BC Farms & Food

RECIPE

These scrumptious Chayote Chips are the perfect way to use chayote squash. Healthy snack food from an abundant fall vegetable!

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RECIPE

Combined with apples, quinces add an amazing flavour to this traditional baked dessert. Tart and tough when raw, quince softens, becomes sweeter and turns a lovely pink when cooked.


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If you enjoy eating tomatoes ripe from your garden, consider saving the seed of some of this season’s harvest for next year. Saving tomato seeds is easy. The basic rule is to choose heirloom and open-pollinated tomatoes for seed saving rather than hybrids, because cross-mated hybrid tomatoes will not produce true copies.

In nature, fruits such as tomatoes ferment before detaching their seeds from the pulp. If you want to save tomato seeds, you need to “wet process” the seeds in much the same way nature does. (Article continues below slideshow.)

Slideshow: Step-by-Step How to Save Your Own Tomato Seeds

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Choose a ripe, healthy, open-pollinated tomato for seed saving. This is a Stupice tomato.

Cut the tomato and scoop the seeds, gel and juice into a cup.

Add 1/2 cup of filtered water and let the tomato gel set for 3 days to ferment.

As it ferments, the mixture becomes cloudy and the seeds come loose from the jelly.

After 3 days, pour off any mould and floating seeds and capture the rest with a strainer.

Rinse the seeds under running water.

The tomato seeds should be as free from the gel as possible.

Dump the seeds onto a paper towel and spread them out.

When the seeds are completely dry, save them in a sealed container for planting.

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How to make delicious tomato sauce fresh from the garden!

RECIPE

Homemade tomato sauce has a sweet freshness you’ll never find by using canned tomatoes. That’s because when you simmer fresh tomatoes into sauce, you preserve the taste of the tomatoes at the peak of their ripeness. You can choose a single variety of tomatoes or mix together many sizes and colours of heirloom tomatoes. The different flavours are subtle and unique.

This chunky tomato sauce goes well with pasta, meat, grilled vegetables, and is good on homemade pizza. You can double or triple the recipe to make extra sauce to freeze. Even after freezing, this sauce is like a bite of summer. So worth it!

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As a gardener, you have many ways to build climate change resilience. Using ecological and regenerative gardening techniques, you can help your garden withstand unexpected weather extremes and bounce back from hardship. You can even help slow climate change by reducing garden carbon emissions.

Regenerative gardening works with nature to build the health of the soil and the local ecosystem. This includes reducing carbon inputs, learning to store carbon in the soil, building habitat, and incorporating plant diversity—all of which can make a difference to global warming.
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If you think the price of store-bought mayonnaise is high, why not make your own?
 
This vegan mayonnaise is fresh, easy to make, and much cheaper than the eggless mayo you buy at the grocery store. Knowing how to make mayonnaise is a satisfying skill that has advantages. The mayo you make at home has no preservatives or hidden ingredients, and tastes delicious!

You can mix up this mayonnaise recipe in minutes with a hand blender or a regular blender, and adjust the salt level and other seasonings to your taste.

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Bee-friendly plants that repel deer? It sounds like a gardener’s dream. As it turns out, quite a large number of flowers, herbs, and even vegetables are deer resistant pollinator plants.

Gardeners and farmers who struggle against deer damage know how difficult it is to grow flowers, fruits, and vegetables with these voracious browsers about. At the same time, growers depend on bees, flower flies, butterflies and hummingbirds to pollinate farm and garden crops. If you select carefully, you can have both together: plants that attract pollinators and are also unpalatable to deer. (Article and plant list continue below slideshow.)

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Prickly plants like globe thistle, globe artichoke (above), and cardoon resist deer and are tremendous attractors of bees, when in flower. Deer also usually avoid plants with thick, leathery or spiky textures.

Plants with fuzzy leaves and hairy stems such as cucumbers, squash, borage (above), and phacelia typically turn away deer. The tiny flowers of borage and phacelia are amazing attractors of bees.

Deer avoid strong-scented herbs and aromatic flowers. The strong fragrance of marigolds (above), lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme, chamomile and other herbs can interfere with a deer’s sense of smell (which it relies on to detect danger).

Mint family plants (Lamiaceae) are reliable deer deterrents. These include bee balm, catnip, anise hyssop (above), lavender, lemon balm, peppermint, spearmint, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, salvia, thyme, and savoury.

While deer may nibble on new spring onion shoots or chives, flowers from leeks, onions and native alliums such as Nodding onion are generally deer-resistant. Leeks (above) and other allium flowers are beautiful, powerful attractors of bees.

Deer avoid bitter-tasting plants like snowdrops, yarrow (above), foxgloves, bleeding heart and poppies (including California and Oriental poppies). Fawns learn while young to avoid these plants, which contain alkaloids.

