No need for a sugar house to make your very own maple syrup

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Our syrup is of great quality.

Louise :

Well, it is not fresh news : the time for making maple syrup is over. It's started earlier than usual here, because of the fair weather we had at the end of winter. I'm already anxious for the next season!

For the 2012 round, we haven't produce as much as we could have : We waited too long to tap our trees.

Quite unfortunate, the sirup's quality was very high. Anyway, what we produced (about 2,5 liters) was all worthwhile, as much for the product itself as for the sheer pleasure.

I thought I could publish this article way before the season ended, alas! I haven't made the deadline. But it is not a loss since my topic here is to share my personnal experience with gardeners new to this bounty, who might be tempted to try it next year. 

If you do want this adventure, it's actually a good idea to think and to prepare yourself a year in advance. First, you'll need to know what kind of maple trees you have in your yard. A fast internet search and you are there. Here's a very useful link for winter identification of maple trees. Or you have this this app, if you are technologically inclined. 

Take note that you can successfully tap sugar maple (Acer Saccharum), but you could do so with black, red or silver maple as well, and even boxelder maple.  The sugar concentration will vary from one species to another. 

It's also possible to tap birch, but the sugar concentration in its sap is less important, so you'll need 100 liters of birch sap to make 1 liter of syrup and this syrup will taste... like molasses ! By the way, the production method to make syrup out of this tree is not exactly the same as for maple syrup, and the harvesting season differs too.  I learned recently that you can tap poplar trees and walnut trees as well. I suppose each gives a syrup with a distinctive flavor.

So, do you have a few maple trees in your yard? Then harvest is near at hand. No such luck? What if a neighbor had some ? Or maybe a cousin ? Grandma ? You could offer your services as a voluntary acericultor and share the harvest with the owner ! 

Here is my personnal technique to harvest maple sap. If however you want to do it in a more sophisticated fashion, I have placed useful links at the bottom of this article.

How many maples do you need?

Not that much, as a matter of fact. With the help of tips found on the internet , here's a bit of maths (also take a look at the Ontario link at the end of this text): As soon as a maple tree reaches 25 cm in diameter (10 inches), we can tap it without risk. The more it grows, the more taps it can support, up to 4. So a 62cm or more maple tree (25 inches and more) can give up to 4 taps. If you have enough maple on your yard to total 6 taps, you should be able to produce about 1 gallon of syrup. It's enough to cover the needs of a family for a year. Well of course, it always depends how much of the stuff you eat... I know a couple who consumes 4 gallons per year.

In short, I have at my home 1 venerable sugar maple that still produces (we put only 3 taps on it in respect for its age - over 100 years old) and three others big enough for a tap each. Over all, I have 6 buckets, allowing our harvest to hover around 40 gallons of maple sap, which after boiling will become 1 gallon of beautiful golden syrup. 

Don't worry : 40 gallons is not too much to handle, since it's not harvested all at once. Me and my husband work full time and with a little bit of organisation, it's quite manageable, especially since the season lasts only a few weeks.

Simple, basic material for the harvest:

To collect the precious maple sap, you will need spouts - or spiles (those little metal drippers drilled in the tree) and tin buckets, with lids. We bought ours from a sugar house owner, many years ago. But sometimes hardware stores or farm stores stock these too.

You'll need a hammer and a crankshaft (or a power drill with an extension or even better - a battery operated one). The drill bit needs to be of the same diameter as your spouts. We noticed that taps receiving sunshine give more water, so don't drill on the north face, because you will not harvest much.

The lids are useful to prevent rain water and impurities to fall in the buckets. It's not bulletproof however and you will eventually find dust, pieces of bark, moss and lichen and even drowned insects in your precious liquid. Don't panic! You will just need to filter the liquid before boiling it and all will be well. For this part, you will need a sieve and a clean linen. 

My filtration system is very simple :
a metallic sieve placed in a bowl...

... covered with the clean linen folded in two or four.
I pour the sap through and voilà! If there's a lot of dust in the water,
I may filter a second time. Some will want to filter the syrup itself. I don't find this a necessary step. My syrup stays clear and beautiful,
but sometimes it forms a deposit in the bottom of the jar (like wine dregs), but it doesn't affect the taste.

