Sumac is one of my favorite plants to forage. It looks like an exotic plant, out of place here in Eastern Ontario. We have it here and there on our property and I often see it on the side of the highway and in parks. I use it to make a refreshing drink (sumac ade) and sumac spice.

It's best to pick sumac early; if you wait too long, you might see bugs inside the berry clumps and it is very time consuming to clean them out. To make sumac ade, I simply crush the berries in room temperature water and let them sit in the water overnight. Then, remove the berries and run the liquid through a coffee filter - if you don't, your throat may tickle a bit from the little hairs that fell off the berries. It's a delicious refreshing drink. We don't sweeten it, but some do,

To make sumac spice, I dry the berries in a dehydrator or toaster oven (smells delicious!). Then I use a mortar and pestle to separate the outside fuzz from the hard seed inside (some people use a blender instead). I rub the mix onto a fine sieve which separates the seeds and the fuzz. 

I thought I would give you a quick tour of my gardens so that you can situate the various things I talk about on my blog.

​First off, let's look at what I call my kitchen garden. My kitchen garden is where I plant the annual plants that give us most of the veggies we eat year round. It's about 30 by 30 feet, and is fenced in with chicken wire due to a groundhog attack a a few years ago. I have let the weeds grow on the outside of the fence to make a sort of hedge because I don't find the fence particularly attractive, and I feel that the hedge will act as a kind of wind break. I also wonder if it hides the garden from pests to a certain extent. They are likely more clever than that, but it seems to be a deterrent at least. This garden was originally mulched with fabric mulch - medium quality for the crop rows and higher quality for the walkways. I am gradually converting this to natural mulch. This garden is hooked up to an automatic irrigation system fed by rain barrels. Each year I plant it from scratch with a mix of seedlings that I've grown, direct seeding wherever possible, and a few nursery plants (for those types where I only want a few plants).

There are a few annuals that don't fit space wise in my kitchen garden or weren't great fits for the fabric mulch I use in it, and don't require watering - those have been relegated to two long beds in our back field. These house ground cherries, potatoes, onions, carrots and scarlet runner beans. Most of these are mulched with hay, except the ground cherries which are on top of fabric because that makes harvesting the ground cherries so much easier. 

A few years ago I realized that I needed separate beds for perennials. At the time I was using the rototiller in my other gardens, and obviously I didn't want my perennials close to that. There were a lot of issues with "accidental mowing" when I simply integrated them in the landscape, and the detailing around perennials (weed-hacking etc) gets tedious. So, I decided to set up a few perennial beds near the house. I have four beds side by side. Two are strawberry patches. They are conveniently located between the house and my workshop so I can pick up snacks on the way. Rarely do strawberries make it into the house! The third bed has Jerusalem artichoke, rhubarb and horseradish, and a few herbs. The fourth one is a cement planter that was used to store milk jugs before they were brought to the dairy, over fifty years ago. It holds mostly herbs. There are a few irises in there (remnants from when I wasn't sure what I'd use the cement enclosure for and cilantro, which isn't really a perennial but has a neat tendency to reseed itself. Having herbs this close to the house it very convenient for cooking, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Lining the side of our laneway are the fruit trees. I have apple trees that produce consistently (empire and yellow transparent), and pear trees that don't produce yet. There are also lilac trees that I use for lilac lemonade and bouquets. After planting and babying these apple trees, I found out we have several wild apple trees in the forest! Oh well.

Around the house there are a few flower beds with perennials, many of them were there when we moved in and I've mostly just maintained them although I have added a few lilies and other low maintenance flowers to them. They are not my priority when compared to the more useful crops. We do eat the daylilies and I hear that hostas are edible too but I haven't tried them yet.

There are also quite a few plants integrated around the property here and there, as an "edible landscape". For example here you can see two grape vines around posts in front of the tiny house we build in our field. Elsewhere you'll find ostrich ferns for example. 

Finally there is a lot of good foraging on our property but I'll cover that in a future post! There you will get to meet things like raspberry bushes, wild grapes, stinging nettle, plantain, and sumac. 

Before moving here, I had had limited encounters with stinging nettle (une hortie), which grows in fertile and moist soil. Ray and I both unsuspectedly grabbed handfuls while weed pulling and learned our lesson quickly. If you brush against it the wrong way, it stings you with its hollow stingers. The stinging sensation can last for hours and even cause blisters. We didn't know what it was, exactly, so we simply called it 'the bad plant", a name that has stuck. Over time I learned some tips to coexist with stinging nettle, and recently I have come to appreciate this plant for cooking. 

