I love mustard. And not the cheap stuff.

When my taste buds were young I slapped bright yellow French’s on hot dogs and nothing else. It was a match made in heaven. During high school I gravitated to honey mustard (oh mon deiu!) and then onto even stickier German styles. But I’ve since graduated, with thanks to my refined late Aunt Kathy, to the creme de la creme of moutarde, the posh dijon.

Oh dijon, how I’ve OD’ed on thee. You were the main accompaniment of so many dishes during my university years. So much so that I had to leave you for awhile - probably because I ate such a shocking diet. Your wonderful texture and hot notes lured me back though, and you’ve been a permanent fixture on the top shelf of my fridge ever since. When you’re nearing empty I actually remember to add you to the shopping list. I could remedy the frequency of reaching your depths by just buying jumbo jars but they somehow seem less sophisticated. You are meant to be mini.

This large sac is full of mustard harvested from my field. It looked stunning in June but it had long since been overshadowed by barley and oats. Michael has some plan for it but it since he’s left I’ve been wondering how mustard is actually made and if this is indeed the beginnings of the wonderful prepared stuff. And where can I find homegrown mustard to replace my Maille?

The first option I stumbled upon, Organics & Gold Mustard, claims to be 100% organic made with Saskatchewan mustard, milled in Ontario. Apparently Canada grows over 95% of the worlds mustard! Wow. Maybe that explains the plant’s proliferation in my field?! Canada also has the biggest and oldest mustard mills in the world.Perhaps I should hunt one down. But in the meantime I’m on the hunt for an all-Ontario organic prepared dijon. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Maybe I should just be making my own…

This is the product of four months growth in my 2.5 acre field. Looks like a lot of grain, no?! I should have taken a handful to separate further and test as porridge but I was just gob-smacked at the sight of so much grain, harvested so quickly from my little field.

Michael was impressed too. He should be - this crop will help help feed his barn animals.

I was also gaping at this contraption - a 1958 John Deere combine. This beast broke down in the field and Michael tinkered with it for at least an hour before it charged back into action. When something goes wrong that he can’t fix a Mennonite farmer down the road can have things good as new in no time. Micheal swears by old classics like this. I guess they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I’ve obviously had a lot on my plate over the past few months but as I look at these photos and start to process, I can’t help but wonder whether I’ve been taken advantage of… You see, Roddy had done his research and wanted the first planting on this virgin field to be a green manure of clover. When I returned to Gothic Cottage in February to sort out the farm on my own, Michael sourced untreated clover seed for me to purchase.

I thought the whole field would be filled with clover but Michael suggested it wouldn’t hurt to plant oats and barley too. That time is a bit foggy to me now, but somehow I rationalized this back in March. Just to be clear, I could never plant out, harvest, till, or do anything on a grand scale to my field. I haven’t got any equipment or experience. So I’m hugely appreciative that my kindly neighbor who’s been haying this little field for the past 15 years is helping me out. I offered to pay him for prepping the soil last autumn and sowing the clover this spring but he won’t take my money (just fresh veggies and baking).

I’m immensely grateful for Michael’s help but when I consider the best interest of my field, is it OK that its nutrients have gone into growing oats and barley? I thought the idea was to restore nutrients to the field with the clover. Where is the clover in this equation?!

It’s here. Can you see it? Squint hard and think little clover leaves interspersed in a grassy lawn. Michael tells me this clover will now shoot up and fill out. I’m a trusting person by nature and it makes me uneasy to tickle my uncertainty.

So I’ll pose the question here: Have I been hosed? Or is this a perfectly reasonable country exchange of feed for labour?

THE GOOD: my friends, neighbours and I have been feasting on tomatoes from my garden for the last two weeks.

THE BAD: Two weeks ago I also noticed the first stages of early blight on a few of my plants.

THE UGLY: It spread like wildfire and quickly engulfed almost every tomato plant.