Some days the sap flow will be heavy, it is therefore useful to have a big holding container of some kind to store it if you can't boil it right away. The sap can be kept for 24 hours in a chilly place. Longer than that and it will spoil - the taste will be altered and the sap will start to become cloudy. As long as it is still cold outside, you can keep it there, out of the sun. I found that a giant water bottle (those that we place in distributors upside-down) is a perfect receptacle for storing maple sap (do invest in a big funnel, it will save you toil and trouble). A clean bucket can also do the work fine, as any container of  5 or 10 gallons will be good too. If you'd rather, you can definitely just drink the maple sap, it is delicious by itself (watch out however, drinking a considerable quantity may provoke diarrhea in some individuals - Partly evaporated sap can have that effect as well (in French, we call this liquid treat "reduit", which means "reduced". For my part, I'm not affected in either case).

Finally you'll need a big cooking pot and a source of heat to bring your liquid to a boil. A skimmer or a big metal spoon will be very useful too to take out the foam that appears during the process.

You'll need a big cooking pot.

If you make your syrup inside and you heat your house with a wood stove, you can simply place the pot on top and let the water evaporate slowly. 

It's Lee Reich's method, an american agronomist - his site is very interesting, by the way. Otherwise you will have to spend on electricity or gas to boil all this liquid. On the other end, you will recycle this heat to warm the house and you will humidify it as well, especially if - like me - the inside of your house is very dry. If you don't start the stove's ventilation (in part or during the entire operation), you will keep the moisture inside.

I often hear people object to making syrup

inside : "You'll end up with sticky walls!"
Not at all actually! Your kitchen will definitely fog up : 

it's the ideal occasion to wash the walls easily,

along with the inside of the windows, 
the ventilation system and the ceiling!

On non-stop days of boiling however, even with the stove's ventilation, the moisture in your house will be noticeable. 

I'll give you reassurance right away : your walls won't become sticky (if they are, it's because they were already dirty or greasy, or according to Lee Reich, if you boil your water so hard that it splashes on the walls). The moisture that sticks to walls is clean water from evaporation, just like the one after a long hot shower in the bathroom. Since only the water from the solution evaporates, what's left in the pot is sugar and will make the syrup once it's concentrated enough (i.e. lots of water gone).

Personnally I use this humidity to clean easily all the surfaces of my kitchen. But the rest of the house doesn't benefit from this steam bath, the quantity of vapour not being sufficient.

This year I wanted to try boiling the water outside. For that, I should build a portable rocket stove, but I didn't have the opportunity to get to it yet. Next year, hopefully... There are plans and videos on YouTube showing how to build one with 16 bricks or a couple of tin boxes, for instance. It's a very powerful system that doesn't pollute much and produces an intense heat without smoke. It uses a very little amount of wood. 

My boiling method : 

My technique could be more sophisticated. I'm sure, for example, that I could use a thermometer, but I started in a time where money was tight, so I learned to do without it. If you want the more precise and scientific method, check the documentation provided by the Ontario Government on the subject (link at the end of the article).

This pot was two thirds full and this is only a day's harvest.
I boiled it at medium heat for 6 hours, I skimmed it when needed
and I obtained 500 mL (2 cups) of syrup.

This cleansing steam perfumes the entire house. It's easy to imagine myself in a sugar house!
If I have to interrupt the process for several hours before the syrup is ready,
I store the half-boiled liquid (meaning maple sap that hasn't evaporate enough to be syrup)
in a chilly place (refrigerator for example) and start the process again later on.
Sometimes, I start a new patch with new water and when that water is close to syrup, I had this stored batch
from before.  You can pretty much add to your current batch some new maple sap anytime anyway.

To figure out when all of this as become syrup, my way has nothing scientific about it : I compare the taste to syrup from the previous year, if I still have some, or syrup from the grocery store. Texture is also a clue, but don't forget that boiling syrup doesn't have the same consistency, it will feel way more liquid than the one from the refrigerator!

Note : You can always boil anew a syrup that's too clear, but if you overdo it, you will end up with toffee, that you can spill over fresh, clean snow... if you had the foresight of storing some in the freezer, of course!

To learn more on maple syrup, it's nutritionnal values and its production, and to browse recipes, check Maple syrup producer's Federation of Quebec.

For a detailed method on how to tap your trees,  utensils, boiling process and preservation of the syrup, check this document from Ontario government on backyard maple syrup production.

Happy sugar season !

Harvest under the blanket of snow

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Irises are starting to peak from under the snow, Freya is disapointed by this weather,
but her playful youth drives her still to go explore outside.

