Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Today is winter solstice, the first day of Winter and the shortest day of the year.  From here on, the days are going to start getting longer again, which means in a few months it'll be time to get planting again!  Time to research and brain storm about next season's gardening ideas.... :)  Meanwhile, 

have a wonderful holiday and happy new year! 

Root vegetables

The root vegetables in my garden were the big winners this year - in particular the Chioggia beets.  I enjoyed them quite a bit last year so this year I decided to plant a lot of more of them.  As usual, the Chioggia beets will grow in a variety of colours - candy stripe , red, or just pure white.  This year, we got mostly candy-striped and one white ones.    

  

They not only taste delicious, but they are also beautiful to look at.  Look at that colour!!  

I found a recipe from the New York Times for Chioggia beets, quinoa, and walnut salad: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/health/spinach-salad-with-red-and-chioggia-beets-quinoa-and-walnuts.html?_r=0

The beets were so successful that they grew well into November.  Here are the last few from the end of the season harvest.  I boiled them quickly and fried it up with some butter - they were delicious! 

This year I also planted two variety of carrots - Solar Yellow carrots and French carrots.  The French carrots had this very cute, round shape root.  However, I find carrot growing to be a bit less satisfying (compared to beets) because they take almost the entire season to grow and the final edible portion is quite small (again, at least compared to beets).   Still, they were incredibly delicious so I was still glad to have planted them.  

Pesto

Every year I regret not planting enough basil, so this year I went to the extreme and literally planted basil everywhere (where ever I could fit them) in the vegetable planters.  Most of them were planted near the tomato plants, apparently basils are great companion plants for tomato plants as it's supposed to enrich the flavours of the tomatoes.     

 

I was quite pleased with the amount of basil I got to harvest throughout the season.  Fresh herbs are just so wonderful and handy to have around - a little bit over here on the pasta, a little bit over there for sauce, and some just to garnish the plate.  All together we had plenty of basil share with friends and family this time around, even enough to make a batch of pesto at the end of the season ;) 

Hydrangeas in the Fall

I know the Fall is coming when the hydrangeas begin to turn pink.  These Limelight PG hydrangeas take on a beautiful rosy/blush colour in the late summer / early Fall.  It's quite a spectacular plant as the flower clusters grows to quite large size - you can see it from a mile a way (well, not exactly a mile, but far enough).   This is probably the plant I get the most compliments on consistently on a yearly basis (and it requires the least amount of work - all I do is trim the branches in the Spring!)

Tomatoes this year

This has not been the best summer for my tomato plants.  This year, I planted two variety of tomatoes - Caspian Pink tomatoes and Big Rainbow tomatoes.  I decided to try planting larger tomatoes rather than Cherry tomatoes like last year to give it a try.  I had a late start with starting the tomato seeds this year, so the seedlings were small to begin with at the beginning of summer.  The cool and wet summer weather we've been having didn't help either.  I took the plants till early August to form fruits.  

The tomatoes actually stayed green for a very long time, almost one month.  I think it was almost the beginning of September when the first tomato turned orange/red.  

 Unfortunately I think the tomato plants were blighted (late blight) so by the time the fruits were changing colour, some of the leafs and stems were starting to turn brown.  At the end of the season, we only got a handful of edible tomatoes, rather disappointing results from five tomato plants.  I did a bit of research and found some resources on how to prevent tomato blight.  I think the key will be in air circulation, as well as having variety of tomato species (going to plan some cherry tomatoes for sure), at which some species are more blight-resistant than others.  I will need to start the seeds much earlier next season to ensure the seedlings have plenty of time to develop before going outdoors.    

Also, some warmer summer weather would help as well (keeping my fingers crossed for next season).   

Here's a good link to some resources related to tomato blight: 

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/factsheets/dc20.php

Garden Bouquet

A summer bouquet from the garden :) 

Tips for keeping garden pests away

And..... they are back (my nemeses - the squirrels).  They seem to have no fear of human what so ever and love to hang out on top of the backyard fence.  You actually have to run outside and stomp of the deck pretty hard and charge at them before they will start to run away.  

 

The latest casualty were the cucumbers.  They take perfect little cucumbers and shreds them to pieces and throw half of it on the ground..... 

I know it's the squirrels destroying the vegetables this year because I believe the family of raccoon in the neighborhood have moved away (they haven't been seen too often this summer).  I really don't know how to keep them away other than put cages around all my vegetables but that's rather unsightly.....  

Any one have some environmentally friendly & humane way to keep pests away?  I was browsing around and found this article - may have to try some of these methods next year... 

http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/top-five-tips-keeping-garden-pests-away-191806583.html