Let’s backtrack here. A month ago I thought blight was an unlucky phenomenon of the damp UK. Nothing to worry about in our idyllic clime! And my babies had received good mothering right from day one so surely they were immune to such epidemics… You can imagine my horror upon discovering a blemish on one of my plants. And then two, no wait, three!

So I did what any city girl transplant surrounded by seasoned growers would do - I jumped online. Sure enough, a quick google search of blight provided quick diagnosis. Early blight first appears as brown target-like lesions which quickly engulf leaves and then entire tomato and potato plants. It also spreads from plant to plant quite rapidly. With this new knowledge I felt time bearing down on me. What to do?! My go-to gardening source at mytinyplot.co.uk recommended removing diseased plants so I ran out to the garden and hacked down the ugliest culprit, a Juliet (sorry Juliet, your time to die) at the base and chucked her in the bonfire pit. No time for romance.

Then I started pruning, really hard pruning, all the blemished leaves in sight with a pair of kitchen scissors. Spotty leaves and branches were flying as a sweat formed on my brow. I came as close as I’ve ever come to OCD and found myself obsessing over what I’d touched, which plant touched which, where I was spreading the plague. It had only been an hour and the blight already had its strangle hold on me.

I was not going down without a fight. Hands stained florescent yellow after the murder, a calm washed over me and I asked myself: what would Mike Mannix do? It was after dark at this point and not wanting to disturb I fired off a distress text. Mike would set things right.

The next morning a relief text came through from my farming guru:

Early blight is pretty common. Once a plant has it, it’s toast. I haven’t found a way around it, I usually leave ‘em. Different varieties are more or less susceptible, take note. Cutting off affected parts doesn’t get rid of it, but looks better. If you’re destroying, probably pull out the whole plant. If there’s early blight about, I dunno if removing the affected plants will make much of a difference, once it’s established. Some will get it, some won’t, or slowly. You could read up a bit online. Unless you’re using fungicides, it’s one of those wiggly things where there are lots of opinions and approaches, but you end up seeing for yourself… :) 

Mike sends abstracts, not texts! Brilliant service. A wee bit late, but brilliant nonetheless! So I’d basically wasted my time and lost a bit of my mind in the garden the previous night. But I was still dogged with where the heck I’d gone wrong?!

Part of the problem could have been that I watered too much, the wrong way, at the wrong time.

Tomatoes have a voracious thirst when they’re growing and first transplanted. But as Mike guided me in an earlier epic text message, which I also sought out too late: … Oh yeah, one good rule is making sure to WATER well when certain crops like peas, cukes, etc, are flowering and fruiting. BUT, toms don’t need it unless it’s a drought. Think the more crisp veggies for that.

I committed a crucial error by watering at least every other day. For the first few weeks after their transplanting into the garden, I also watered from above which encourages a moist environment ideal for mould and disease. A drip line is best but if watering with a hose be careful to prevent spray back onto lower leaves. I have a long drip line but never got round to hooking it up. Tsk Tsk. And to make matters worse I also watered in the evening, thinking I was doing the toms a favour when I was really furthering along that damp climate. Luckily, I knew enough to prune lower leaves up to the first bundle of fruit so there was sufficient air circulation. The sun has also been prolific here this summer.

But it wasn’t enough. Sigh. Over the course of two weeks the blight turned my vivid green plants into a brown and yellow splattery Pollock painting. Much to my delight, however, I’ve been hauling massive numbers of virtually blemish-free tomatoes off all six varieties. And blight-scourged tomatoes are still edible - just don’t compost any part of them and definitely don’t plant toms in the same spot next year. Although shamefully ugly, the plants themselves are still sturdy and I’m certainly not watering them much. My friend Stacey also told me last week that everyone gets blight, and that it’s airborne. So no matter what good mothering I provide, at some point I have to relinquish control.

One thing I did know with certainty when I planted 30 tomato seeds last April - if I waited until I knew everything about veggie gardening to start a garden on my own I wouldn’t be gardening for years. As Mike says in one of his tomb texts: Experiment, observe, have fun   Check!