Wildflowers, such as deer-resistant woolly sunflower (above), yarrow, and phacelia, co-evolved with pollinators for centuries. Native plants have co-relationships with specific bees and pollinators that protect diversity.

Blue, violet, white, and yellow flowers, such as salvia, lupine (above), alyssum, and zinnias are attractive to bees. Bees cannot see the colour red. They look for shallow or tubular plants with a landing platform.

Tiny clusters of flowers attract a variety of beneficial insects such as bees, butterflies, flower flies, ladybugs and parasitoid wasps, which pollinate and also prey on garden pests. Parsley, dill (above), and fennel are a prodigious draw for these beneficials.

Bright (especially violet or red) flowers, such as purple coneflower, delphinium, and cosmos (above) with wide landing pad areas attract butterflies. Hollyhocks and lupine host butterfly larvae and help support butterflies into adulthood.

Scarlet, red and orange tubular flowers such as columbine (above), comfrey and foxgloves attract hummingbirds. A hummingbird can access nectar from deep within the flower using its long narrow bill and tongue.

Yellow and white flowers, like calendula (above) are good attractors of flower flies (also known as hover flies or syrphid flies). Flower flies are valuable pollinators. Although they often look similar to wasps or bees (a mimicry they’ve developed to ward off predators), they do not sting.

On Salt Spring Island, a court challenge about the noise of three roosters may have an outsized impact on the future of local small-scale farms throughout the region.

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Looking for ways to extend the growing season? By warming the soil and protecting plants from the rain and cold, gardeners can gain weeks or months of additional growing time in early spring, fall, and winter.

Season extension does not need to be costly—especially when you use scrap and natural materials already at hand. Mulches, raised beds, wind protectors, and surroundings designed to capture the sun’s heat are just a few of the low-cost and no-cost ways available to resourceful gardeners. (Article continues below slideshow.)

Slideshow: 10 Ways to Extend the Growing Season

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Leaf mulch warms a row of parsnip plants in winter. Dark-coloured mulches such as leaves, wood chips, or black plastic will warm the soil more than light-coloured materials.

Mulch, such as straw or dried grass clippings, can warm the soil during cold seasons and help retain soil moisture during hotter months. When mulching around plants, take care to leave air space around the stems.

Burlap coffee sacks, (available free from coffee roasters) make good mulch material or pathway liners. In addition to warming the soil, they also help to suppress weeds.

Water-filled containers, such as 2-liter plastic milk jugs, can help warm seedlings. During the day the sun heats the water in the jugs. This continues to provide warmth and wind protection for the plant after the sun goes down.

Cold frames will stand up to wind, rain and snow to provide warmth and protection for plants throughout the winter. Old windows are excellent choices for cold frame tops. Scrap wood, hay bales, large stones, or bricks make good materials for the frame.

Hoop-style covered supports that span across a garden bed can protect seedlings or established plants. Thick-gauged wire, fiberglass garden rods or bent pvc pipe can form the supports. Plastic tarps (3 mil or higher), bed sheets, or Reemay (a polyester fabric that allows in light) are common coverings.

Wind protection can make a huge difference, especially in early spring. Planting near existing walls or fences offers protection against cold wind. You can also build temporary wind breaks with plastic or other materials.

Traditional cloches are bell-shaped glass covers placed over individual plants to protect them. Translucent plastic 4-liter milk jugs with the bottoms cut out will serve the purpose. By removing the cap, air can circulate in the cloche, while still providing warmth. A tall stick through the opening helps to anchor the cloche.

Raised garden beds, whether built in neat cedar boxes or by simply mounding up soil, will capture the warmth of the sun and give plants an advantage. The cool air sinks down to the surrounding pathways. Adding stones or gravel to the surrounds is another way to capture heat.

Plants situated against a sunny south-facing wall or fence often bear fruit larger and longer than in less protected areas. With extra warmth and wind protection, these locations are especially good for heat-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers.

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RECIPE

Home fries with an attitude! If you haven’t tried parsnips, you’re missing out on a great local winter vegetable. Similar to carrots, parsnips are root vegetables with a sweet, nutty flavour that mellows when roasted. The trick with parsnips is to steam them first in the oven, and then roast them to ensure they are evenly cooked.

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Seasonal eating can cut your food bills and your carbon footprint at the same time.

When energy was cheap and the climate was more predictable, you might have given no thought to eating fresh tomatoes or cucumbers in mid-winter. But times have changed. Now, the high cost of fuel is making it expensive to transport food long distances. And, on the farm, climate-driven droughts and unpredictable weather events are impacting crops. So how can we eat better in these changing times?

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