Hélène :

Today in the backyard, the tranquility was only broken by the sound of the snow melting. This noise is remindful of rain, albeit without any sign of it. It's because last week, temperatures hovered around the 20 degrees (celcius) and this week it's around zero. And then it happened : last night a soft snow fell. We always worry for our plants in such times, especially our tulips and our trees - magnolia, lilac, personally my juneberry and my peach tree. But this snow melts fast, something we can attest to on these pictures : as I'm writing, most of it is already gone.

Daylillies are peaking in the front,
you can see two types of chives in the back.

And so the ground, which had plenty of time to thaw last week, is still workable. It's with this in mind that I made my way to the garden, in this peaceful beauty, and that I decided it was time to harvest a special vegetable I had purposefully left out of the harvest last fall, hoping to collect it this spring.

One heave of the shovel and voilà! Plump Jerusalem Artichokes showed! Helianthus Tuberosus, a remarkable plant, one that looks a bit like sunflower, but a whole deal taller, makes amazing edible tubers similar to the potato. It is rich in inulin and offers the benefit of having no starch (for those who can't have starch, take note). It was widely cultivated by amerindian tribes and has been often quoted as a good replacement for the potato. Here's the wikipedia page on the subject.

You can spot the tubers against the base of the wall, this beige mass covered with soil.
The beauty of this operation was that it took me only one plunge of the shovel
to take out the plant (I have a second one) and pull out a bunch sufficient enough
for my solitary lunch and still enough for my family's diner.

What's left after my lunch,
It weights 542g, and will make an exquisite vegetable for tonight!
And remember! Only one plunge of the shovel! I'm also pretty sure more
than half is still left underground.

And regarding what's left in the ground, here's the catch. Jerusalem artichokes are very invasive. So if you attempt to grow some in your garden, make sure to locate them in an area where you can control them.

Louise :

Jerusalem artichoke's tubers are like corn : They taste much better eaten fresh, not long after harvest.

They also have similarities with beans... they give gas. To avoid this with beans, the old trick is to add to the soaking water a bit of baking soda (don't use that water after however). Some persons claim that we can also use baking soda in the cooking water of Jerusalem artichokes, but I didn't try it yet. My trick is simply to eat them as fresh as possible and it doesn't give me any gas. So it's a major advantage to have them in your garden ready for the picking whenever you actually need them! 

Jerusalem artichokes have similarities with rhubarb too : once settled, they will virtually always come back because whenever you forget a tuber in the ground, a new plant will sprout from it (and it's not quite that easy to catch them all). I didn't choose a space yet where I want them "there forever", so I settled on making them grow in containers. It's a method that works perfectly well apparently, but one has to be careful to choose a very cheap plastic container, since the tubers have been known to deform them badly as they multiply and take up all the space inside. 

I planted 4 tubers inside in a big pot that previously contained a perrenial bought at a nursery. The plants will grow outside all summer and I'll be able to harvest the tubers in late fall. 





Jerusalem artichoke in all its glory, last fall



Hélène :

I would have liked to harvest my tubers last fall but spring offers so little in term of food that I resigned myself to try a spring harvest instead and that's how I came around to do my first harvest under the snow.

Seedlings are off to a good start!

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This year, the garden planning was (litterally) a game. You can see here the garden map, desired vegetables cards and mini-cards for desired flowers, flowers that will be used for companion planting.

Hélène :

Have you started you garden planification yet? Here plans, seed orders and seedlings have been started a while already! Of course, buying seeds instead of buying plants cost less, but the time and expertise required for success is not negligeable and it's definitely a sign of trouble for most (me included). I did talk about this, I once tried to sow seeds in a big container with usual potting mix from the store and it just didn't work. Last year, I finally equipped myself seriously with a heating mat and a small light setup (not this exact model, but the last year's equivalent). Results for last year : a couple of difficulties but for the first time, I tasted tomatoes and peppers that were very different, vegetables I couldn't have tasted any other way.



Light setup and a heating mat underneat. Notice
the aluminium hanging for maximum light reflection.
Also notice the setup is on top of a shelf,
a place cats can hardly reach.



This year, the game started with even more varieties of tomatoes and peppers. And I have to admit my experience of last year is already showing. It's easier, losses are reduced and the plants are vigorous! There is a couple of fine points I would have like to have known at the offset, points I would like to share (this list will most likely grow with the years to come, too).

