Gardening & Lifestyle Articles by Jennifer Adamson
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Jennifer writes about her experiences in gardening, travel and her passion for helping people better understand their potential through the art of Face Reading. Enjoy some of Jennifer's Articles written especially for Astoria Magazine below.
photograph of Jennifer by Trina Astor-Stewart |
There’s a lonely little daffodil in my garlic patch!
By: Jennifer Adamson
(photographs of daffodile and garlic in Jennifer's garden were taken by her husband, Derek Figueira)
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I was expecting garlic, but it was a pleasant surprise to find the one flower bulb I had forgotten to dig and relocate boldly growing where no bulb had a right to be, blooming away in my garlic patch.
This beautiful daffodil, a true harbinger of spring and good weather reminded me of a song I used to hear and sing as a kid. To tell my sons there really was a song about a petunia in an onion patch sent them both into peels of hysterical laughter, even funnier when I proceeded to sing the whole song! I really think they thought I was joking; there couldn’t possibly be a song about THAT! But enough about flowers, let’s get back to what’s really important. . . |
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| Nothing excites me more than seeing nature’s promise of wonderful organic garlic right in my own backyard. I am thrilled beyond measure that my beautiful Siberian Purple, Korean Purple and Russian Red hard neck garlic are growing oh so robustly and my hot and spicy Fish Lake 40 soft neck garlic is delicately pushing its way up through the earth getting ready for the dry hot summer they are forecasting we’ll have. Garlic loves the heat and dry weather, so this is going to be a great year for garlic! In stores you’ll recognize soft neck garlic as the type you see coming in from China, or braided in Vampire movies, and the hard neck garlic is usually seen hanging in bunches by the stem. |
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I remember last June when I left some hard neck garlic to flower, just to see what would happen? After the beautiful purple flowers died, teeny tiny garlic cloves (bulbils) grew all around the tall stem. I harvested the dried bulbils on the stem as I dug up the garlic. Some fell off into the garden. My grandfather’s voice sounded in my head “Let’s experiment” as it did when I was a little girl planting every seed I could find just to see what would happen. I had been told they would be too delicate to survive the winter, but I worked them into the soil anyway and lo and behold, they are sprouting up all over my garden like little blades of grass. I will be picking them to use as garlicky green onions in my cooking. They don’t ever amount to any kind of big heads of garlic, but they sure are tasty and tender and will fill the flavour gap until I start harvesting green garlic as well as curly Q garlic scapes in June and then the succulent, heavy, hearty full grown bulbs in July. |
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Stay tuned for this season’s Scapes, green garlic, then garlic harvesting in upcoming articles!
____Visit Jennifer Adamson's website
Personology or the Art of Face Reading ...After all, your life is written on your face!
The Art of Face Reading has been around for thousands of years and yet few people know how the understanding of what is written on their faces can help them.
They say the eyes are the window of the soul and your face is the mirror of your personality. Studies show there is a connection between facial features, expression and personality traits. We all know our faces change over the years.
A person with a hard life, has these cares all written on their face, the stress, the worry.
A happy individual or one who endeavors to practice a more light hearted look at life actually look more contented.
What if you could find out things that would help you look and feel better?
What if you could understand your personality better to achieve more in your life?
This is where a trained face reader like Jennifer can help. Jennifer Adamson is a gentle and caring person trained in physiognomy or the art of face reading.
You can find out more from Jennifer Adamson’s website coming soon.
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The following articles are some of Jennifer's previous writings for Astoria Magazine for you to enjoy.
November! It's time to plant garlic!
Garlic: Ready, Set, Grow!
By: Jennifer Adamson
...The ad reads:
Wanted: Vegetables for my garden. Interviews to take place in person Thursday, October 14th 2PM
Gardener: “You’re not a vegetable, you’re an herb!”
Garlic Clove: “Actually, I’m classified as both herb and vegetable”
Gardener: “So, tell me, garlic clove, what makes you think you are qualified to become a candidate for a spot in my garden?”
Garlic Clove: “My main attributes, besides my unique and highly prized flavour are my high yield and low maintenance”
Gardener: “Hmm, You don’t look very big . . .”
Garlic Clove: “True, but for every clove like me that you plant, I yield one big bulb with many cloves, and we can be planted quite close together, also increasing yield in a small area”
Gardener: “Well, I’m looking for low maintenance candidates too”
Garlic Clove: “Then I’m perfect for you – I don’t mind a few weeds, you don’t need to water me; I get by on what the rain brings me, and because you plant me in the fall, you don’t have to spend any time on me in the spring when you’re busy planting other vegetables”
There’s nothing quite like pulling the tall green spikes out of your garden in July reaching down into the ground and discovering that the one little clove, all but forgotten from last fall’s planting, has miraculously turned into a plump, deliciously pungent, weighty, juicy bulb of garlic.
