Gimli Fibre Spinning Project
Hello friends,
Over the summer I spun up some 100% Corriedale combed top in the colourway Gimli from Dye Happy Yarn. My friend Karyn picked it up for me at a fibre festival last year, and I chose this colourway to spin because it reminds me of autumnal shades, which I love.
Not wanting to think too hard about the process, I split the combed top in half, and spun up two singles on my spinning wheel using my default drafting method.
The 2 plied yarn ended up being approximately fingering weight width, and a total 215 metres long.
The washed and dried yarn is now in storage, along with many other handspun project yarns, ready for me to eventually decide what to do with them all.
I find spinning to be one of my favorite crafts, as I find the whole process very relaxing, but deciding what to do with the yarn afterward, and getting a chance to actually knit or weave with it, never usually happens. Maybe one day I may decide to sell some of my excess spinning projects to make space for more fiber projects in my life, but at the moment I'm just happy to squish the yarn whenever I walk past it.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Tomato Seed Saving In Late Summer
Hello friends,
Late summer and early autumn is the perfect time of the year for seed saving in your garden. One of my favorite plants to save seed from are tomato plants. After a number of years of finding the perfect tomato varieties for us to grow, I like to save these seeds, as they have become acclimated to our growing conditions.
Each year I harvest the most squishy and ripe Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Grosse Lisse, Italian Island Bay, and Lebanese tomatoes off the vine, and then I bring them into the kitchen to process. My best advice for doing this is to label each tomato with a sharpie as you take each tomato variety off the vine, as otherwise, I promise you, you will forget which tomato variety is which...
The next step is to squish each tomato over a kitchen sieve to catch all the seeds, and then scoop out any seeds which are still attached to the tomato flesh. Once all the tomato seeds are in the sieve, wash them with water to remove the protective gel coating. Using your fingertips to pry the seeds from the gel coating really helps a lot with this step.
Once the seeds are as clean as they can be, hit the sieve containing the seeds onto a paper towel which is labeled with the seed variety. Spread the seeds out onto the paper towel and leave them to dry overnight.
The next day peel the dried seeds off the paper towel and pop them into a paper seed envelope (or whatever system you normally use). Store them over autumn and winter until it's time to sow seed once again.
Seed saving really is a great way to not only save money while gardening, but also to grow plants which are acclimated to your growing conditions.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Dehydrating Apples For Snacks
Hello friends,
My parents dropped by our home one day in early March, and brought with them a 10 L bucket full of golden delicious apples off their tree for us. As it's also currently apple harvesting season in our garden, I added them to our growing pile of homegrown apples, and started thinking about what to do with them all.
Our apples trees are the varieties Ballerina Waltz, and Ballerina Flamenco, highly compact, columnar apple trees ideal for small spaces. These apple varieties are bred to be no more than 40 cm wide, and up to 4 metres tall, with all the branches being completely covered in apples in autumn, making them perfect for urban gardens, and also for hedges. I really do recommend Ballerina apple trees if you don't have the space for fully grown apple trees, and they come in different varieties, so you can pick which apple types you'll be harvesting and eating.
Ballerina Waltz is a crisp and juicy variety with a slight tang, suitable for eating fresh, dehydrating, and cooking.
Ballerina Flamenco are eating apples, which also make a lovely apple jelly.
After some thought I wrote a small list of apple making possibilities, and got to work, first of all making dehydrated apples for snacks. I filled a bowl with water, and added the juice of a couple of lemons (from our lemon tree), to stop the apples from turning brown while I processed them.
Once the some of the apples were all cut and soaked in lemon juice water, they were patted dry before placing on dehydrator trays. They were put in our dehydrator and dried at 60˚C for 5 hours, with them being flipped over halfway through.
The dried apple slices were then tested for dryness, before being stored in a plastic container.
Dehydrated apples are great snacks, whether at home, or for when you're going on a walk and you need a little pick me up. The three different types of apples I dried all taste very different, with the Golden Delicious apples being super sweet, the Flamenco apples being nicely balanced between sweet and tart, and the Waltz apples being quite tart. It makes for a nice mix, and it's a pleasant surprise as the apples are eaten.
Unfortunately we didn't use up all the apples sitting in the 10L bucket, so hubby made a huge batch of apple pie filling with some cinnamon, and I've stored it away in our chest freezer to use over the coming autumn and winter months.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Rearranging the South Side Garden
Hello friends,
This summer I wasn't very happy with my south side garden. The blueberry bushes weren't getting enough sun, and didn't produce many blueberries, and the gooseberry bush as always didn't produce very nice fruit for us to eat.
As I was tidying up our blackcurrant bush after we finished harvesting its fruit, the gooseberry bush beside it poked me in the butt for the very last time. I was sick of getting attacked by it, and also since it wasn't producing any good fruit, it was time to pull the whole thing out from the ground. Before you can say "where's my garden fork", I had started cutting the gooseberry bush back so I could access the inner part of the plant.
I did indeed get out my garden fork, and dug out the gooseberry bush within in a matter of minutes. The hardest part was shoving all the gooseberry bush cuttings into a green waste bag without getting stabbed by it as I did so.
With the gooseberry plant out of the ground, I turned my attention to the blueberry bushes. I dug them out and transplanted them into large orange pots which recently held dahlia seedlings (before I made the decision that I didn't want to keep them in my breeding program). After filling up the pots with potting mix, planting the two blueberry bushes, and giving them an appropriate blueberry fertiliser (acid based), I moved the pots into their final positions on the patio.
Now the blueberry plants get all day sun, and they are much happier, even putting on new growth within their first week. Their small amount of fruit from this season have finally started changing colour, after staying green all summer long. I now just have to keep remembering to water them regularly so they don't dry out.
As for the empty spaces in the south side garden, I used some of my flower farming earnings to invest in two hydrangea bushes. The south side garden gets more shade than anywhere else in the garden, and also we need some privacy on that side of the house due to a nosy neighbour. I chose the paniculata hydrangea, Limelight, for the gooseberry spot, and it has conical shaped lime green/cream flowers which are popular in the floristry industry, and as a bonus it also reaches up to a height of 2 m tall.
In the blueberry bushes position, I planted the paniculata hydrangea Sundae Fraise, which has creamy flowers which transition to strawberry pink flowers in autumn. It is a stunning hydrangea which reaches 1.5 m tall, making it perfect for giving us some more privacy on that side of the garden.
This wasn't a planned gardening project when I started out pruning the blackcurrant bush, but I'm very pleased with how it has turned out. Hopefully in the future I will get bigger blueberry harvests, and the hydrangea plants will provide us both privacy and flower farming income in the years to come.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
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