A few years ago I noticed that if you pick stinging nettle with an upward motion, it doesn't sting you. I still prefer to use gloves, just in case, but once in a while I'll pull one out by the base of the stem. Its hairs are angled upwards so when you pick it up with an upward motion, you crush the hairs towards the stem, instead of embedding them into your skin. 

The second tip I learned during a foraging workshop is that plantain is a good antidote to stinging nettle. As soon as you feel the burn of stinging nettle, chew a few plantain leaves and then spit them out and apply them to the burn. It will neutralize the burn quickly, and prevent it from itching for hours afterwards and from causing a blister. We have lots of plantain around, so I have used the trick a few times including on my little nephew who hasn't yet learned the lessons of "the bad plant". 

People use stinging nettle in various recipes including pesto, soup, and cheesemaking. I haven't used it in all these ways but I love this stinging nettle soup recipe that I just made for the first time. I think it'll be something we make often in the spring, when there isn't much in the garden yet but the stinging nettles have popped up, and before it gets too hot. It was a perfect treat on a rainy day.

The first year I gardened, I quickly became overwhelmed by weeds. After a week away, it was hard to get back on top of things. I had read about the importance of mulching, but all that came to mind at the time was expensive bags of mulch at the nursery. I knew the cost would add up quickly based on the size of my garden and needing to add mulch over and over again. However, it was clear that I needed a solution.

Starting the next year, and for many years since then, I have been using landscape fabric to control weeds. I lay it down along the rows, over my drip irrigation lines. I secure it with a generous amount of ground staples, rocks, and logs. Advantages of this method include:

• Effective weed control
• Lets the rain through
• Retains moisture in the ground
• Warms the soil

I think this is a very decent approach to weed control and I definitely would never go back to not having any kind of mulch. However, I did find that this approach had some downsides:

• It can be costly (Costco is the best bargain that I found - a very big roll with lots of staples. They have sold various qualities (at corresponding prices) each spring
• Landscape fabric doesn't last forever - especially the least expensive types, which I found I had to replace after 1-2 years
• It locks you in to a certain planting pattern
• It can be tedious to cut out the holes when planting 
• It's not suitable for root crops - pulling a turnip out rips the fabric, for example
• It's hard to plant things very close together - for example corn or carrots - since you need one hole per plant. I something cut long rectangular holes but more often than not, that led to the fabric ripping.
• It does nothing for soil quality

Over the last couple of years, I have been experimenting with switching over my landscape fabric to natural mulch. I haven't given in to buying commercial mulch - I use whatever I can get my hands on for free. For example:

• Grass clippings - I let the grass grow a bit longer, and with the power mower, I shoot all the grass clippings into piles, near the garden if possible. We pick it up with a rake onto the lid of a rubbermaid container, which makes a handy "carrying tray" to the right spot in the garden.
• Bales of hay - We have a few areas which we don't mow or cultivate. Our neighbor picks up the hay once or twice a year for his cattle, and we ask him to leave us one bale of hay by the garden. A lot of people say not to use hay because it's full of seeds, but it is free and if you keep mulching over it, it's not the worst of issues.
• Dead weeds - When I weed the garden, I sweep all the weeds on piles over the black (high quality) landscape fabric I use for the walkways between my garden rows. I let the piles dry out to kill the weeds, and then I use the dried matter as mulch in the garden
• "Compost in place" - When picking vegetables that have unwanted plant matter (for example, corn husks), I remove that plant matter while I'm still in the garden, and I either let it dry in the walkways to use as dry mulch, or put it directly on the ground as mulch. It's a good way to return nutrients to the soil - why take them out of the system in the first place?
• Leaves - I don't have a lot of leaves around the garden but I will be asking my parents for a few bags from their place this fall!
• Dried matter in the spring - in the fall, I don't really remove any plant matter from my garden. Things like vines dry out in place over the winter, and in the spring I gather them up and use them as extra mulch right there in the garden. (Watch out for seeds).
• Not-so-natural odds and ends - I also use things like newspaper, cardboard and used jiffy pot sides as mulch. Anything that is biodegradable and handy.

When mulching with natural materials, I make a pretty thick layer - about 4-6 inches. I keep an eye on it as it decomposes and replenish the low spots every time I mow the lawn or whenever it's needed. Weeds do pop up here and there but they are typically easy to pull. The mulch continuously decomposes, so it keeps enriching the soil. In the fall we put an extra generous layer of mulch that stays there through the winter. It keeps weeds down in the spring and I just pull off the extra when I plant, ready to be used as replenishment as needed.