1. It is hard to give too much light. And if you go for natural light, if you are like me in the north, this is not Californian sunshine, northern sun is not as hot. All in all, maximizing the light you give to the plants is a good investment, so be ingenious about it : use mirrors or aluminium to reflect the light as much as possible. Most light setups come with height-adjustable light. When the seedlings poke out of the soil, don't be afraid to bring the light really close, a couple of centimeters over the top is fine. It's even actually better then fine, because else, you will get spindly plants, you know those long plants that hardly hold up?

2. Heat makes a big difference! This way, the seeds will germinate instead of rotting, so place a heating mat underneat the greenhouse and even under the containers holding the small seedlings. This can make a world of difference between a living plant and a dead plant.



In the small plastic greenhouse, down left,
new seeds are ready to sprout.
 The plants around are 3 weeks old.

 3. As long as those seeds haven't sprout, keep them in a greenhouse like the one on the left picture or place a plastic bag on top of the container that will keep the humidity inside. Don't buy a greenhouse that's too big : Take the size you need. Last year I bought a 50-cells greenhouse, thinking I could use only a part of it. What a mistake! All plants that were adjacent to free cells never sprouted for lack of heat and humidity. If they had been surrounded by other growing plugs, it would have been fine.



Here's a small plant ready to move up in a
potting mix, vermicompost and perlite.



4. Normal potting mix works fine of course, but there is a couple of details that need mention. First of all, it contains very little nutrients and since it's sterile, it can't make more. Some people add a handful of garden soil so bacteria is introduced, making this new soil richer. Others add compost, which slowly release its nutrients, an ideal solution... when your compost bin is not under 4 feet of snow! There's also vermicompost (worm compost) - something I will try this year - but it needs to be well mixed with the potting soil and it shouldn't be on the top since it has a tendency of caking, making watering challenging. I also add perlite. It's  very fine volcanic rock, it's white (it's in the glass in the picture above) and it helps to retain water, making plants less likely to dry out. Watch out however, because perlite is so fine, it should be dampen before working with, since it produces a dust that can be irritating to the lungs if inhaled.

These roots clearly state it's time to place them in containers.

5. Don't wait too long before repotting, especially if you used plugs! A baby plant that's in a container really too big for it will possibly have a hard time, but a plant that's too big for its container is a dead sentence.

I hope these tips and tricks will inspire you, give you courage to try and succeed with seeds! Of course you will loose some plants, but don't despair. Plants have a will to live too and will be forgiving to beginners.



When you order seeds, the choice will be immense and varied,
 the selection definitely exceeds what a nursery can offer as plants.

Louise : 

If you don't have a heating mat, place your seedlings higher (closer to the ceiling, the air is usually warmer). Another old trick is to put your tray over the fridge (at least all night long).

Don't forget to acclimate your plants before bringing them fully outside. Choose a mild day, preferably overcast and without winds (or place the plants in a shady spot that also offers wind protection), take them out for short spells, 30 minutes a morning, 45 or 60 the afternoon and so on. The idea is to limit shock when the plants will be outside. Think about it : A transplanted plant already is having a shock. Change the light input, the temperature and the wind at the same time and you can kill it quite easily, or at least damage it enough to stunt its growth.

Have a delightful gardening season!

For winter, why not invite vegetables inside?

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Louise :

Watercress.
Charming, isn't it?

Tomatoes, potatoes, swedish turnip, garlic, lettuces or peppers, these are not plants that we imagine inside our homes. But why not? 

What do they have that's so different from our ornemental plants that beautify our living quarters? After all, these are plants, and some are very pretty. 

Actually, the big difference is that for a plant to be able to produce fruits or replace munched leaves, it requires more energy then when it just has to stay there and "be pretty". This producing plant will need more of everything (fertilizer, light and sometimes even warmth). 

A bunch of cherry tomatoes leaning lazily against the next planting pot.

But it's definitely possible to cultivate edible plants inside, with a little bit more care then what ornemental plants require. That's what I discovered in the winter 2010-2011. For those of you who are lucky enough to have a very sunny spot, it's even possible to use only natural light. When it comes to growing vegetables inside, I myself use two different techniques  that I will present here. 

A suspended garden

The first source of inspiration that allowed me to consider seriously the possibility of having a winter edible garden inside is the discovery, in january 2011, of the website Windowfarms, a site that proposes nothing less then to create a vertical hydroponic garden, simply hung in a window, at a very affordable price.

Picture published with the permission of Windowfarms.

