Once you are familiar with the complete canning procedures, you can fill out, print and tape these canning cheats sheets to the front of your canning binder or wherever you keep your canning recipes. I find them very handy to remind myself of all the little details that vary between different canning methods and to remember the numbers and quantities specific to my setup, such as ideal knob positions and how many jars can fit in my canner. 

Steam canner cheat sheet

• One load is ___ half pints ___ pints or ____ quarts
• 3 quarts of water in canner
• Bring to temperature
• Lower stove knob to _____
• Process
• 5 minutes cool down (off heat / lid on)

 
Waterbath canner cheat sheet

• One load is ___ half pints ___ pints or ____ quarts
• Bring to a boil
• Lower stove knob to _____
• Process
• 5 minutes cool down (off heat / lid off)
• Partial lid off

 
Pressure canner cheat sheet

• One load is ___ half pints ___ pints or ____ quarts
• 3 quarts of water in canner
• Check vent pipe
• Heat, wait for 10 minutes steam vent (steady moderate flow of steam)
• Max heat, add regulator (weight is ______ lbs)
• When regulator moves, lower stove knob to _____
• Process
• Cool down (off heat / lid on / regulator on)

• When plug drops, remove weight, wait 10 minutes

High acid foods can be canned safely using either water bath canning, or steam bath canning.  Water bath canning can be accomplished with household items. Steam canning requires a specialized steam canner, but it is faster and uses less water and energy.

In this blog post, I summarize what you need to can high acid foods with either of these methods, and what procedure to use. Along the way, I give extra tips and dispel some common misconceptions or outdated methods. To learn more about safe canning as an overall topic, have a look here. 

Ahead of time, make sure you have the following:

• Commonly bought as part of a “canning kit” (but household alternatives exist for all of these):
  • A pot with lid, big enough to contain all your jars in one layer and cover the jars with at least 2 inches of water, or a steam canner
  • A rack to put at the bottom of you pot (bought or improvised), or towel
  • Jar lifter (or other tongues / silicone mitts)
  • Headspace measurer/bubble remover (or ruler)
  • Canning funnel (optional)
• Stove or standalone burner that is compatible with canning (some glasstop stoves aren’t).
• Clean canning jars and rings (can be reused) (Ball, Bernardin or Golden harvest)
• New lids (Ball, Bernardin or Golden harvest). It is not recommended to reuse lids (may affect longevity of the seal).
• A safety tested recipe and what is needed to complete it (where to find safe recipes)
• A ladle
• A timer (or phone, watch etc)
• A dishtowel to put the hot jars on
• My canning cheat sheets (optional but useful!) 

Before processing

1. Prepare your canner
   1. Waterbath: Fill the pot with water (enough to cover the jars plus at least one inch (two to be safe). Add a splash of vinegar (to avoid deposits). Bring to a simmer (can take a long time).
   2. Steam canner: Add 3 quarts of water to the bottom of the pot, slightly below the rack. Add a splash of vinegar (to avoid deposits). Bring to a simmer (can be done just before packing jars, it won’t take long).
2.  Wash jars, making sure that the rims in particular are completely clean of any residue (reflect light on them to check). Prepare some extra jars just in case. This can be done by hand or machine (sanitizing or boiling them is not necessary if your recipe later calls for 10 minutes or more water bath, which most recipes do).
3. Prepare your food based on a safety tested recipe.
4. Fill each jar with food using a ladle and funnel. Pay close attention to:
   1. “Headspace” – the amount of empty space between the top of your food and the top of the jar. Dictated by the recipe.
   2. The temperature of the food. Most recipes ask for the food to be hot in the jars. If you had to take a break or make batches, make sure the food is hot when packing your jars, and still hot when you start your waterbath.
   3. If your recipe calls to pack solids first and then add liquid, make sure that the solids are packed tightly. Otherwise, you might run out of liquid later.
5. Remove any bubbles or air pockets trapped in the jar, using a bubble remover, spoon, butter knife or chopstick. Check the headspace again and top up if needed.
6. Wipe the jar rim with a wet paper towel. Reflect light on it to make absolutely sure there is no residue. Do NOT use vinegar to wipe as this may affect the lids.
7. Put on the lids (do NOT boil them first. This applied to old lids only).
8. Tighten the rings: Finger tight plus a little more. They should take a little force to open.
9. Use the jar lifter and rack, put the jars into your canner (the food should still be hot. The temperature of the jars and the water should be similar / simmering). Consider packing empty spaces with water filled jars (for waterbath only).
10. Replace the pot lid.

