Strawberry Jamming

This is the DDS' second annual strawberry jam making cooperative.  Last year we messed up Shannon's kitchen so this year it was my turn.  In one afternoon we processed about 20 pounds of strawberries into jam.  We chose to make batches of strawberry rhubarb, a lavender infused strawberry and a freezer strawberry jam.  Working together definitely makes the task less daunting.  This time around I washed and hulled the strawberries, while Shannon cut up rhubarb, prepared the jars (water bath to sanitize) and measured all the ingredients.  We follow the recipes that came with the pectin.

Below: Chopping rhubarb picked from Shannon's abundant patch

 

Below: Berries being washed in my sink in prep. for hulling (removing the stem).  My mom has a very old tool made especially for hulling strawberries.  I just push a small teaspoon into the top of the berry and twist out the hull.

 

Our folks picked up the two flats of berries from a local farm in Langley.  There is nothing like the flavour and colour of fresh local strawberries.  You can tell they are not GMO as they definitely don't keep for long and need to be eaten, frozen or jammed very quickly.

Below: Some of our lovely jars of jam.  The darker colour jars are the lavender infused and the lighter is the strawberry rhubarb.
 

 

 

For the Strawberry rhubarb we followed the recipe provided with the pectin.

To make the lavender infused jam, I packed two tea bags (designed for loose leaf tea) with fresh picked lavender, added to the strawberry mixture and let it infuse during the cooking and stirring portion of the process.  I removed the lavender bags before putting the jam into jars.  The flavour added is quite subtle.

 

If you have room in your freezer for freezer strawberry jam I highly recommend it.  For freezer jam you don't need to sterilize or seal your jars or containers and it tastes more like fresh picked strawberries than the cooked jam.  Often it is a little runnier than cooked jam and thus makes an amazing syrup for waffles or ice-cream.
 

Though I don't think we save money by making are own jam, it is satisfying to see the jars lined up on my shelf and know exactly all the ingredients that went into them.  It doesn't hurt to support local farmers too. 

 

 

 

potato tower

I got sucked in by a pin on pinterest. I was innocently scrolling through pins when I came upon a picture of a potato tower. I visited the website and the project seemed easy enough and I happened to have extra galvanized wire fencing on hand so I figured this was a sign that I should make my very own potato tower. I also thought that the tower would save me space in my garden and prevent rogue potatoes from popping up in unwanted places the following growing season. This pin should have come with a warning: do not attempt on a windy day, it didn't. You are supposed to place straw around the inside perimeter of the wire fencing to keep the dirt from falling out.  When I attempted to place the straw it was flying everywhere, it didn't help that I had positioned the planters next to my chain link fence and had neighbours not only watching me fight with the flying straw but also giving me weird looks like what is the crazy gardening neighbour doing now.... It was about this time that I realized that digging a trench and throwing some potatoes in the ground is much easier than trying to make a potato highrise. Eventually I got my two towers built and planted. The potatoes are growing like wildfire and I'm looking forward to the first fresh creamy nugget potato. The verdict is still out as to whether I will plant potato towers next year.

Yellow spreads in my garden at an alarming rate

It seems yellow is a theme that can't be stopped in my out door space right now.  The yellow poppies have arrived in my east border.  I also received an outdoor toss cushion for my birthday with a mod yellow pattern.  Then I scored another free outdoor chair left at the end of a neighbours driveway.  It was a rattan style chair that I washed and sprayed a bright yellow which perked it up considerably.

Now if anyone has an organic solution to rid my grass of buttercups please let me know!  For now I'll try and appreciate them as another yellow addition to my yard.

diy corten steel planter/bench

Back when we tore down our old shed, we found a large 3"X11" timber shoved in the back corner. I immediately started imagining what I could do with the  big chunk of wood.  Around the same time I had been dreaming up what I could make with Corten steel for the garden. I decided I could combine these two components into a single project: a bench with an attached planter.  First off I had to find somewhere to supply the Corten steel.  This proved more difficult than I had thought but eventually I found a localish supplier that would take a small order.  I combined my order with Lauren's under her deck stair riser project.  I found out later that Corten steel is also called weathering steel by engineers and if you refer to it as that to the supplier you get a cheaper price.  In case you're not familiar with Corten steel, it is steel that's composition allows it to form a protective rust layer that doesn't continue to rust.  It is often used landscape projects and sometimes as cladding for buildings.  My dad still doesn't understand why anyone would pay extra for rusty steel! The planter consist or four pieces of the steel welded together to make the planter box (it is open at the bottom end). HH and me both had a welding lesson from my dad and took turns welding the tube together as our first ever welding attempt.  The welds may not have been the prettiest but it is holding together and the welds are covered by dirt!