In Southern Ontario planting takes place toward the end of October and into early November. Garlic (like flower bulbs) needs that cold hibernation period and months of frozen slumber in the earth to prepare it for the growth that takes place in the warm weather. The rule of when to plant garlic is this: The weather needs to be warm enough that the roots will set, but not so cold that the ground is frozen and past the time of hot weather when garlic could sprout and the tender new green shoots be killed off by frost and snow. Some say the very best time is just after the first frost of fall.
What kind of garlic to plant, ah, that’s the question! There are two main types of garlic, soft neck and hard neck. You can tell which type you are holding by bending the stem down near the bulb. If it bends, it’s soft neck and if it is very rigid, it’s hard neck. Soft neck is the kind you see braided and hanging in the background in old vampire movies while hard neck garlic is often gathered in a bunch and tied with colorful string by the stems. Soft neck has an outer ring of big cloves and an inner ring of smaller cloves while hard neck garlic has a hard stem right down to the bottom of the bulb with one row of big cloves circling around it. Soft neck garlic is said to store better, and is usually the kind you will find in the grocery stores. Hard neck garlic needs more care taken in storage, but in my estimation the amazing flavour is well worth the effort.
Now, the quest is to find that perfect clove for planting. It can be as easy as looking in your pantry and picking a plump good sized clove (though unless it has partially sprouted it may have been sprayed with a growth inhibiter); going to a gardening centre or farmer’s market or, my very favorite way - going to a country fair and talking to the farmer/gardener who grew the garlic on display for sale. Farmers and hobby gardeners are usually willing to share all kinds of tips for growing and storing their particular type of garlic.
At the moment I am planting mostly the Siberian Purple Hard Neck organic garlic that I got on Manitoulin Island eight years ago. It has nicely altered it’s DNA to grow well in my soil and weather conditions, yielding bigger and bigger heads every year. I’m experimenting for the first time with three other kinds: two hard neck varieties I acquired at the Milford fair – Russian Red and Korean Purple and a soft neck variety local to Prince Edward County called Fishlake 40, or as I like to call it “Forte” as it is a very hot and spicy variety.
Garlic is very easy to plant. Find a sunny location, minimum 6-8 hrs sun is best, if you’ve got a garden, you’ll already have the best spot picked out. You don’t need too much room; a mere eight inches between plants will suffice. Turn the soil over, and with a small trowel, plant the garlic two and a half times as deep as the clove is tall. Roughly two to three inches deep. Plant the round end down and pointy end up. Cover it up and Bob’s your uncle. I usually put some crushed egg shells on top of the ground above the clove so I know exactly where the plant will come up. Eggshells nourish the soil and slugs and snails don’t like to crawl over them. I sometimes save up my eggshells all winter, crush them up and border my whole garden with them to deter those slimy slitherers.
While you are waiting for spring and summer to come, start saving the mesh bags you get from onions and lemons/limes, they are excellent for storing the garlic once it’s harvested.
More about harvesting in an upcoming article. There are actually three different crops you get from garlic at different times of the year, my spring garlic article will be about harvesting scapes and will have harvesting tips and even a few very creative and yummy recipes from amazing restaurants in the area.
For now acquiring cloves and waiting for that perfect planting period and plot is all you need to think about.
Happy planting!
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Garlic - The Great e-'Scape!
June 2010
By: Jennifer Adamson -
Photographs by: Derek Figueira
Ahhh, can you smell it? The inviting, mouth watering smell of garlic beckons as I prepare to harvest the first two side crops from my beautiful garlic bounty.
It’s June and the 'scapes' are set and curling just so, the green garlic is whispering “take me today” as I walk toward my very own organic, home grown, lovingly nurtured, genetically-imprinted-in-my-garden-over–eight-generations, garlic patch. Gardening for those of us who love it is naturally our great escape!
Yes, it’s true, I confess, I am enamoured with my garlic! What other crop can you think of that says ROBUST, VITAL, HEALTHY, HEARTY quite like garlic.
I can almost imagine the thick Russian accent and deep voice as my Siberian Purple Hardneck Garlic says things like “I laugh in your face you bugs, and you slugs, you are no threat to me, I am invincible!”
