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A warm welcome from British Columbia! Last year I got involved with a local seed library and was able to donate more that twenty varieties of lettuce seed. This year I hope to do the same. There is certainly a little bit of work involved, but if it inspires even one novice gardener it is...

With summer rains every little bit helps. I had a plastic cup out on the deck to gage our rainfall, and it looks like we got about 1 1/2". The rain fell gently for more than 24 hours, with the occasional heavy downpour. I may just get out there and water some more today, to take advantage of...

I love watching Patrick Ryan demonstrate his method for baguettes. He's a professional baker from Ireland with a very soothing voice. The dough can be used the day it is made, or chilled in the fridge for a day which is really convenient. So I made his baguettes two days in a row. I am also...

The plan is to add the mustard seeds to pickles and ferments, and we also use them in Indian dishes such as sauteed potatoes. The store bought yellow mustard seed doesn't seem to have a lot of flavour, but these fresh ones are really tasty. And thanks for the threshing suggestions. As I twist...

It is indeed feta, and yes-- all of the herbs and vegetables were from the garden. Mint is not something I would typically put in a salad, but it was really nice and refreshing in this dish. https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/israeli-salad-with-feta.html#tabrecipe

After months and months of seed starting, weeding, and watering we are finally beginning to enjoy the fruits of our labour. This weekend we enjoyed a Middle Eastern salad made with tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, scallions, oregano, and Italian parsley. We also tried our first Ronde de Nice...

We have been harvesting lots of bush beans for the past two weeks, and really enjoying eating them and sharing them with friends. I couldn't resist starting a second round of Masai and Mascotte bush snap beans, in the hopes that they might mature before the autumn frosts take them out. There...

Rain started last night and should continue through to tomorrow morning-- yay! I got to spend the day baking bread and starting seeds indoors for a change. We are very grateful for this moisture. It's hardly rained for a month, and the ground was beginning to look very parched. Warm weather...

If anyone is interested in trying this technique next spring, start saving large plastic bags now. The big plastic bags from toilet tissue work great for the broad blossom ends, and then smaller bags can be used to hold the narrow stems.

Back in May I stuffed bags and bags of peonies in our basement beer fridge for long term storage. Some were placed in large plastic bags, and some were wrapped in packing paper and then bagged. When I took them out of the fridge those blooms that sat for months in only plastic were covered in...

Last July my friend and I spent time carefully dead heading calendula Zeolights, which was a slow process. As an experiment I tried cutting back hard a second patch of the same variety, rather than just removing the spent blossoms. Those that had a hard chop in mid-July rebounded strong and...

Lettuce does seem to be the poster child for self-pollination, so much so that I am trying Frank Morton's approach for those that I wish to cross intentionally. He ties the bolting stalks of desirable varieties together when they are about to flower, and then unties them before the seeds form...

My big patch of my Cardinale head lettuce is beginning to bolt. While most lettuce plants send up a nice straight stalk head lettuce is different; the stalk has to kind of make a u-turn as it develops, and it's not pretty. The process results in most of the inner iceberg-type leaves rotting...

What an unusual shape for the interior chambers of this tomato. Very interesting!

Those are fresh lavender. The flowers were harvested and arranged with love by our daughter, for a sad occasion. The process of creating bouquets from the garden was therapeutic, and helped to comfort a broken heart.

Way to go for setting such an amazing goal for you and your family. We grow and preserve a lot of the vegetables that we eat, but not all of them. Perhaps together we can take steps towards that. I really enjoy learning tips and tricks from others on the forum. Welcome! 😊

We do make salsa, and I think it's almost time for the first batch of the season. 😊

It's wonderful to be able to go out in the garden to harvest flowers for bouquets!

The last few patches of ranunculas have dried down, and now that the foliage is mostly gone they are very easy to lift from the ground. I trimmed their stems, leaving about 2". Having some stems attached will make it easier to figure out which way is 'up' come spring. After trimming I tossed...

Our first harvest from multiple cold tolerant early tomato plants including Gundula, Gold Nugget, Honey Nail, Uralskiy Ranniy, and Turboreactivniy. :)