Balcony garden update (aka I have nothing more exciting to blog about...)

True, it's mid-summer, I've already taken my vacation, and Andrew's out of town at a conference in Germany, therefore I simply don't have much to write about. That's not to say I just sit around at home all the time twiddling my thumbs (as blogged last week I spend most of my nights editing or writing), but I don't do a lot of super exciting things that I think other people would care about (not that I think people care much about what I write ordinarily anyway). I suppose I could track my experience of training for a marathon, but I'm not a fitness expert, so my musings would be purely self-case study and as I'm well aware, an "n" of 1 does not equal sound scientific evidence.

And so I turn to our garden. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been the best for vegetable growing thus far (although the week that's passed since I originally wrote this has been quite nice). We've had a lot of rain and not much in the way of sun or heat. I pulled up the radishes a week or two ago as the thick prickly stalks and flowers sprouting from the stems seemed to indicate the were never going to blossom into an edible plant no matter how long I left them in the soil. I fear the carrots may go the same way as the radishes, although the planter shown below might yet turn out to be all right--I haven't peaked in on the roots to see how they're comming along. And the rhubarb has not done well either (I didn't think those things could be killed). The roots rotted due to over watering and although Andrew tried to perform a partial root-ectomy, its leaves have continued to yellow and wither.

Our carrots. I think they're looking pretty good.

On the bright side, some of our plants have flourished. Check out the tomato plant. Despite a stem-fracture caused by high winds (have I mentioned we live on the 12th floor?) there are at least a dozen little tomatoes sprouting all over. Then there's the zucchini. No sign of vegetation yet, but look at the leaves on that thing, its really going strong (and the lettuce isn't doing too badly either). Next over are our happy potatoes. I can't wait to dig them up in the fall. I suppose we could have pulled some up early and had baby potatoes--maybe next year if we increase our crop size. Finally there are the peppers. They're still pretty tiny, and very green, but they seem to be content hanging out on the side of the railing.

A couple of our furthest along tomatoes, still very green.

A full view of our tomatoes.

Our zucchini plant surrounded by lettuce.

One of our pepper plants. How exciting! I hope it matures into a bright red pepper.

The potatoes are huge! I can't wait to dig them up in the fall.

We'll continue to tend to our crops over the remainder of the summer and take stock when it comes time to harvest. I don't think we'll bother with radishes next year, and possibly no carrots either. On the other hand the tomatoes and the potatoes are pretty much a given. Perhaps some other types of squash might be worth while? Or more herbs? I've got a small pot of parsley and basil inside, but I wouldn't say no to chives, mint or basil.

Ciao,

Andrea

My sourdough experience

As you might know, I love to cook and bake. I make my own bread from scratch, and I have to boast, I think my regular brown and white loaves of bread are far superior to the ones that can be bought at the grocery store. So, about a month ago, one of my favourite cooking bloggers, Clotilde Dusoulier, at Chocolate & Zucchini detailed her experience about making sourdough bread. Although she didn't make her own starter, she did provide links to other bloggers who did. Being always up for a baking challenge, and wanting to expand my bread-making repertoire, I decided I would give sourdough a try--including making my own starter.

If you follow my Twitter feed, you will know that my first attempt at sourdough starter (or "started" as I typed numerous times) didn't go quite right. I used the directions from the blog, The Fresh Loaf, as they are well laid out and easy to follow. Day 1 and 2 went along swimmingly. The starter was nice and bubbly on the second day, but on third day it didn't double like it was supposed to. The instructions said to wait until it had doubled, so I waited. And waited, and waited. And then my starter was rancid and I had to start again. The second attempt went much better. This time, I noticed that the instructions said to give the starter I little boost with extra flour and water if it didn't double, so when Day 3 came around and my starter hadn't grown enough, I gave it a little extra to eat. And voila! My starter continued to grow and bubble and collect wild yeast like it was supposed to. Huzzah.

Last Friday rolls around and I ponder the eternal question of whether or not I should pull my freshly minted starter out of the fridge so I can bake with it the next day. Due to scheduling uncertainties, I decided to leave it be. Saturday morning, up early as per usual, I changed my mind and reversed yesterday's decision. I was going to bake sourdough bread. I pulled my starter out of the fridge, follow Clotilde's instructions for preparing it and continue on with my day as I waited for the starter to rise. Fast forward to 7:30 p.m. Saturday night. The starter's looking good and I'm ready to roll. I pull up the recipe again and begin weighing my ingredients (we recently purchased a kitchen scale).

I've got everything mixed when Andrew asks me something along the lines of: "Have you actually read all of the instructions?" To which I sheepishly reply, "At some point I did." Now Andrew starts reading me the recipe out loud. "Let rest for 2 hours...6 hours later..." My response is a somewhat panicked: "Are you s**ting me?" I come over to the computer and after a few minutes we discover alternate instructions, which permit the baker to place the dough in the fridge to rise over night. I took the alternate option.