HH joined the wood corner of the bench together with biscuit joints.

We connected the bench to the planter with flat bar that we had welded on and with lag screws from the inside of the planter into the end of the wood.  We also sealed the wood to slow decay. I bought a dwarf fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides "Little Bunny") and grabbed a few plants I had on hand for the planter, the plants will likely change at a later date. I'm now waiting for the rusty patina to happen.  Below you can see the completed project with my mini-assistant as the model.

Now when I find the time to take a break from gardening, I have the perfect place to sit....so far I haven't found the time!

  It can also be used to jump off of in case that's what you feel like doing instead of sitting!

Birthday Blooms

Every year I watch my peonies and wonder if the day they decide to burst open will be on my birthday.  They were a few days off this year but it is their best year yet with more then a dozen blossoms on one bush. 

Some years being confronted with a plus one addition to my chronological age can be daunting.  Being in my garden, now coming alive with spring growth and colour, makes me glad to be around to experience all that is yet come, this garden season and beyond.

Pictured above: lilacs in the foreground and white wisteria in the background.

Pictured above: alliums in the foreground in my west facing front garden.

Wishing everyone some time outside to enjoy spring!



diy retro concrete block pad

 So we built a bench (for another post) and then discovered we had no where appropriate to put it.  I thought we could place in front of the new shed, directly on the grass, but was informed my multiple people that the wood would wick up the moisture from the grass and rot in a hurry.  We needed some sort of pad. My husband thought we could use some left over bricks from another project but that seemed too boring and really not special enough for the awesome bench we are going to bestow upon it! I decided the solution was to find some used decorative concrete blocks that were common in the '70's  and fill the voids with pea gravel. I knew my only chance of keeping HH on board with this plan was to not spend too much so I needed to find the brick for free or really cheap.  I scoured craigslist for the concrete blocks but nothing was panning out until I happened to spot a pile of rubble next to the highway at an old motel.  I contacted the motel and they gave me the concrete blocks for free. Lauren had some left over pea gravel that she donated to the cause.

We dug out the sod and then put in a couple inches road mulch (gravel) as the base.

Next we placed the concrete blocks with a couple inch gap between them and filled the voids with pea gravel.

After some tinkering with getting things level the patio was complete!

DIY Grass Couch

I have a grass couch in my backyard.  This is something I don't share with everyone except on the internet.  It all began in the fall when I had a lot of dirt and a husband away on a business trip.  In trying to dig out under our deck I had run out of places to off-load the extra dirt and thought I could be more creative than just piling it up in a corner.  After searching the usual websites I did come across some stock photos of grass couches - some looked rather less than organic, i.e. sod thrown over old couches.  These images looked great but I'm sure they were really only meant to last the day of the photo shoot.  Can you imagine an old couch in your backyard rotting beneath a layer of sod with springs and wood poking out?  I did find a public garden in the UK that used  bales of hay to make their grass couch base, this idea looked like it lasted for sometime, but I had soil, not hay to work with.  My idea then evolved, I picked up 20 cardboard boxes from the liquor store and filled and stacked them to make the couch structure.  I was pretty sure my husband would not be onboard with my engineering plan and I didn't feel like justifying my crazy idea so I had to work pretty hard to complete the project before HH arrived home.  You can see the soil filled and stacked liquor boxes below.

The image below shows the backside "support" for the couch backrest.

 I mudded (not sure if this is a real word) all surfaces with a dirt, water and grass seed mixture.  You can see below it had started to sprout before winter arrived.

 At the end of winter, to everyone's surprise the cardboard box and dirt structure had held together, grass was growing, even on the vertical surfaces but it was pretty patchy.  I ran out of patience and decided to speed up the process with a trip to my local turf farm (bet you wish you had a local turf farm too).

Pictured above is the final version of the couch draped with fresh sod.  The kids don't look particularly impressed in this photo.  Let's hope the grass couch holds together a little longer and that I can capture all the fun that a grass couch adds to ones life.

Thank you to my local liquor store for helping to make this project happen in more ways than one.