Growing hardneck garlic definitely has its advantages as it produces an interim crop called 'scapes' – the wonderful tops that start to curl mid June that can (and some say should) be cut off to send strength to the developing bulb. They taste like a mild garlic/green onion and are delicious chopped up and tossed into stir frys, soups and salads.
Garlic scapes can be chopped up and frozen or made into delectable garlic scape pesto by blending with olive oil, parmesean cheese, salt, pepper, parsley and pine nuts and kept in the fridge for a week or frozen for future use.
And then there’s green garlic. Europeans know and love to eat their garlic this way. It is garlic at its freshest, picked before full maturity and before the individual cloves are fully set and encapsulated. When you want the freshest of fresh milder garlic taste, this is what you can go for. I was inspired to cook a lovely borscht yesterday and the fresh green garlic I added along with the dill hit the spot. My mouth still waters every time I think back to the cornucopia of flavours that burst forth in my mouth as I enjoyed this delicious soup.
Green garlic resembles a pregnant leek. A pure white bulging, glistening lower part by the root, tapering up to a light green stem, becoming a deeper rich green near the top.
Depending on just how immature your garlic is, you may be able to chop it all the way up the stem and use it all; the more mature it gets, the woodier and less edible the middle of the stem becomes.
If you don’t want to sacrifice any of your own garlic before maturity, you can go to your nearest farmers market and pick up some fresh green garlic there. One of the most commonly grown varieties across Ontario and Quebec is Magic, a hardneck variety easily grown organically. It is displayed and sold with all the green stock and leaves attached, a true testament to its freshness.
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Now, in my own garden, I tend to remove most of the scapes, though I do keep a few plants intact and watch the magical slow motion dance as the scapes uncurl, flower and as each individual flower in the ball gets germinated, the ovary of each one swells to produce teeny, tiny cloves (called bulbils). Unlike planting by cloves, these bulbils are not clones of the mother plant, but genetically different and some say more intense or varied versions of their mother plants. The rub is that you have to wait two or three years of cultivating them into big enough cloves to make fair sized bulbs.
If you are presently growing hardneck garlic, experiment with leaving a few scapes in place, just to see how it affects your yield and witness bulbils growing. More on bulbils in my next article on harvesting! In the mean time, keep saving those mesh bags that you get onions, and citrus fruit in as they are perfect for storing your luscious, weighty, gorgeous garlic once it’s harvested.
Please scroll down to read Jennifer's winter article on growing garlic.
(looking for a farm fresh produce and farmer's markets in Durham Region Ontario ...click here)
“Edible Landscaping!?”
Article and photographs by: Jennifer Adamson
“What are you getting yourself into this time?!” my husband said to me with a chuckle and a smile as I told him the topic of the speaker I was going to hear that night.
Yes, it’s true, if it has anything to do with gardening I am willing to boldly go where I have never gone before, on cold and moonless nights over dark and treacherous roads to seek strange new places and people united in earthy endeavours.
The seed of this new adventure started germinating one Saturday morning listening to “Let’s Get Growing” with Marjorie Mason on CKDO 107.7FM/1580AM.
Marjorie was announcing her upcoming lecture to the Brooklin Horticultural Society entitled The Edible Garden – making gardening edible AND ornamental incorporating fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs and flowers along with all the basic staples that you would normally think of in a garden.
So, it being the appointed 3rd Wednesday of the month off I went. It looked like Election Night by the number of cars surrounding and people entering the Brooklin United Church for the meeting. The place was packed! People were lined up to pay for membership twenty people deep, there were raffles, BHS logo’d gardening clothes and hats, sweets and beverage table par excellence, bulbs, pots of crocuses, huge potted indoor plants, people catching up and talking gardening, and most mysterious of all were the crazy hats adorning the heads of many of the members.
I was impressed to learn from Dena that the Brooklin Horticultural Society has been in existence since 1921 boasting close to 300 members, with a few “happily driving from as far away as Enniskillen, Greenwood, Locust Hill, Pickering and Toronto”. From novices like Brian, an accountant with no background in gardening, but plenty of interest, to lifetime gardeners like Faye who as a child helped her dad as he planted row upon row of tomatoes, and to Fred, an avid orchid aficionado, all entwined by a common bond – the love of growing living plants.
Jone Webster, president, came to the podium in what I call her “Mother and Child Reunion” hat – eggs and feathers mostly, and welcomed back the members and explained to the newcomers the reason for all the hats - gardening and otherwise - was to get people back into the gardening mood after the winter hiatus.
