Happy harvest!

As we sow, so we shall reap. Or, rather, we will not reap what we have not sowed. Sowing is a necessary condition for harvest, but not sufficient. There are plenty of things that can go wrong from the moment a seed hits the soil until the grower is there to harvest. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too many insects and slugs and mice and birds can all wreak havoc in the garden of Eden.

Now, by the end of July, we have started picking tomatoes, which is a clear sign that harvest season is full on. Indeed, we have been picking spinach, rhubarb, asparagus, berries and various leaves since April, but now the real vegetable season is here. All of a sudden, we move from scarcity to abundance. Courgettes (also known as summer squash) are ready for picking. Broad beans have to be collected. Raspberries ripen every single day. And of course tomatoes. We have something like 30 tomato plants this year, and fortunately only a few have started ripening their fruits. In a week or two, we will have kilos to pick every single day for a month or so.

Most of our harvest is collected in three months: August, September and October. Especially September is a busy month every year. It is a happy frenzy, to bring in veggies, dry herbs, can sauce, and to prepare the root-n-apple-cellar for the season's bounty.

We learn as we go, and every season we have been able to preserve more food with less effort. Canning and preserving are real skills, since every crop behaves slightly differently. We observe what we can, trying to understand the mechanisms and the criteria for success. Every year, we figure out some simplification that makes the process more effortless and smooth. We still fail sometimes, and lose produce to spoilage, but it is less every year.

This year, the most useful improvement in the garden has been to use a different soil mix for the seedling veggies. We now use sand+biochar, 50/50 by volume. When the seedlings have started to grow, we replant into a richer mix. Germination is now much better. Almost every seed makes a seedling, it seems. I shiver when I think back on our seedling disaster for naked-seed pumpkins. Almost all the seeds rotted away in the rich compost mix that we used back then. Out of thirty pots, we had two plants. Not good, and a clear indication that something had to change. We realized that the seeds with paper-thin shells were an easy target for soil organisms, and decided to try another mix with less life. It sure works fine.

Talking about compost and pumpkin seeds - we have quite a few self-seeded pumpkins in the places where we have spread last year's compost. Even inside the hoop-houses we have some pumpkin plants, which is not very convenient. On the one hand, they seem to shade out some tree seedlings. On the other hand, they have already started to form at least one pumpkin each, and I want to watch them grow. Let's see if we can find a compromize, cutting back side shoots and keeping the vine contained around the first one or two fruits.

A volunteer pumpkin plant in the hoophouse, a visiting mother and a hen.

Early berries from the Saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia) tree.

Gooseberries are great. This is one of the five varieties we have.

Red currants are early and beautiful.

Summer breakfast - oatmeal and berries.

Nuts

Summer time is a time for budding (oculation) of fruit and nut trees. We had a day at Peter Linder's tree nursery with the course for nut growers, and Peter showed how to do chip budding. We all got our own pieces to practice. I have rarely been able to get buds to take, so I want to try again after this session. I suspect that I need to leave more of the rootstock plant during the first fall.

Peter showing how to chip-bud trees.

Hazelnuts

It is very interesting to see how different trees grow in different places. The same species of tree can grow at wildly different speeds if they are happy or not. Hazelnut bushes have a tough time in an open landscape, where wind drives moisture loss with leads to slow growth. On the other hand, in a protected environment, they can grow very quickly and reach full size much earlier.

That was clear when I visited to nut growers on the same day:

Hazel planted in 2020, not much growth.

Big difference compared to a tree that was planted in the same size, but only two and a half years ago:

Hazel planted in 2024, very good growth.

It is hard to know what really makes this difference.

On both bushes, nuts are forming and will be ripe in September.

Walnut trees

The walnut trees had a tough winter. Several died in the wind. On the other hand, grafting now works better than ever. I even got some heartnut scion wood and got three successful grafts of those.

Grafted walnut trees, grafted in April 2026.