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What's in Season
What a great summer we're having!
Vegetables and fruits are growing all over the Ottawa Valley and up into the Gatineau Hills.
Markets and gardens are full of fresh peas, beans, greens, herbs, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, garlic, beets, green onions, rhubarb, raspberries, blueberries, saskatoon berries, potatoes, corn, currants, and early apples.
You will taste the difference with freshly picked local produce.
Even as a crazy gardener and food lover it is a challenge to be a locavore (a person who tries to eat and cook with ingredients grown locally). I grew up eating with the seasons and planning for out-of-season by canning, freezing, drying and preserving. I grow what I can, go to pick-your-own fields and buy the rest from local farmers in season and process it immediately. I put long keeping vegetables like winter squash in a cool storage room. There are farmers, such as those at the Organic Market that cool store and sell all year long. Others extend the season with greenhouses and some even deliver a basket on a regular basis to your home.
It is time to plan. For me it means newly arrived seed catalogues, lasts years garden plan, a box of saved seeds, and a comfortable chair. I make a list of all the vegetable and fruit that I would like to have in my garden, then I get realistic!
I like to grow tomatoes - beefsteak, Brandywine, yellow, sweet 100's cherry, early arctic, and paste. Hot and sweet peppers, yellow, orange, green, purple and of course red for roasting and drying. Peas to plant as soon as the grown is the least bit warm, nothing is better fresh! Purple, green and yellow beans for eating and freezing and some for drying for great soup and chilli. Carrots of purple, white and orange. Cucumbers for slicing and pickles. Zucchini in yellow and green and winter squash for storing. Onions, garlic, chard, potatoes, radish, tomatillo, eggplant, beets, pumpkins, parsnips, turnip, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, basil, corn and cauliflower are regulars too, as room permits. I try a few new varieties or colours each year to make life interesting!
I will be planting the slow growers this month - peppers, onions, tomatoes, chard, tomatillo and herbs.
How about you?
Are you out and about the Ottawa Valley farms and markets? Email me your finds and favourites so we can share the best of the bounty! |