Our guest speaker Marjorie Mason, of Mason House Gardens in Coppin’s Corners, proved both well informed and inspirational with her lecture about Potager (from the French potage – soup) or kitchen garden. She described in words and with a slide show how a potager is traditionally a small plot, frequently a pinwheel shape, close to the house, heavily planted and continually harvested throughout the season. As one crop finishes the next grows to fill the space left by the first. The ground is never walked on and harvesting and planting takes place by leaning into the garden.
The challenge and exhilaration of a potager is to make it as colourful, unusual, long lasting and beautiful as possible.
- parsnips left in the ground to harvest in March
- garlic planted in the fall and pulled up in July
- citrus marigolds nestled right up to broccoli to confuse cabbage moths
- early dark red lettuce leaves picked until the plants bolt into beautiful tall dark red conical shapes
- multicoloured mesclun planted in three different spots, weeks apart, grazed on all season long instead of being pulled up by the roots
- a fruit tree, sundial or pole bean teepee is often the focal point in the middle of the potager
...And beyond the obvious beauty of a potager and the delicious bounty it can provide, try these potager delicacies to enhance your meals.
- calendula flowers for rice dishes
- orange, purple or green coloured cauliflowers
- nasturtium leaves for sandwiches
- lavender for cream sauces and desserts
…the possibilities are endless!
Marjorie is a guiding force behind the Fairmont Royal York Restaurant’s rooftop potager. Not only do they grow vegetables but also boast fresh berries, herbs, fruit, six bee hives and wine grapes for their own teeny tiny winery. Their wonderful honey won 2nd prize at last year’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
To add another dimension of excitement to Marjorie’s task this year, the rooftop garden in all its glory is the vista viewed by distinguished guests staying in the Royal Suites of the Fairmont Royal York.
This year none other than Queen Elizabeth II will be feasting her eyes on the bounty of the Fairmont Royal York rooftop from the Royal Suites during her visit to Toronto in May 2010.
So there you have it, a quick peak into the Brooklin Horticultural Society and a brief introduction to Marjorie Mason and potager.
For more information click here to see the Brooklin Horticultural Society’s quarterly newsletter for all the details of the future meetings and events. (upcoming seed swap March 24th)
Visit: Marjorie’s Mason House Gardens, opening for the season April 1st.
Writers Write, Right? – And They Slam!
Yes! Saturday morning sleep-in! Oh, but no, not July 10th, 2010, it was the morning I was to attend the breakfast meeting and Word Slam of the Writers' Community of Durham Region, Ontario Canada.
I’d heard about it on FaceBook, seen the announcement advertised in our local Snap Newspaper Updates and thought I’d give up the luxury of listening to the birds, rolling over for another dream and snuggling with my bed buddy to see what all the fuss was about.
Waiter! - Breakfast for One Hundred! It was hosted at The Dubliner in Whitby, a perfect venue for five score and more writers to break their fast, find words of encouragement and kindred spirits for this solitary hobby and /or profession.
But what’s a 'Word Slam'? Apparently a Word Slam starts with participants writing an original story, coming out before a judging panel and performing their piece in three minutes or less, competing for a coveted spot in the final line up. The finalists are showcased once a year, and WCDR members and guests flock to listen and cast their votes for their favorite presenter at this special event. And it was special! The Slamists (is that a word) or Slammers all looked so cool and poised as they walked onto the stage, the audience collectively held their breaths as each one began their timed address.
Holy Cow! They were all so good! I didn’t think it was possible to convey much of anything in three minutes, but they sure did pack a lot of adventures and ideas into the allotted time! There were tears, laughter, gasps, snickers, arms waving, shouting, leaning, grinning, jeering, singing, emoting, paper toting crème de la crème slammers. The seven finalists did such a fabulous job entertaining the crowd, it was hard to vote for just one. They were all in various stages of their writing careers, from neophytes to published novelists and world traveled professional story tellers, giving their all in just three minutes. It was terrifically, and terrifyingly (imagining myself on stage in their place) exciting.
Click on this link and go take a look at the video of the winner of the Slam, Sue Reynolds.
The WCDR has been around since 1995, starting out as the Writing Circle of Durham Region have appropriately – due to the huge membership, vision, and community presence - become the Writers' Community of Durham Region.
They boast fabulous guest speakers every month. Saturday morning September 11th , none other than published author, blogger, humour columnist Neil Crone (known to most as character Fred Tupper of “Little Mosque on the Prairie”) will be “talking about the ticklish challenge of being funny on the page (or screen).”
And that’s not all folks, you can treat yourself to a workshop after the breakfast event, all in the name of igniting and keeping lit that writing spark that lives within.
I can’t say enough about the amazing job they do and the exciting ambiance of being in the presence of all these creatively energized people.