Processing

Option 1: Water bath process:

• Bring water to a roiling boil
• Start timer.
• Watch to ensure water keeps boiling and that top of jars stay covered. If the water level drops, top up with already-boiling water from a kettle. If the water stops boiling at any time, start your time back at zero.
• When the time is complete, shut off the heat, remove the lid, and let it cool for 5 minutes. Do NOT let it sit significantly longer (such as overnight).

Option 2: Steam bath process:

• Turn up heat to max, until the needle reaches its marked maximum.
• Once up to temperature, if a lot of stream is escaping out the sides of the lid, you may turn down the heat as long as the maximum needle position is maintained (make a note of what knob position that is). Keeping the heat too high may cause you to lose too much water – keep an eye on the water level. If the needle drops, start your time back at zero.
• When the time is complete, remove from heat, let it cool for 5 minutes WITH THE LID ON. Do NOT let it sit significantly longer (such as overnight).
• Open the lid partially for a few more minutes.

 
After processing

1. Remove the jars with the jar lifter, and set them on a dishtowel, with a little bit of space in between. Leave them undisturbed for at least 12h.
2. Remove rings (jars should NOT be stored with rings on).
3. Check that all lids have popped down (no clicking noise when you press the middle, and lids cannot be lifted off with casual force (with a properly sealed jar, I need to “pry” it off).
4. Any jars that didn’t seal properly should go in the fridge and treated as open jars, or frozen (risk of breakage – consider putting in a different container or wide mouth / straight walled jar). In some cases you can also choose to re-process the food.
5. Any jars that are sealed properly are shelf stable and should be stored WITHOUT the rings. Preferably a cool, dry, dark place. Make sure your shelves are sturdy. Stack up to 2 layers with a cardboard piece in between.

This Friday brought record breaking rain to our area. Many people got flooded basements and cars. We were lucky not to get any damage on that scale, but getting 15cm + of rain over a short period of time was hard on the garden. The ground was saturated and soft, and some of the newer areas had standing water well into the weekend. It took about a day to clean up the damage. There might be damage that I can't see yet either. A sudden downpour / inconsistencies in watering can lead to a lot of problems such as cracks and blossom end rot in tomatoes, and cracked carrots. 

My biggest concern was my tomato plants. I use cages for most of my determinate plants, and with the saturated, soft ground, many of the cages toppled over. This caused some fruit to fall and in many cases, some branches (including the main "trunk") to break. Since the ground is still waterlogged several days later, any attempt to right the cages fell short. Ideally, I would love to put a T-post in each cage, but budget wise it's not a great option. I was able to rescue 6 used T-posts from an old fence, though.

The solution we opted for (Ray's idea) was to run a T-post at both ends of each tomato row, and one in the middle (so, a T-post every 18 feet - or about 6 tomato plants in between each pair of t-posts). Then, I ran a heavy-duty rope very tightly from one post to the next, which I wrapped around the upper hoop of each tomato cage as it crossed it. Thus, the tomato cages are being held upright and centered. So far it seems like a good solution. In the future I may set up my tomato cages like that at the start of the season, to prevent any accidents.

Once that was done, I did a big round of tomato picking. I picked up any tomatoes that had fallen to the ground, even green ones, and any tomato that had started to "blush" (change colors). This falls into my regular pattern of picking up all the "blushed" tomatoes once or twice a week - I don't wait for them to turn completely red. It is a little-known fact that from a flavor perspective, it doesn't matter if you let tomatoes ripen "on the vine" or not. Picking them early protects them from pests and bruises, and in this case, lightens my plants, too. In this case, I had an additional reason to pick the tomatoes - excessive watering can make tomatoes crack or get blossom end rot. I am hoping that by picking them quickly I will have pre-empted that.

The green tomatoes that had fallen to the ground won't go to waste. We'll make some fried green tomatoes, and maybe some green tomato salsa. ​

My second point of concern was any crops that might be sitting in standing water - for example root crops (potatoes, turnips etc) and onions, because they might rot. I inspected all those crops and luckily most were in well drained soil. My potatoes in particular are on high ground and seem like they'll be fine. The only crop that looked at risk was my onions. Onions can rot if they are in wet ground, and I noticed standing water in the part of the garden that holds my onions (up to my ankles in the alley). I rooted around the onions a bit and noticed that some were in completely soaked ground - the kind of ground in which any hole you poke with your finger fills with water instantly. I pulled those onions right away. I'll trying to dry them for now, but I'll likely use them right away.