On Sunday Andrew and I got up, went for our long run (18 km) and when we got back I pulled the dough out of the fridge to warm up. We went to church and even had brunch with another couple who go to St. Joseph's chapel before returning home to the sourdough-dough. At this point there were only a few quick kneadings to go before placing it in a 3 litre pot and into the oven for an hour. My last tribulation of my first attempt at completely homemade sourdough bread: the bottom got a little burnt. Our oven runs hot. Roughly 100 degrees hotter than what the temperature dial reads. We've known this since we moved into our apartment over 2 years ago. We've got a little thermometer in the oven to gauge the actual temperature. Unfortunately, it runs even hotter at higher temperatures and so when I went to pull the bread out of the oven I was greeted with "burning" smell. I was preoccupied with hemming pants while it cooked and I forgot to use my nose to tell me my bread was done.

Regardless the bread is delicious. The sour flavour isn't really strong, yet. But it comes with a more aged starter.

In Garden News...

I wanted to give a quick shout out to our garden, continuing to preserver on our 12th floor balcony. We have strawberries! They're tiny, but they're there. And tomatoes, which, with the wave of hot weather we're getting here in Edmonton, I hope will continue to grow.



Ciao,

Andrea

Garden balcony 2009: Day, lots.

Quick update: We have blossoms on our strawberry and tomato plants. We might get all of one strawberry, but we're growning these things on the 12th floor of an apartment building in downtown Edmonton, so I call it a success. All of the tomato plants (there are 3) appear to have blossoms. I might be able to make some tomato sauce yet!



Ciao,

Andrea

Learning the dials/Balcony garden 2009: Day 69

Today I took a course on digital SLR cameras. Andrew received a Nikon D40 last year as a graduation gift from his parents. We've enjoyed using it since then; however, we didn't understand the settings or any of the capabilities of the camera. We'd like to get a new lens, something with a better zoom, but I didn't want to get a new one until I knew how to use the one we've already got. This course helped, a lot.

There's a number of factors that go together to make a good picture. There's aperture (how wide the lens opens), shutter speed (does that need an explanation?), ISO rating (how sensitive the "film" is to light) and white balance (what kind of light you're shooting--so the picture doesn't look orange). I had heard of aperture, but I definitely didn't know how it worked. Nor am I going to relate the details here as one course doesn't make me an expert, but I hope it will improve my pictures.

The one problem I foresee now, is that this course will actually make me a slower picture taker. I'm now going to need more time to fiddle with the dials. Open the aperture wider and slow down the shutter speed when the picture is darker and visa verse for a brighter photo. Or I can start playing with things and blow the exposure way out of proportion. I suppose I could just leave my camera dial on the auto features like "portrait" or "action," but what's the point in having a SLR if that's all I'm going to do?

And on the note of improving my pictures...An update on the balcony garden (which is still sitting in our living room as it's not yet warm enough to leave them out over night).

Peas:



(Hmmm...the top picture's a little blow out after all. It can be tricky to tell on the camera screen sometimes.)

Strawberries:


They're teeny tiny. We hope they'll grow to actually produce fruit.

And Tomatoes:



I hope we can move the garden outside soon. It's supposed to be up to +16C tomorrow. And, I'll keep working on my photographs.

Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony garden 2009: Day 17

I felt really busy over the weekend and for some reason the thought of taking the time to write up a short blog entry on how our garden was doing seemed impossible. (In fact, I didn't leave my apartment from Friday afternoon (~3:00 pm) straight through to Sunday night (~6:30 pm) so why I couldn't spare the time is beyond me.) I thought I had better provide a quick update before next weekend as all kinds of things are growing in our little planters.

The sweet peas (which I frequently mistake for being green beans...) are growing like crazy. I sometimes wonder, if I sat long enough, could I actually see them growing? They have little shoots that coil themselves around the trellis to hold themselves up. In my mind they're like alien growths shooting out and grabbing on to things. Pretty cool.





Carrots. They're coming. They're pretty tiny right now and we've had to weed a bunch out so they'd have room.

The radishes don't appear to be ready yet, despite the fact that the package said it would only take them 2 weeks to grow. I tried to dig one up on Saturday to see if they were ready and well...I couldn't find anything. I guess that means they're not ready.



We've got wee little strawberries growing. I'd guess about half of the plants we sowed have broken the surface so far, I hope the remaining plants will succeed as well. It will be sometime before they're ready to transplant outside.

Finally, the tomatoes are coming along swimmingly. I'm not sure if we're going to let them all grow, or if we'll pitch some of them. I guess it depends on whether or not I can find some rhubarb to plant in our second planter.



Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony garden 2009: Day 1

Last year Andrew and I attempted to grow stuff on our balcony. It worked, somewhat. We had a lot of delicious green onions and various other herbs. Our peas grew well initially then got fried in the sun and nothing else worked. We decided that we would try again this year and, perhaps foolishly, expand the operation.


Above are our strawberry plant starters. The seeds are minuscule and they have to grow indoors for 10-12 weeks before we can move them outside. We planted thirty-two seeds altogether as we have planters that hold thirty-two plants. I hope we have enough crop so that I can try making jam. The three cartons at the bottom of the picture are tomatoes--for Andrew. Although, if we have any success I might try making some tomato sauce or something.


These planters contain peas (in the back row), carrots (they fill up the planter in the back, and just the middle row in the one in the front) and radishes. The variety of radishes we purchase are suppose to grow in two weeks, so we could harvest our first vegetables in just fourteen days. Carrots take 50-60 days, but if they work out, we might be able to grow a second crop.

I'll report on our garden as it progresses.

Ciao,

Andrea