Keeping Up With The Figs Plus The Late Summer Garden

Our fig tree started last week to present fruit ripe enough for picking. Presently it is yielding about twenty large figs daily. Learning from our massive blackberry harvest earlier in the season, I knew I wanted to process our figgy bounty in a similar way. Without generating any more heat than what the summer was already providing along with retaining as much vitamin content as possible, the uncooked fruit in the case of the blackberries were put through a Foley mill followed by an addition of confectioner's sugar per sweetness preference; in the case of the figs, they, along with maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg added to taste, were pureed with a stick blender. Once portioned and popped into the freezer, these home-grown fruits will be ready for future use in all kinds of goodies. I do reserve daily some fresh fig puree to mix into yogurt or if I am experiencing a super home-grown-fruit-appreciation day, I make a tall parfait to take out into the garden. It showcases our blackberries, blueberries, and figs all in one fell swoop. First goes in a layer of crumbled blueberry muffin, followed with the spiced fig puree, blackberry coulis, and yogurt. Topped with more muffin crumbs and a deluge of fig puree and blackberry coulis, it is out of this world with the goodness of fruit.

I love digging a spoon in and seeing swirls of fig puree and blackberry coulis spontaneously appear in a plethora of patterns.

  

A blueberry muffin crumb gracing the gustatory situation just makes everything even better.

Not only are fig trees vigorous, they are also easy to grow and maintain. Pruning is not that difficult as the wood isn't too hard. Since arriving here ten years ago, I haven't yet fertilised it. I do water it in between rains during summer. How to know when they are ripe? First thing, you need to know the colour for your fig variety when it's mature. Ours is mostly purplish brown with swatches of green. Also the fig should not be right angles to its twig/branch, but instead be drooping a bit. Additionally when pressing ever so gently, it will feel like a small balloon filled tightly with air. Lastly, though not always, there will be a drop of juice oozing from the bottom centre. Those are best eating right out of hand immediately. Picking involves slightly twisting the stout stem that afixes each fig to its branch until there's a plump packet of delight sitting in your palm. Since their skin is fragile, bruising easily which is why storebought figs are expensive, place each fig in a single layer. Recycled egg cartons are great as fig harvest baskets.

Two thirds of our tree is in our garden and the other third is in .  .  .

. . . in the yard of a refrigeration depot which is directly behind our urban garden. When their entrance is open I can harvest figs from that side. This coming late winter, I will remember to prune that part of the tree which presently is touching the ground!

Late summer is such a lovely time. It's so enjoyable to sit under the pergola and gaze upon . . .

. . . all the abundance.

Out in the front garden, the border directly in front of the balcony stairs leading to the front entrance door is a tropical riot of yucca and canna with a cooling splash of temperate dahlias, lobelia, and sedum.

À la prochaine!

Late Summer Garden 2019

There's a paradoxical edge in the air. The pervasive mellowness of late-summer laziness when much already has been harvested, specifically rhubarb, asparagus, peas, potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, is brushing against the beginning bustle of sowing for autumnal crops such as beets, carrots, kale, and tansy along with picking plus preserving peaches, plums, the second flush of raspberries, and figs. Watering and mowing chores are being replaced by weeding and clipping hedges such as ivy, laurel, and the wild area's brambles. Ivy covering walls/fences and pergola pillars gets about four trimmings per year chez nous. This one will be the last until late winter/early spring. When the cutting back is vigorous, dead leaves tucked deep into the vines will show. Through time they will flutter down on their own accord or be covered with new growth. This final trim was done a little too late as clusters of berries which sustain starlings through winter already had started developing so though some unfortunately got the axe, I made sure the ones up high were spared as on the ivy-covered wall in the below photo's bottom left-hand corner.

But the bustle is not exactly a bustle. Even it is pervaded with a sense if not exactly of laziness, then one of satiety with the promise of more to come. This halo of contentment hovering over our little city plot is reminiscent of the much larger one that floated over a farming community we visited about ten years ago south of Grenoble. In exchange of our being custodians for a century-old country property while their owners went abroad we got to spend two weeks during late August in an active agricultural setting.  The large house more in shambles than not is referred to on local maps as Le Chateau hence at one point in our stay a pair of hikers stared with confused disappointment over the chain-barred dirt road entrance at the rather dilapidated structure in process of being renovated. We made sure the horses got their daily water and the orchard's apples got picked and stored. As we hiked around fields dotted with bales of hay and walked through narrow village streets where workers were making sure roofs were in good repair for the coming winter, this dual sense of activity laced with satisfied fulfilment was everywhere. 