What about your tomatoes? Did blight blow into your garden this year? How have you dealt with it? I’d love to add advice and gory, triumphant tales to my text archives… In the meantime, here’s hoping that you’re also enjoying the delicious fruits of your labour, even if they look rather hideous.

This charming wee fellow gave me a start when I was puttering around the garden last Wednesday evening. I was headed toward the mass of uprooted pea plants when the luminescent guy (a leopard frog?) jumped in front of my path into the pile of pea sticks.

I’ve had toads visit the garden but never frogs, and never such a huge frog - he was easily the size of my palm. OK, I have very tiny hands but he was not your average dinky frog. And so florescent! I was pretty excited and ran for my camera. He stayed frozen like this, heart pounding while I got closer and closer with my lens, for at least 20 snaps. I really wanted to clear up the old row of peas but I couldn’t bare to disturb him so I just tended to the tomatoes instead and he stayed put for another hour. He can stick around for as long as he likes and gobble up all the nasty slugs, flea beetles, aphids and mosquitoes.

I was a massive frog enthusiast in my youth. I spent hours catching them in the bay with my cousins and friends at my family’s cottage up north. We would catch tadpoles too and keep them in a makeshift holding tank - an old tractor tire filled almost to the top with water in the bay. Good summer fun!

It’s been awhile since frogs have leapt in and out of my life but the theme continued last weekend. As my cousin Mark and his new bride Nicole arrived arm-in-arm at their wedding reception on Saturday evening, a little girl turned to her cousin and said: “Oh look! That’s the girl that just got married!” Her cousin piped up and excitedly replied, “Yeees, and she’s with her prince!”

This frog pond was situated right behind my family’s table under the reception tent and throughout the speeches a gaggle of little girls making “ribbit” noises drowned out the speakers. Nicole spends a lot of time outdoors. She’s no stranger to frogs and later in the evening she caught one for the excited girls.

We never grow up, do we?

Now where did that prince of mine go off to?

My pal and colleague Lindsay, also known as David Suzuki’s Queen of Green, was out for a visit this week. We also call her Mama because she has a green recipe for absolutely everything under the sun, including safe homemade cosmetics free of the dirty dozen harmful ingredients. Super-nurturing and mothering this one. And also full of entertaining stories. It’s no wonder she’s got a syndicated column in the Metro now.

Linz is also real farm stock. Armed with her fancy digital SLR she strolled around the farm and captured these images. I love seeing what others are drawn to here - their framing of scenes at Gothic Cottage is so different from my own. Very refreshing!

If you’re also coveting a fancy camera, enter David Suzuki’s Nature in the City Flickr photo contest. Happy snapping and enjoy the weekend!

The mustard has been outgrown and now the two and a half acre field is filled with a lush mix. I’m waiting for Michael to return to ID this pretty purple plant  - does anyone recognize it?

The other new appearances are the ripening barley and oats. Michael will harvest the grains and leave the clover for a green manure but for now I get to enjoy the view. So graceful in the breeze - makes for lovely scenery strolling through the field.

Such a sweet sight is this, for a farm girl who skips dinner to weed her garden.

I’ve been away. Five days in Nashville for work. Two days in Toronto for play. A couple of weeks ago before I fled for Tennessee I was weeding and thinning baby carrots under a full moon. Yesterday evening I treated myself to a yoga class, and when I returned after eight o’clock full of energy I struck out to wage war on weeds.

My weapon of choice: the Lee Valley Tools super weeder.

My opposition: a mix of five weeds, each with unique strengths. One creeps and clings, one gets tall fast, one spreads along the ground, one has tap roots that reach China, and one pricks and stings with a vengeance.

I had already showered after yoga but the feels-like-40-degree-heat was still lingering from the day and in no time it felt like I was back in the hot yoga studio. As I quickened the pace to race the fading daylight, sweat mixed with dirt and soon swatted mosquitoes joined the cakey mix. I was so fixated on the weed war that when I realized I’d missed dinner I reached for snowpeas instead of going inside to fix something. Sound familiar?

Have you ever felt like a crazed gardener? I crossed that threshold last night.