Something to watch out for after a rain storm or any time the soil in your garden is soaked, is the risk of compacting the soil. In my case that means being very careful to only step in the alleys in my garden. It can be hard to be disciplined about this especially when you are anxious about fixing things that have gone awry, but it's well worth it - I don't want to lose the soil structure I've worked so hard to build up. If my garden didn't have such healthy soil, the damage would have been much worse. I remember the first year I started my garden, the soil was very compacted and 100% clay. It was a wet spring, but nothing like we experienced this Friday - yet there was standing water everywhere. I lost almost all my tomato seedlings. I had to dig moats in between rows and plant everything on mounds. My garden has come a long way from then, and the resiliency it built up really showed on Friday.

My cooking has changed drastically since I’ve begun growing our own food – my garden gives what it wants on its own time and doesn’t follow any recipe book. It’s very rare that what’s available matches up exactly to what is needed to follow a recipe to the letter. Over time I have developed a list of go-to, very flexible dishes that are easy to adapt to whatever is in season, in whatever quantity is available. I thought I would share these while we are in the season of abundance. Here are five of my most flexible “whatever is in the garden” type dishes for the summer season. For each dish, a list of example ingredients is given – you don’t need all of these – I just pick from them depending on what is available.

Pizza is an easy one. I usually keep a few cheese pizzas from Costco in the freezer, or some uncooked pizza dough (Pillsbury for example). We just throw whatever is available on top of it and cook it on the barbecue.
Examples of toppings:

• Cherry tomatoes or larger tomatoes
• Green onions or onions
• Kale (crisps up great and gives nice texture!)
• Sweet or hot pepper
• Eggplant slices
• Spinach

Spring rolls are another go-to for early summer, when greens are in abundance and other items start coming in gradually. I keep rice wrappers, vermicelli (optional) on hand, and either pre-made dipping sauce or make some with a peanut butter base. The wrappers get dipped in a saucer of lukewarm water to soften them and then you wrap the ingredients burrito-style. I usually do two layers of wrappers. This is a great dish on a hot day since you don’t need the oven.
Example ingredients:

• Greens – salad, arugula, spinach, swiss chard, salad greens
• Radishes
• Cucumber
• Carrot
• Daikon
• Sweet pepper
• Green onions

I keep pad thai sauce and rice noodles to make pad thai inspired noodles. For a little extra protein my go-tos are tofu, smoked tofu, breaded fish or vegetarian breaded “fish” or “chicken”, which I cook in the pad thai sauce. I also often add some peanuts or sesame on top. I cook the protein, noodles and toppings separately then combine everything before serving.
Example ingredients:

• Pepper
• Green beans
• Soy beans
• Eggplant
• Cherry tomatos
• Celery

These bowls are made on a base of greens, couscous or rice (or a mix of these). I cook the various ingredients separately and put them in little clumps on top of the base. Sometimes I add a hard boiled egg or tofu cubes. Super easy and can be made in various versions
Example ingredients:

• Swiss chard and/or kale sautéed in garlic butter
• Kale “chips”
• Green beans sautéed in garlic butter
• Cherry tomatoes
• Pickled or fermented veggies from last year (sunchokes etc)
• Roasted beet cubes (I use my air fryer to avoid heating the house)
• Soy beans
• Radish
• Cucumber
• Eggplant slices
• Marinated onions (red onions slices in lime juice, garlic and olive oil)
• Celery cubes

A great desert that can be adapted to whatever berries or fruits are in season. I use it with honeyberries, cherries, apples, pears, and mixed of all these. Recipe here. 

A no-till approach means drawing inspiration from the forest's nurturing and passive approach as much as possible. To avoid disrupting the layered ecosystem of micro-organisms in the soil, you never turn over the soil (bye-bye, rototiller). You also keep layering organic matter onto the soil, keeping it completely covered at almost all times. This organic matter, or mulch, serves several purposes:

• Suppressing weeds
• Providing shelter to the micro-organisms that colonize the soil, and,
• Continuously enriching the soil by decomposing into light, fluffy humus. 

It makes so much sense. And I always hated fighting with my rototiller so I was easily convinced.