I still have fabric mulch in my main kitchen garden, but I don't use it in any new gardens and I am replacing it with natural mulch as it degrades.

This is all part of the "no till / no dig" approach to gardening that I have been transitioning to. This biodegradable mulch composts in place and is making my soil better and better. The book that started me down this path is "Le jardin vivrier" by Marie Thévard. I also recently picked up "No-dig gardening" by Bella Linde and Lena Granefelt and "Building soil" by Elizabeth Murphy to learn more about the topic.

One final tip. Years ago Ray decided to use some leftover construction paper as mulch. Not a good idea. It's waterproof so it doesn't let rain in, so you need to water a lot. And, now, 5 years into it, It's starting to fray in places and little bits of it are flaking off, I am afraid it may mix into the ground so we'll have to remove it. So be careful about using things such as this or tarps. Make sure whatever you use is biodegradable. 

When I first started to grow herbs, I was disappointed to see the  short harvest window of the cilantro plant, and the small quantity of leaves that a single plant gives. A cilantro plant doesn't have a huge amount of leaves, and it quickly turns to seed. I found the solution to this issue by coincidence. One year, Ray had an extra cilantro seedling, and I stuck it in a large planter to avoid wasting it. It did its thing and went to seed. The next spring, while weeding the planter, I noticed a familiar scent and I realized that I had accidentally weeded out a bunch of cilantro "volunteer" plants. (Volunteers are seedlings that pop up on their own, most likely because of a seed from a plant the previous year.) Fortunately, more volunteers popped up and before I knew it, I had a whole bed of cilantro leaves... enough to harvest for cooking. 

The next year I was more intentional about taking advantage of this reseeding. In the fall, I harvested a large quantity of seeds from dried out cilantro plants in that bed. I stored them in a plastic container. In the spring, I let the volunteers pop up from the seeds I unavoidably missed. Then, every few weeks I sprinkled a few seeds from my reserve onto that area of the bed. I then had cilantro in the "leafy" stage in continuous supply throughout the summer which is great for tacos, wraps, and Thai-style stir fries. 

Incidentally, did you know that cilantro seeds are coriander? I am not shy about dipping into my saved seeds throughout the winter whenever I need a bit of coriander. I just grind it up with a mortar and pestle.

Here is one of my favorite fall recipes that features cilantro and delicata squash.

Honeyberries are the most successful berry I have been able to grow in our area (we are in zone 5A). Honeyberries do very well in cooler climates - they are very hardy and even the flowers are frost resistant (to a point). The berries come very early - for us it's usually around mid-June. You need two plants from two different varieties in order to cross pollinate. I have a couple of Borealis (introduced by the University of Saskatchewan) and a couple of Indigo Gem. They both originally come from Canadian Tire as 5 gallon plants.

Honeyberries look like elongated blueberries. They are sweet and a little tangy. They are high in vitamin A and C, antioxidants, and lots of other good stuff.  

When honeyberries turn blue, they still need another 2-3 weeks before they are ready to be harvested. During that 3 weeks, I found that birds consistently ate all the berries. We were never able to harvest our honeyberries until we invested in bird netting that we simply drape over the row of bushes, and tuck at their base. Bird netting works like a charm, but, as a downside it is possible for birds to get caught in it, so we keep a close eye on it (which is easy since it's right outside our front door and my office window). We have freed a few birds from it over the years, with no casualties.

​I can usually tell the honeyberries are ready to harvest when they come off the branches very easily, or I notice some are falling to the ground. At that point the flesh is red/purple and the berries are sweet. Another tell-tale sign is that the U-pick farm down the street starts to advertise theirs as ready to pick :) 

I hand-pick my berries, although I have read that some people shake the bushes into a kiddie pool or over cardboard - my bushes are too close together. It's quite time consuming. It takes me about 15 minutes to pick 1 liter. 

We eat as many as we can fresh (great on ice cream or in a smoothie). I freeze the rest in 2 cup portions in Food Saver bags. When they thaw, they release a lot of juice. I pour that juice off into a mason jar and we use it to make fizzy drinks with our Soda stream, and I use the berries in baking. My favorite recipe to make is fruit crisp - a mix of honeyberries and pears is great in that recipe. Honey berry flavour is intense and I find the pear balances it out nicely.

