of light is increasing rapidly. Waking up to sunrise gives an energy boost for the day. I have an alarm clock with a wake-up light, but it has no comparison to the natural light.