Going back to the time when I was reading all these revelations, I had already been using mulch in my garden in the form of landscape fabric. It had saved me hours of weeding, and I still don't hate it - I think it's a decent option for some scenarios. However, I was getting frustrated about a few aspects of it. First of all, it locks you into a certain planting pattern (wherever the holes are), so it was limiting my ability to do proper crop rotations. Secondly, it doesn't last forever and I hated the expense and waste it created. Thirdly, it's not very conducive to planting very tightly planted crops - you can't realistically make a hole every 5 centimeters. And finally, I now realized that it hadn't been doing anything to improve soil health. ​

The first year after reading this book, I decided to convert part of my garden to a no-till approach. Fabric mulch had never worked well for corn, because of how tightly spaced the seeds are. So, I decided to use lawn clippings to mulch my corn patch. The second year, I stopped replacing any sections of landscape fabric - whenever a section was too torn or degraded to use, I put down natural mulch instead. I used dried weeds, lawn clippings, and dried leaves. Even the occasional cowpot. Whenever I harvested vegetables, I removed any "extra parts" such as corn husks, carrot leaves, and the external leaves of cabbages, and dumped them right there and then as mulch - I started to see anything that was removed from the garden as a loss of nutrients, and it made sense to limit that loss. In the fall I left all plant matter, such as tomato stalks, to decompose into the soil. ​

Last fall, when I "closed up" my garden for the season, I took out all remaining landscape fabric. I dumped bags of leaves on each row - I just packed as many bags as I could every time I took a drive through a residential neighborhood. On top of the leaves, I put whatever I could find, such as weeds, branches, corn stalks, etc - keep the leaves from blowing away. I also used lawn clippings.

When spring came around, I was greeted by a vibrant soil that had been protected throughout the winter. Very few weeds pierced through the mulch, and the ones that did were easy to remove. I was able to weed my entire garden (30 x 60 feet) in about twenty minutes, and I only had to do it once. Normally, even with the fabric mulch, I had to spend a significant amount of time on several rounds of weeding in the spring. I also noticed that the soil hadn't compacted over the winter and during spring rains. It stayed fluffy and aerated, with lots of worms. ​

I've now planted my hardiest seedlings, for example onions, potatoes, parsley, and greens. It's been a pleasure to plant them in the natural mulch, compared to fabric mulch. Just spread the mulch with my hori-hori knife, making a little nest for the seedling or seed. No more cutting out the landscape mulch with an x-acto or scissors for every seeds (savvier gardeners burn those holes through, but still). ​

​I am still a little nervous about keeping up with that amount of mulching. The yardsweeper makes it relatively easy to gather up lawn clippings and that should be enough throughout the summer. We shall see! 

Some considerations for going no-till

• Do you have the means to procure natural mulch in the quantity needed? In my case, I predominantly use bags of leaves, and lawn clippings. We have a very lawn though and I can adjust how much of it I mow to make sure I produce enough lawn clippings.
• Can you handle to labor of mulching? It is most certainly going to be less than the labour you'd spend tilling and weeding, but it's not insignificant. A yardsweeper or lawnmower bag will come in very handy.

What can you use for natural mulch?
Scientifically speaking, it's useful to know that some mulches add carbon to the soil (mostly dried/brown stuff - for example  bark, cardboard, and sawdust) and some mulches add nitrogen (mostly green stuff such as lawn clippings, aged compost, weeds and hay). Leaves and branches occupy a bit of a middle ground. Ideally speaking, you could choose your mulch based on a soil test to determine if your soil needs more nitrogen or more carbon. In practice, in our area, nitrogen is typically what is most needed so I learn towards "green" mulches. 

A few other factors to take into consideration:

• What can you get for free? I get leaves from neighbors, lawn clippings from my lawn, I use weeds and extra veggie parts, and once in a while I go to the furniture store and take all their large appliance cardboard boxes (which they are very happy to give away - it saves them labor).
• If you are getting your mulch from somewhere else, do you know what herbicides or pesticides have been applied to it?
• Does your mulch contain weed seeds? For example, hay typically contains seeds (but straw doesn't). I did have a bad experience using hay - as it decomposed it sprouted into very strongly rooted grass. 
• Will it blow away? Leaves are susceptible to blowing away in strong winds, so I cover them with something else.

