Thought I'd share some more recipes today, some nice, simple and fresh things for summer.

Enjoy!

 

 

This one is my Mom's original recipe!! Thanks, Mom!

Gardening Tools and Compost Advice

Little 'page of gardening tools' I put together to use some of those spot illustrations I created for Rooftops Montreal/ Alternatives (orignal post about that here, and the place where they've used some of the illustrations here) ...as the project has been suspended for a while anyway and the work was volunteer-based I hope they won't mind if I play around with the images and post some here on my blog.
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Here is some excellent, clear, simple information on how to compost from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, of River Cottage, of the River Cottage BBC tv series (of which I am a big fan!) that I just read about in the River Cottage cookbook. Great for those like me who have little-to-no experience with real composting, and especially carrying it through from tossing scraps on there to producing a finished product you can proudly spread on your garden beds.

Over to you, Hugh:

"Once you've got the hang of seed-packet gardening, the only really essential information you need to know is how to keep your soil in tip-top condition, year after year. However good your soil, vegetables will take the best of the nutrients out of it on an annual basis - and on an annual basis it has to be put back in. How do you do that? For the organic gardener, who wants to avoid chemical fertilizers, there is a one-word answer to this question: compost.

Your garden and kitchen activities are sure to generate a considerable amount of vegetative waste. Your job is to make sure it isn't waste at all, but goes back to feed the plants that feed you. You can start a compost heap in any quiet but reasonably accesible corner of the garden (you'll need to be able to drive a wheel-barrow up to it!), but it is a good idea to give it a little structure, rather than just make a big mound that slopes away at the edges. A three-sided structure, with "walls" of wood, corrugated iron, or straw bales, is simple to put together and will do very nicely. Don't make the base dimensions too huge or you'll never get any depth: about a yard square will do for an "average" household (as if there is such a thing!). A "floor" again of wood, or thick sheet plastic, will help retain moisture and heat. Moisture and heat, incidentally, are what composting is all about: any vegetable matter will eventually rot down into a form in which it will be welcomed back by the soil, but in a well-managed compost heap that stays warm and wet (but not too wet), the whole process can be speeded up considerably. Speed is important, because the faster you can make good compost, the more goodness you can put back into your soil at the end of the gardening year. If you generate enough waste and manage your heap well, a pile started in March can be dug back into the soil in November.

For this kind of efficiency, bulking out your heap with dry materials is essential; it will also improve the texture of your finished compost. Straw is good for this, as are wood shavings, dry leaves, and even shredded newspaper (a particularly good way to incorporate newspaper into your compost is to mix it with grass cuttings, which anyway have a tendency to rot to an unpleasant slime if piled on undiluted). The bedding from your hen house, be it straw or wood shavings, with its bonus of rich chicken dung, is an absolute must for the compost heap.

Just about anything of vegetable origin can go on a compost heap: the only thing to avoid is anything too coarse or woody that might lag behind the pace of decay of the rest of the material. Those with large vegetable gardens (who are forced to take their composting pretty seriously) sometimes address this problem with the aid of a powered compost shredder: it shreds coarser stalks down to a manageable size that will bring them in line with the rest of the pile.

Incidentally, one of the great dilemmas of the vegetablel gardener who also keeps pigs is which vegetable leftovers to save as piggy treats and which to throw on the compost heap. Last year, I was so generous to the pigs that, while they thrived, my compost heap actually lost weight. This year, I am trying to be a bit more even-handed; leafy waste and peelings all go for the compost, while thick cabbage and bean stalks, which are a bit coarse for composting but very nutritious, all go in the pig bucket, along with any starch and dairy leftovers.

An important aspect of compost is knowing when to finish it. Keep piling on the waste until your pile is about a yard high, ideally a bit more. Then stop. (Meanwhile, start a fresh heap somewhere else - right next door to the first one if you like.) You now need to turn the finished heap: use a pitchfork to move as much material from the bottom of the pile to the top and vice versa: or at the very least try to move the top layer to the middle by forking the stuff at the bottom and piling it on top. Cover the turned heap completely with an old bit of carpet, plastice sheeting, or a thick layer of straw. Leave it for about a month, then turn it and cover it again. It will be ready about six months after that. I look on the end of August as a cut off point: any heap finished before then should be ready for digging into the soil the following March/ April. Heaps finished fom September onward will need a good dose of Spring sunshine the following year to complete the process, but can be used for top-dresing your soil or digging in with late plantings of zucchini, squashes, spinach and salads. You can buy products, usually liquid, called compost accelerators, to speed the process even further. I've never tried them, but my dad swears by them.