Seed saving is a great sustainability skill to learn and pretty easy. But where should you put all your seeds? For small seeds, I really like my little seed suitcase, pictured above. It's sold as a bead organizer (I found it on amazon). I write the year and variety on each little container. It's very handy to bring to a seed swap, too. Bigger seed go in takeout containers or ziploc bags

In my opinion, canning is a must if you are serious about growing your own food. Canning is a bit of science, and it's important to understand safe canning techniques. Many of the techniques that our ancestors used are now understood to have limitations that often lead to spoiled food and occasionally to health risks. I remember my grandmother's canned strawberries and they are a part of why I can now - but I don't follow her techniques now that we have access to more foolproof, safety tested approaches.

There are three safe canning approaches - water bath canning, steam canning and pressure canning. This blog post will give an overview of each approach and will also enumerate a few techniques that aren't considered safe or foolproof anymore.  Finally I'll give a few of my favorite resources for recipes.

Water bath canning is the most traditional canning technique. It is a good one to start with because you probably already have everything needed. Water bath canning consists in bringing a very large pot of water to boil, then completely submerging the mason jars in this water for a prescribed amount of time. It is safe and effective for foods that have a high acidity (for example pickles, tomato based products with a bit of lemon juice added, jellies and jams, condiments, sweets). 

Pros: 

1. No specialized equipment available
2. Simple to learn
3. Many safety-tested recipes available

Cons:

1. Takes a long time to get this much water to boil
2. Wastes water and electricity
3. Can produce a lot of steam (humidity in the house)
4. Pot is very heavy - could be hard to manipulate for some people, and risk of dropping a large amount of hot water
5. Only effective for acid food

Steam canning is a more recently studied type of canning. You need a special steam canner, which sometimes has a built in gauge. The canner isn't air tight. You put a small amount of water at the bottom. The jars are placed on a rack above the water. Once the pot is full of steam (and the gauge is in the proper zone), you start a timer and keep the jars in this steamy environment for the prescribed amount of time. Most water bath canning recipes can be accomplished using steam canning - the only exception is recipes with a very long sterilization time (generally quotes as more than 45 minutes), because your canner may run out of water as the steam escapes. Steam canning is an old technique but it was only recently studied scientifically and proven to be safe.


Pros:

1. Faster than water bath canning due (less water to heat)'
2. Easier to handle and less water wastage
3. Lots of recipes available since all water bath recipes can be used for steam canning (except those longer than 45 minutes)

Cons:

1. Need a Steam canner (but the steam canner can also be used as a big stockpot and as a water bath canner if needed so it's quite handy).
2. Only effective for acid food

Pressure canning is the only proven safe canning method for low acid foods including things like non-pickled vegetables, soups, meat, fish, broth, etc. It requires a special pressure canner. In Canada, the most readily available is the 23 quart Presto brand pressure canner. If you eat meat, it's a must - as a vegetarian, I find it very handy too. Pressure canning can be a bit intimidating for some, but, the manual is very clear so there is no reason to be intimidated. If you live in Canada, it will be hard to find a place to calibrate your pressure gauge, but you can write to Presto and they will send you a 3-piece weighted gauge that does not require calibration.

Pros:

1. Only proven safe method for low acid food

Cons:

1. Requires a somewhat expensive Pressure canner
2. A bit more technical to understand.

Many canning methods used traditionally, internationally, or otherwise, have not been studied scientifically. Personally, I choose not to use these methods. There is a risk of adverse health effect (or even death) with all of them. Furthermore, even if you don't get sick or die, you risk your food spoiling and growing and canning food is too much work to take a chance, in my opinion. Some of the methods that you may encounter that haven't been proven safe include:

• Open kettle canning - Pouring hot food into jars and closing them. 
  
• Oven canning - Heating full jars in the oven
  
• Dry canning - Putting ingredients in the jars without liquid covering them and then processing them using any method (including oven canning and water bath canning)
  
• Sealing jars with wax
  
• Turning jars upside down to help them seal or to "sterilize" the lid (often in combination with open kettle canning)
• Water bathing low acid foods (including meat) using very long processing times

Most people's arguments for using these techniques is that they know someone who uses them and nothing bad has ever happened. That may be true, but it doens't mean nothing bad ever will happen. Or, more likely, they may not have heard about the times things didn't work out (my grandma definitely threw out moldy wax covered strawberry jam more than once). It is also possible that some of these techniques will one day be proven safe but until then, I stay away from them for the aforementioned reasons. 