I also want  to mention that although sawdust is fine, walnut sawdust or shavings should be avoided (it suppresses growth). And, finally,, to bust a myth - it is not true that pine needles make soil acid, so you shouldn't fear them for that reason. The real reason things don't grow around pines in that pine needles make a very dense mulch, and, pine trees have very shallow roots. I actually really like pine needles as mulch - they provide great coverage and they don't blow away in the wind.

A word about the broadfork
Finally, as you transition to a no-till approach, you may need to fluff your soil occasionally. For that I would recommend a broadfork. A broadfork fluffs the soil without turning it over. It leaves the microbiome of the soil intact. Eventually, as the soil becomes fluffier and fluffier, you won't need to broadfork it anymore, but, it is a good transition tool.
​

Setting up a new no-till garden bed
Most of my beds were converted from tilled beds to no-till. That means that originally, I dug up the sod and tilled it. However, it's also possible to create new no-till beds in your lawn, without tilling it even once. I am trying that for the first time and I will write a separate blog post about my experience once I am a little further along with it.

Over the years I have worked to establish more perennial food plants on our property. They typically cost a little more upfront but having low-maintenance, recurring sources of food is great. In the process of writing this post, I realized we have over forty different perennial foods growing on our property - a mix of naturally occurring and purposefully introduced. 

I have integrated these perennials plants in various places on the property, creating a bit of an edible landscape; but I also have a few dedicated perennial beds in a section of our property. I keep these beds separate from my main garden so that they don't interfere with crop rotation. Before I switched to a no-till approach, it was a also a concern that they would get in the way of rototilling. 

I'll provide a summary of the perennial foods we grow, in hopes that it will give you ideas if you live in a similar zone. Even though we live in zone 5, I tend to favor perennials that are rustic to zone 3, to ensure they are very rustic and survive our winters. 

Trees:

• Apple trees - I planted a few specific apple trees (honeycrisp, empire, and a sweet yellow variety); we also have a variety of wild apple and crabapple trees planted by animals in the forest. (two or more compatible apple trees are needed for cross-pollination)
• Pear tree - I planted four pear trees, which should be two cross-pollinating pairs. They haven't produced yet but I think they will this year.
• Plum tree - I only have one plum tree, they are self-fertile so they don't need a companion. It's new and hasn't produced yet.
• Hazelnut trees (bush) - I have eight hazelnut trees, I planted them this year. I got them from Meadowlark Rise Farms, local to us. They plant a variety of nut trees, but it seems like hazelnuts are doing the best in our area.'
• Sour cherries (bush) - This one spreads! It is beautiful when it flowers, and I use the cherries to make ice cream, Turkish cherry jam, and chocolate cherry jam / ice cream topping

Berries and other small fruits:

• Honeyberries (Haskap) - these do amazing here, but they need to be covered by a net or the birds get them all. They are a great early crop. 
• Gooseberries - new this year
• Strawberries - I chose everbearing plants which means that they produce throughout the season, instead of one big batch. They are great for snacking whenever we pass in front of the patch, conveniently located between the house and the workshop.
• Saskatoon berries - new this year
• Concord grapes - for eating fresh and for juice
• Artic kiwi - new this year

Edible flowers:

• Daylilies - the flowers are edible. They are a nice snack or a nice garnish on salads. Be sure not to eat lilies though.
• Hostas - the shoots can be cooked and eaten
• Lilac -  good for garnish or for making flavoured simple syrup , I can it and use it to make lilac lemonade or seltzer water
• Sunchokes -  the tubers are delicious. We especially like them fermented (which also takes away the gassiness that some people experience with sunchokes)
• Sunflowers - for seeds

Herbs:

• Rosemary - doesn't always come back, depending on winter conditions
• Lavender - doesn't always come back, depending on winter conditions
• Sage - doesn't always come back, depending on winter conditions
• Mint - invasive, be careful where you plant it
• Oregano - invasive, be careful where you plant it
• Thyme
• Chamomile
• Chives

Others:

• Rhubarb
• Horseradish - harvested for the root. Can spread.
• Asparagus
• Amaranth - not really a perennial, but it reseeds itself generously 

Naturally occurring perennials (foraging - more details here)

• Raspberries
• Fiddleheads
• Daylilies
• Sumac
• Sugar maple
• Cedar
• Stinging Nettle
• Mushrooms - for example shaggy mane. Still learning about these
• Wild grapes
• Crabapples
• Wild chamomile

Failures - things I might try again:

• Sea buckthorn - got swallowed up by weeds, will need to try again
• Blueberries - I've tried these several times but they never survived, I'm not sure why

This year I am growing onions from seed for the first time, after many years of using onion sets. Part of my motivation is cost, but I also read in Le Jardin Vivrier that onions from seed tend to store better. Here is the approach I am taking based on the principles of no-dig, intense planting.