At the moment in our urban garden, there's a bumper crop of peaches! As I pick up the fragrant ones volunteering easy harvesting by their dropping to the ground, I hear neighbours' chickens clucking, clucking, clucking along, in their own feathery universe, bringing memories of our stay in that farming village where the sounds of domesticated animals were everywhere, from horses to cows, and of course chickens.

The fig harvest looks to be a record breaker also.

Beets still have a ways to go in developing their roots, but a few leaves here and there have been plucked to go into minestrone.

It's a common saying among gardeners that the best crop yield often is found on the compost heap. Ours at present is covered with squash and tomato plants.

The front garden's lavender, abelia, purple plum tree, and potted heather are bathed in flitting shadows cast by the much taller and still fully leaved cherry plum and box elder trees. Within a couple of months the shadowy dance will become more subdued once those trees start to shed their leaves.

Companions to the heather are a solar lamp and floppy, chartreuse echeveria. The succulent will put out welcomed, cheery, bright-yellow blooms in late winter.

Lavender cradles pink, low-growing dahlias.

It will get a clipping after flowering.

Deadheading regularly will keep dahlias blooming right into autumn like these lovely, single, red ones set in a dramatic background of yucca with its sword-shaped leaves.

À la prochaine!

Midwinter Garden 2019 Part 2

Just after I sowed a pea bed, frosty winds came bearing down, so before twilight deepened any further, the bed got a cozy horticultural fleece tucked snugly around it. This morning, the cover was stiff with ice. Here's hoping the shallowly planted pea seeds are still viable.

One of the first perennial food crops that gets attention is asparagus. A violet-tinged spear tip here and there means their patch needs some work.

Since the six-year old asparagus planting lustily overgrown its original border of terracotta roofing tiles, the tiles have been removed hence I am in process of digging a trench around the bed, heaping the displaced soil onto the bed itself. Heaped soil is great for asparagus by keeping the bottom of their stalks in the dark, thus blanching them a bit.

Moss fills the space between lichen-covered pavers.

You would be forgiven if you mistook these glorious skeletons of hydrangeas as a flurry of glasswing butterflies.

Lamium galeobdolon—one of its several common names is yellow weasel snout (!)—has turned its veins burgundy.

A cyclamen unfurls a burst of crimson, laughing at the wind and the cold.

Shade-loving, fragrant sweet violets have spread along the west side of the house forming a carpet because of their powerful way of seed dispersal: their pods snap open, injecting seeds far and wide.

A pop of yellow is always welcome. Thanks, stonecrop!

Each year, I keep adding what is regarded in horticultural jargon as green bones. We talkin' evergreen. One of the older and venerable 'bones' is this yucca which spent the first half of its twenty years in a pot on a Grenoble balcony and the second half in Angoulême soil. It now has several trunks and is close to my height.

À la prochaine!

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  Diana Studer

  Will you change from G+ comments on your blog? That is going to sunset too.
  
  I nurture one pot of violets.

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  Michelle Beissel

  +Diana Studer , if Google allows the maintaining of past comments, then since I hardly get comments outside of G+, I'll opt for the status quo as I really love re-reading old G+ comments when I check past posts (my blog is my recipe book). If not, then all those comments will disappear and that would be sad. Yay for that pot of violets!

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  Diana Studer+1

  I think the G+ comments will disappear. But there has been NO feedback from Google.
  Maybe edit the comments you value into the text of the blog post? (Which is what I did when I edited posts from my former blog to the current one)

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  Michelle Beissel+1

  +Diana Studer , excellent idea. Thanks!

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  Diana Studer+1

  and do it soonish ... they keep jumping the date forward!

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  Kim Quinn+1

  The hydrangea leaves are so beautiful! I enjoy your posts so much and keep 2 small garden beds, 3x6 and 3x8. They were allowed to rest this past year with a cover crop of hairy vetch, clover, tillage radishes (pods on stems, yummy!) and supposedly field peas. Never saw any of those. It was mixed in April and broadcast over and just whacked 3 or 4 times through the summer when it hit knee height. Now, I am dreaming of herbs, Kale, chard, tomatoes herbsherbsherbs. Wish I had a bona-fide rosemary hedge!💜

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  Michelle Beissel

  +Kim Quinn , thank you so much!
  
  Your garden interface sounds wonderful (I enjoy whacking cover crops, too). Keep dreaming (and doing). Rosemary is easy to propagate so all you need is a starter plant. If you run out of soil, and you have some cemented area, you can make a potted hedge.

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Diana Studer

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We have a potted hedge on two sides of our kitchen patio. Third side is an in the ground planter (and the fourth is garden) Ours is spekboom Portulacaria afra (which is also edible in salad, a different taste and texture)