And then it started to rain. Oh did it ever feel good to hear the rain coming - first on the trees, then in the field, then on the roof of the barn, then on my caked-up skin. What a fantastic sensation to hear the intensity of the rain swell, fade, swell. And so refreshing. I didn’t care that my gardening gloves were thick with mud. I kept going, soaking up the rain and the respite from mosquitoes. I finished a row of weeding and then did some more for good measure. At this point the hard rain had tapered off to a trickle but I decided my veggies needed more of a drink after such a hot day.

So then I watered my garden in the rain…

I think I’m a real gardener now.

I didn’t plan on growing mustard.

No, two and a half acres were supposed to be boasting a lush mix of white clover and oats right now. But instead, these cover crops are taking a second seat to a sea of yellow.

Apparently mustard seed can lie dormant in the soil for as long as 25 years! Last year the field at Gothic Cottage was ploughed for the first time in at least 15 years and mustard seed has clearly survived in the Guelph loam. My farmer friend Michael down the road suggested I hand pick it so that it wouldn’t return. Hand pick two and a half acres?! This is what he’s been doing for years… I pulled about twenty plants from the soil but I’m so busy it’s a good day if I can tackle the weeds in my veggie garden. The field would take me an age!

Suddenly mustard looks even more striking.

Oh has locavore garden ever needed attention over the last couple of weeks.

Every spare moment was spent dashing out with tools in hand to get dirty in the sunshine. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed this time of year when veggies (and weeds, and lawn - sigh!) are going great guns. But I’ve been amazed at what can be accomplished in 15 minutes… or an hour that feels like 15 minutes.

Thinning carrots planted in April was long overdue. I have a small row of hand-seeded Scarlet Nantes, which germinated so well it crushed me to create a carrot war zone. I just pretended they were weeds and wow it feels good to rip them from the soil! I’m very tactile and I love the sensation of pulling little fronds at the roots - a natural born carrot killer. When the conditions are right, thinning carrots is a joy. Be sure to water the soil first for ease of pulling, and leave 2-4 cm spacing. Ideally, this should be tackled when greens are much shorter than mine here. Repeat 3-4 weeks later and leave 4-8 cm spacing.

These are the first root veggies I’ve tackled on my own. If all goes well I’ll be adding lots of potatoes, purple carrots, beets, and - my favourite - parsnips next year. Does anyone know where I can get delicious organic seed potatoes?

Happy thinning!

Twenty two tomato plants found a new home in locavore garden last weekend.

On a hot, sunny Saturday Tori, Nancy and I tackled a weedy garden and prepped beds for my nomadic seedlings. These leggy wonders were growing at an astonishing rate and I never could have made such progress in their stealthy move had it not been for the heft and cheerful willingness of my garden companions.

In my clogs and gardening gloves, Nancy got straight to work on weeding duty while I raked composted sheep manure into well turned soil. Beds plotted with popsicle sticks - 24″ spacing with 6′ between rows -we then dug deep holes for the tall toms, which got a generous handful of organic tomato food (4-6-8 in pellet form) before being watered in and finally covered up to their top leaves.

They really were so tall, especially the early Juliets and Yellow Pears, which doubled in size to monster seedlings in just a few days. I think they benefited from the organic plant food (2-1-3) I gave them every second watering after potting them up.

In the garden now, next to the onions, peas and carrots are a mix of heirloom and organic Brandywine Red, Grightmire’s Pride, Black Krim, Matina, Juliet, and Yellow Pear. The 11 remaining plants will go to friends and family, with maybe just a couple more finding corner real estate in my garden.

Tori and Nancy were a fantastic help. And really, it’s such fun to knock off 22 plants in a couple of hours with lively company!

Nancy was quick to comment on how therapeutic is was to work in someone else’s garden, where she didn’t have the stress of seeing all the work that was involved beyond what we’d finish that day. Yes, I still have much weeding to do but what a pleasure it is to admire the neat, weed-free rows of healthy tomatoes in the garden.