I started my onion seeds in a tray. I planted them very densely in rows. I didn't thin them.  I trimmed them a couple of times to keep them around 6-10cm long. The trimmed ends are very fragrant and I used them in my cooking.

Once it was transplanting time, I trimmed them once more to around 6cm, and loosened the soil in the tray. It was easy to pull out the tiny onion seedlings and untangle them. 

I grabbed 3-4 onion seedlings at a time

My garden surface was already loose soil (if it had not been loose I would have used the broadfork to loosen it). I had recently replenished the mulch covering it, with a layer of leaves and a layer of grass clippings. I used my hori hori knife to spread the mulch apart and make a small hole. I placed the 4 seedlings in the hole, making sure not to cover them above the split in their leaves. I packed the soil around them a bit. 

The reason I put 4 onions per hole is that they will naturally push each other apart as they grow. In many cases I will harvest one per hole as a "green onion" early in the season, and maybe even another one to cook as a young onion, but they'd be fine left together to maturity, too. 

I used a distance of 8 inches between each 4-pack of onions. Even this densely packed, since onions have such skinny leaves, they won't shade the soil and weeds, so it will be important to keep a thick layer of mulch in between the onions, all summer long. I planted my onion sets the same way. In total, I have about 300 onions planted. They are one of those things that we never seem to have enough of! One of my favorite uses is French onion soup, which I pressure can. 

Woodworking skills and tools come in handy in the day to day. My latest project was making a gardening bench, which is mostly used while kneeling but also for sitting. It makes it more comfortable to kneel, saves my pants from the worse of the dirt and scuffs, and makes the repetitive up and down motions easier when it comes to long days of working along rows. The design I decided on has a few bonus features as well - it makes it easier to move all my tools as I go down a row, and if I flip it upside down it's a nice stool from which I can complete the "admiration phase" of my work or take a little break. My design was inspired by commercial products such as this one. 

Materials needed:

• Foam (I purchased a kneeling pad from Rona)
• Wood: 2 by 12, about 6-8 feet long (1 board) OR 2 by 6, about 6-8 feet long (two boards). I used pine for budget reasons. I'm sure it will get marks on it as I use it, but I really don't mind that for this project.
• White carpenter's glue
• Contact cement to glue the foam to the wood
• Polyurethane finish

To create my design, I experimented a bit with stacks of books to see what was a comfortable height for kneeling, how high I wanted the handles to be (to assist with getting up repeatedly), and how wide I wanted the kneeler (I wanted a bit of extra space on each side to put down a tool if needed). I also experimented a bit to see what dimensions would work to fold my gardening bag over the top edge. I decided to use mortice and tenon joinery for strength.

I could get 2 by 12 boards so I started by jointing and laminating pairs of 2 x 6 boards cut to size. I planed and jointed them. Then I used my router to carve out a mortice and handle in each vertical piece. I made the handle and mortice symmetrical, which made for an appealing design and simple router set up. 

Next, I used my router table to carve out a notch at either end of the vertical board. This creates short little legs that make the bench more stable on uneven ground. As a bonus, once I started using the bench, I realized that they are great for hanging my hat or any tool with a loop. 

I While I was at the router table, I started to work on the tenons, at either end of the horizontal piece. I routed out material on both faces of the board, adjusting until it was the correct thickness to slip just right into the mortice. I used a handsaw on the two edges to complete the tenon, and chisels to round off the tenon and adjust the fit. I made the tenon a bit longer than needed, so it would stick out a bit, just as an aesthetic choice.

Then, I used a palm router and rasp to round the edges. I glued the mortice and tenon, and applied polyurethane finish. In the picture below, the bench is drying upside down, on some painters' pyramids that I 3D printed a while back. All that was left was gluing the foam on with contact cement.

I had a chance to try out my kneeling bench yesterday while planting onions, and I love it. It is comfortable, less tiring, less muddy, and makes it easy to move all my tools along a row as I progress. The upside-down side definitely came in handy too. I love hooking my gardening bag on one end, and my hat on the other when I take it off to cool down a bit. Overall I am very happy with my design! It took about two half days to make, plus drying time. It was a lovely project to spend some time in one of my happy places, my workshop, listening to the rain falling on the tin roof.