Finished compost should be dark, rich, crumbly and pleasant-smelling - "like a good christmas cake," my dad says, though I'm not sure I'd go that far."

(Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the River Cottage Cookbook, pgs 42 - 43)

Here are some images from a personal project I was working on the the winter...I had it in mind to put together a large series of images to be printed on a tea towel altogether, using the amazing fabric-printing resource Spoonflower. I may yet finish this project, but I am excited about a new fabric-design project I've begun very recently. For now, here are some little images of things!

Mostly watercolor, little bit of digital here and there.

mushrooms

black walnut bough

globe artichoke

 

 

figs

 

 

feverfew

 

sugar snap pea

 

 

nasturtium

 the now-obsolete Canadian penny!

 

snake

 yew

pomegranate

COMPOSTING: Greens and Browns

Last Spring I volunteered to do a series of spot illustrations for 'Rooftops Montreal' which exists under the umbrella organization called 'Alternatives'. The project was to create a number of free, instructive, illustrated pages on various topics to do with gardening for beginners. It ranged from what tools to use to how to plant seeds, to specific plant care to what to put in your compost. I believe there were going to be ten sheets in all. Alternatives interns, who were also Horticulture students, came up with the concepts and text for the sheets (all in French), and I provided the artwork. A few of the sheets (or, "fiches horticoles") were made, but the project has either been scrapped or put on hold for the time being. You can see a few of them here.

Just for fun, and also to make something I know I will use, I decided to put together two sheets - using some of the illustrations I made for that above mentioned project - on what to put in your compost, and what NOT to put in your compost!

Of course these are very very basic...composting really is a science and there is so much one can know about it if one were so inclined to "dig in" to the subject, so to speak :)

Briefly:
Essentially compost is made up of organic matter that breaks down into a fertile substance which can be added to soil to greatly improve plant health and growth. Organic matter which is good for making compost is classified, generally, as being either "brown" or "green".

Green compostables are sources of organic nitrogen, because they are things which are high in nitrogen or protein to begin with. Greens decompose quickly, producing heat and generally speeding up the compost breakdown.

Brown compost items are classified as organic materials that are high in carbon, or carbohydrates, and when they break down become a source of organic carbon. The carbon-giving materials keep the nitrogen from the green matter from evaporating or leaching away, and also absorb the mal-odours produced by the green matter. Browns are the main source of energy and food for most soil organisms, and are essential for making good humus.

As I've said in my little chart, you want a ratio of about 25 - 30 parts brown/ carbon to one part green/ nitrogen. You can see in the "What to Put in Your Compost" sheet what is what by the colored dot beside each item.

You can tell which is which (if you're not sure) by putting some water on the item/ matter in question, and if, in a few days, that item has begun to reek, you can assume it is a "green". If not, then it is a "brown".

Anyway, I just kind of threw these together as a fun little experiment...the digital type and lines are not ideal, but what the "hay" I'm sure they will come in useful, and can always be revisited!

Sketch/ watercolour of my last-spring Montreal porch garden.

Lino, Stamps and Sketches

 This stamp was the first one I'd made in a while...and until I stamped it I forgot about the cardinal rule of print making...whatever you carve will turn out backwards, so always reverse your text!!

A couple sketchy layouts of, and some original artwork from, an info-sheet I'm working on (for fun)! Last November I saw that on the fence of the main community garden in my neighbourhood were a whollllle bunch of dried morning glory seed pods, just waiting to be taken! So, I took some pods, removed the seeds and put them in an envelope until this spring, when I sprouted them, after doing some research into how best to grow them. I found that I had to go to many different pages to get all the info I wanted to find, and thought that it might be helpful to other people in the future if I put some sheets like this together, after I do research on certain topics that I'm interested in. I'm liking the first (top) one, I think, for it's simplicity. Always, I welcome heartily any comments or suggestions you may have!!