33 days 'til spring!

Shoot Salad Mix:  pea shoots, sunflower shoots and purple daikon radish shoots.....this mix is really popular with customers in Victoria.  And I love them too.

Hi everyone!  I've been away from the blog for quite a while...and I have so much to write about but it's really a challenge to make the time to get here.....

"What do you do in the winter?" That's what many folks ask me at this time of year.

Nowadays I say:  I'm Growing Shoots!  Lots of them...all day, every day, from before dawn 'til after dusk.....my petzl headlamp is the fashion accessory du jour because it can get really dark out here during these short days of winter.

  So sorry to all of you in and around Victoria who've emailed me to ask where you can get my shoots....I probably haven't answered, I just can't keep up with my emails.  

I hope you're all still visiting this blog because here's a list: 

Lovely Deep Cove Market on West Saanich Road, near the ferry terminal and the pretty town of Sidney.  In Victoria,  Niagara Grocery in the friendly and beautiful James Bay neighbourhood and Fairfield Market near the corner of Fairfield and Moss streets.  I love the 'bringing back the neighbourhood grocery store' vision the folks who own and operate these two shops have!  Charming places with awesome things, a lot of them from local growers and makers. 

I'm so happy that The Root Cellar in Victoria also carries our shoots now!  Great people, great store and  it's a real town-trip-treat for me to get to shop here because they have such a fabulous selection of some of the freshest veggies around.  

Checking out the shoot display at the Root Cellar last week while I fill my basket with blood oranges for Valentine's Day mimosas : )

And on the mainland,  they're at The Organic Grocer. The owners of the Organic Grocer are Mayne Island community members and are devoted to taking the shoots back with them to the mainland and their store....so nice! 

And of course, when you visit Mayne Island, you can always find them at Farm Gate Store and Happy Tides Health Foods.

So anyway......about what I'm doing nowadays.....

This year, January flew by while I worked on building my micro-business...winter has been busy....soaking seeds....

and planting them in trays with soil.....

During the cooler weather at this time of year,  I put the freshly planted trays on heat mats with domes to quick-start germination.  This is a row of sunflower.  The pea shoots are on the shelf above.

Carefully watching them grow and managing their needs at their different growing stages is important....I really have to keep up with these tasty little morsels, they demand it.

Sunflower shoot greens, ready to harvest!

In the garden kitchen, rinsing and packaging them up for store shelves.

labelling, labelling, labelling......

All the containers are packed into cardboard boxes......

.....and at 6:30 am on Tuesday mornings I put all the boxes into the back of my truck so I can take them to the ferry terminal to meet Shanti in the Farm Gate Store van for their trip into Victoria on the 7:20 am boat.

One big challenge of my small shoot-growing business on my small island with it's small population is  the reality of not having enough customers  on-island and so therefore, the need to transport off the island to more customers.  Don and Shanti, who operate Mayne Island's Farm Gate Store have been so helpful...not only do they sell the shoots at Farm Gate but they also take them in to town and deliver them for me when they go in to get supplies for their store.....and they've introduced me and my shoots to some fine fellow grocer-folks too!  

Pea shoots on Chris's pasta dish at the Bennett Bay Bistro on Mayne Island sometime last summer.  I've been delivering pea and sunflower shoots to them since they opened last year and I'm very happy that the folks there are so enthusiastic about using the shoots we grow!

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Wow, it's the first day of fall.  

Apple abundance is always a part of this transition time of year in the garden.

Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards hangs out around here,  I'm sure I feel her presence.  I read somewhere that the pruning knife was her sacred tool!

This year the apples are flourishing again, ready for harvesting and we've been eating lots.

These are one of my favourites, Spartans. They're just now ready to harvest and eat and store.

This is a Gravenstein and we've been munching on them since the end of August.  We like them sun-kissed, right off the tree.  Such a treat, so crisp and sweet.  Gravensteins and Spartans are a nice combo to have growing in a garden because of their different ripening times, flavours and characteristics.

oh.oh.  Looks like  I'll work on finding my inner Pomona today.  This is what happens when an apple tree gets overly ambitious and produces too much fruit for it's own good.  We had some lovely sunny warm days when this tree was flowering so the bees were able to do a very good pollination job and the tree is heavy with apples.  I need to remember to be more careful about thinning and helping the fruit trees, just like Pomona would do....

Autumn in the garden, a time for me to appreciate the abundant harvests, a time to take stock of what was and contemplate what will be.  A time to regroup and organize, to reclaim some balance in life after the busy spring and summer.  A time to weed, clean and tidy up and prepare the beds for fall plantings (garlic!) and next spring's plantings too. 

Taking a deep breath.  Happy fall equinox!

tropeana lunga onions

Last winter, I ordered some Tropeana Lunga onion seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

So I planted them in starter cells and little black pots in the greenhouse and watched them grow.

Onion seed needs to be planted in winter to get a good start (I plant mine in late January/early February).   But  I  could probably plant them even earlier.  It can be a bit finicky and labour intensive which is why a lot of people prefer to buy sets to plant out. I'm interested in less common types of onions though, so seeds are the only way to get many of them.

In past years, I've had such a tough time getting the little onion plants that are growing in the greenhouse planted out into the garden beds in good time (for me, by late March) because it's just when everything starts getting really busy.  I get overwhelmed with too  many things to do and some things, (like planting the onions) just don't get done.  eeek! what a waste.

But this year, I had wwoofers helping so they did the job and even tho' the transplants were planted out really late (in May), I'm now getting some nice red long of tropeas!  (maybe because they're not a long-day type?...they are an intermediate day length type.....hmmm, I wonder if I should try overwintering these one year?) Seems like I need some more experience before I really know my onions.

I forgot to show my helpers how deeply to plant the wispy little plants so they weren't planted deeply enough, but they still grew.  Transplanted onions have a tendency to push up and bulb up on top of the soil anyway.......it's amazing how I don't think of all the little things to tell folks when I'm asking them to do something!...a whole new set of skills for me to learn.

growing....

I had some wwoof help keeping the bed weeded too.  

Here Pascale has moved on to the bed beside the onions.  Onions don't do so well with competition from weeds (just like garlic) but by the end of August, as they were getting bigger, there were lots of weeds again.  The weedy competition can keep the onions from getting as large as they would otherwise.

Just pulled out of the ground.

Tidied up a bit and bunched for the store shelf.

These aren't so great for storing...they'll keep a couple months, but I like them best freshly pulled and sliced into a salad with other just picked summer veggies.   Greek salad, potato salad, cucumber salad, yum yum yum. A fresh summertime eating onion.  It is so nice to have these ready for picking at suppertime!  They go with everything.

I saw these at a farmer's market a couple of years ago...I wondered about them being labelled shallots....maybe there are shallots with that name too?  They sure look similar.

I get inspired to grow things after I see them displayed at farmer's markets and specialty stores....I saw these at Union Square Greenmarket  which turned out to be a hotbed of inspiration for me.  If you're interested, the market has a great facebook page filled with fabulous photos and links.....makes me want to live in nyc!
.....and I have seeds for those lovely cipollinis and will be growing them next year....can't wait!

I got some of these Red of Florence seeds from the Baker Creek folks too.  They seem similar to tropeana lunga and I'll try them out next year.  In case you're interested, Baker Creek has an interesting onion seed selection to browse.