Fiddleheads are a great food to forage. They are very easy to identify around here, and come pretty early (early/mid-May this year where we live, in Eastern Ontario), right as nature wakes up and before I can get fresh greens from the garden. It might be easier to spot a nearby ostrich fern patch in the summer, and go back to harvest in the spring. We have lots in our forest.​

Fiddleheads are the early form of the Ostrich fern - one of two abundant ferns in our area, which also has a lot of Cinnamon fern. It's key to be able to distinguish between these two ferns, and luckily it's pretty easy.  The first key characteristic of the ostrich fern is that is it covered with light brown / tan paper - as opposed to the white fuzz that covers the cinnamon fern. The second key characteristic is that its stem has a groove in it (a cross section would be U shaped like a tiny celery), as opposed to the cinnamon fern which doesn't. In the picture below, the ostrich fern is at the top and the cinnamon fern at the bottom. 

I cut a couple of fiddleheads from each fern and leave the rest, to ensure a sustainable harvest. I cut them near the ground as the stem is quite good. Once at home, I sort through the fiddleheads to confirm identification, remove as much of the papery husk as I can (but it's fine if some stays), trim off the ends and wash them. I boil or steam them, then pan fry them in olive oil with garlic, salt, pepper. I add a little bit of lime juice. Delicious!

When we first moved here, I planted a few apples trees. They have become quite productive and on a good year yield the apple harvest is plentiful.

Unfortunately, the pruning process has always been intimidating to me, so for the first 12 years or so, I didn't prune any of my trees. I could tell they were getting a little bit out of control, but I just didn't know where to start with it. I looked for information in books and online, but never felt confident. I mentioned this to many people in hopes someone could point me in the right direction... and finally it paid off as my friend Peggy from Good Food Garden, who similarly wanted to learn to prune her apple trees, got a small group together to learn this art from a local expert, Jeff Turner. After participating in this workshop, I can safely say that the best way to learn pruning is to learn in-person, from someone who knows what they are doing! After covering a little bit of theory, we headed outside and pruned Peggy's three apple trees, that were in a comparable state to mine. As the pruning process progressed, the pieces started to fall in place for me and I started to be able to make educated guesses about which branches needed to go. The next day, I pruned my apple and pear trees - I thought I better do it before I lost my nerve! 

Reflecting on the specific advice that Jeff gave, I realized some guiding principles:

1. Any branch that is doomed to break off, or that isn't productive (watersprouts), corresponds to wasted energy. 
2. Aim for a tree with an even distribution of branches in three dimensional space, emanating from the center but not crossing each other. Branches that cross are in competition and also run the risk of rubbing against each other, opening up a wound.
3. Think about the practicality of the harvest - are low branches going to be in the way? Do you need some kind of open space to lean your ladder against?
4. When deciding between two branches, always imagine what things will look in the future if you leave branch A, vs branch B, and how these scenarios will support or contradict the first three principles.

Here are a few of the specific guidelines I used to prune my trees in support of the principles, thanks to Jeff's advice.

• Prune off any "watersprouts" - thin vertical shoots that won't produce (principle 1, waste of energy)
• Avoid having any Y-split of 15-20 degrees or less, in  vertical Ys - these are likely to get bark trapped in the center of "Y" as the two branches develop and thicken, weakening the joint and leading to the "leaning" branch breaking off. (principle 1, potential waste of energy when a whole section breaks off)
• Prune off any branches that cross other branches when seen from above. When deciding which branch goes, imagine future development and which branch will fill out the tree without crowding an area. (principles 2 and 3, even branch density with no crossings)
• Never prune back more than one third of the tree

In terms of the process of pruning, we learned:

• Always prune just after the collar. Cutting into the collar is not great for healing, and leaving too much of the branch sticking out might be an opportunity for rot to set in.
• Any cut that is more than an inch in diameter should be covered with pruning sealer. I used a woodworking glue spreader to apply it. 
• The best tools to use are a pullsaw (I used my woodworking Dozuki saw...) and sharp pruning shears
• An alternative to pruning is using spreaders or ropes and weights to redirect the branches for a season, to set them in a new direction. I haven't tried this technique yet.