I learned to can using the pick your own website. It is full of easy to follow recipes and the recipes follow safe practices. 

The National Center for Home Food Preservation (US based) has very detailed and extensive recipes. Most are pretty basic and unimaginative but they cover a lot of staples. 

Recent canning books by Ball or Bernardin (the Canadian brand of Ball) generally adhere to safe canning practices.

The Facebook group "Canning and preserving with love" has many knowledgeable admins and a considerable repertoire or safe canning recipes

The website created by Vincent le canneux, in French, has safe recipes. Vincent used scientific protocols to test his recipes. 

The Facebook group "Conserves Maison, Cannage, hommage à Vincent le canneux", in French, has many knowledgeable admins.

Tentatively I would say that Ricardo's recipes generally appear safe.

Some books and resources to steer clear of include books by The Canning Diva, Miss Conserves (French), and Canning Rebels Facebook groups. These all encourage techniques that aren't proven safe. 

Cherry tomatoes are such a tasty treat. When the first cherry tomatoes of the season come in, I always think "wow, I could eat these all day". But before long, the numbers are overwhelming and I find myself desperately trying to offload them on everyone I know. Over the years I have come up with a few ways to deal with the excess during those weeks when there are so many that we can't keep up.

I always plant cherry tomatoes at the entrance to my garden so it's easy to grab a few to eat fresh. They are also great to put in salad (sliced in half) or to make an appetizer tray. I made this tray for my mom's birthday - it has a variety of cherry tomatoes, some fresh basil leaves, fresh mozzarella, a drizzle of olive oil and a drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette. 

Fermented cherry tomatoes are very easy to make. I ferment mine in water, salt and a bit of whey (byproduct of making ricotta or other cheese), however there are plenty of recipes online that don't use whey if you don't have access to it. I make them in quart mason jars and keep them in the fridge. They last several months (I have read 6 months) - this year we ran out in February. They make an excellent side dish or addition to salads. They have a slight fizz when you bite into them. 

Tomates confites are tomatoes roasted in oil. They are SO good. I put them in mason jars, they will keep for a few weeks - if it's going to be longer than that, I freeze them in the mason jars. as a funfact, olive oil shrinks when it freezes, so you won't break your jars. Tomates confites is delicious when spread on baguette or crackers, or on a pesto pasta dish.  Here is the recipe I use. 

This pasta sauce is very sweet and not acid. I usually make a big batch in the summertime when there is a bumper crop; I use part of it for supper that night with fresh pasta and freeze the other part for a wintertime supper (this recipe cannot be canned).  Here is my recipe. 

Hot cherry bombs are pickled cherry tomatoes that taste a bit like bloody mary. They are a great side dish and would be a good tomato juice garnish. Here is the recipe I use, by Bernadette Grazioso, who runs the Facebook group "Canning and preserving with love" (which I highly recommend). 

A few years ago I came across an interesting method of preserving carrots in the book "Root cellaring - Natural cold storage of fruits & vegetables" by Mike and Nancy Bubel - simply placing the carrots in sand. I have experimented with a few variations of this method with good success. I also use the same method for potatoes with great success. I tried with sweet potatoes and it didn't work. I may try other root vegetables such as turnips in the future. I usually store my carrots and potatoes in October and they stay well preserved until late April or May. At that time I replant any potatoes that are left. This is such an easy way to store these vegetables, it is my go-to for any that I will use from October to April. I can some as well for use in the summer. 

Here is how I do it:

1. Harvest your carrots. Carrots and potatoes will do fine with frost so I harvest them last. Don't wash them - brush off most of the dirt with your hand. Cut off most of the leaves. Set aside any carrots with damage or broken ends for immediate use. I sort my potatoes by size - I put smaller ones in a bucket and bigger ones in a bin. This way I can always find the size that I need for my recipe.
2. Take a clean plastic bin such as this one from a grocery store.
3. Put an inch or two of sand at the bottom. I have used dry sand or 
4. Put the carrots lying down in the sand, not touching each other (see picture above)
5. Cover the carrots with sand. I have used both dry and moist sand, didn't seem to make a difference.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until the bin is full or you run out of carrots
7. Store in a cool dark place.  I am not sure if it's best to put a cover on it or not - no cover and you risk mice getting in. With a cover, moisture will stay trapped in and it may contribute to earlier rot.
8. Use as needed. If you notice mushy carrots, you are running out of time to use them. The carrot tops may grow back (doesn't matter) and potatoes might sprout towards the end (doesn't matter).