This one is their manufactured model.
Water bottles or soft drinks bottles are recycled,
small basket filed with clay pebbles are the nest for plants,
a bit of silicone tubing, metal wire and hooks for hanging the structure, 

a timer and a small air pump (the same we use in aquariums) allow for the circulation of water,
artificial lighting (depending on the vegetables you want to grow and your situation) and a  sunny window.

There! You are now a " window farmer" !

For the big picture, hydroponic culture consist of growing plants without soil; we replace the soil with an inert substrate. This substrate offers a physical support for the plant; I use clay pebbles. The irrigation of those plants is done with pH balanced, fertilized water (naturally or chemically, up to you). Finally we have to provide enough light to allow plants to grow. Here's what Wikipédia, amongst many, have to say about hydroponics. 

My personnal experience 

The growth of my plants
has been fast from the beginning.
We were in February.

I built my first Windowfarm in January 2011. It was really simple, though not very pretty, because I was too anxious to try out this type of gardening to loose my time on such things as aesthetic frivolities (I can also be very lazy on occasion).

On this picture you can spot my young and tender vegetables, about a month pass germinating stage.  On the lowest level, I transplanted two climbing pole bean (they became monstrous). 

On the middle level, two nasturtium plants are nestled comfortably.

Finally on the third level, two cherry tomato plants found their home ("Christmas grape" and "Yellow Pear Shaped ").

Except for the nasturtiums, all of these plants were taking so much space that after a couple months of growth, a single more plant would not have survived in this window!

And then, it became serious 

One year after construction, my vertical garden produces vegetables that
are entirely organic, vegetables we can eat fresh while watching the
snowflakes fall just outside this very same window. And this without any artificial light. 

During that winter, I read almost every archived article on windowfarms.org 
(it's a lot of material to read). When I became more self-assured, I started to work on a more ambitious project. 

My windowfarm, built at the end of the 2010-11 winter.
Made of porcelain pots.
On this picture, it was just starting in function,
being only a couple of weeks old.

My goal was to create a windowfarm without plastic, a pretty one and one that wasn't relient on electricity to pump its water.

Taking inspiration in all I read, I decided to use glazed porcelain planters, made of the same material as an ordinary coffee mug.

I am very satisfied with the result, even with some corrections still needed on the overall conception and functioning of the system.

My three main goals have been achieved: my irrigation system is made of durable materials; it works without electricity (by gravity only) and barely contains any plastics. (This fall I replaced my plastic reservoirs with nice buckets made of galvanized steel covered in a baked paint.) Furthermore, this construction is really pretty (at least it is to my personal artistic sense).

Finally, it can acommodate a lot more plants than my plastic test model, since it contains 22 planters. But of course, these plants must be small enough to live together, so I made the wise choice of choosing dwarf varieties. It's one thing to plant parsley and lettuce close together, an entirely different one to plant a pumpkin plant in such a facility !

But the possibilities are still surprising. For example, there's no way I can install a zucchini plant in there, but I found a dwarf variety of cucumber called "Space Master", recommended for... small spaces (the vine still grows to a healthy 1 to 1,5 meters long). My plant took all the space on the bottom of the window and only gave me... one cucumber before meeting its death, most probably caused by my inexperience.

What about traditionnal culture in soil?

This swedish turnip was already growing in a container outside
with two kales. I brought it inside so it could fatten a bit more.
It ended in a soup, leaves included.

I owe this to Ray Browning, an experimented gardener from the North of the United States : He convinced me that it was possible to grow either kale or pepper inside the house. Here's where you can find him on YouTube (Dance in the Sunshine channel, Praxxus 55712). It truly worths a detour, because Ray's way of gardening is unusual but still so well-rounded, either for inside or outside gardening. 

This used light garden cost me 175$ with the
fluorescents and the plastic trays.
At 40W per tube, it cost me about 28 cents
of electricity per day for 16 hours of light.
This installation gives me
 24 square foot of gardening surface.

Not too long after, Marie-Claire found this treasure for me : a light garden for indoor growing. New, these babies cost a lot but this one is used and comes from a lady from Montreal who grew african violets to sell them.

So, last fall was just a new adventure in ways of gardening for me! I started by installing my shortest vegetables on the bottom of the rack. 

Thyme and strawberries (they both eventually died), mint still going strong, kale, a couple of young eggplant and peppers (they are having trouble), onions, garlic, calendula and rosemary (that are all ok), oregano, tomatoes and swedish turnips grow well. A couple of ornementals and I just finished sowing strawberry spinaches. 

Bringing plants from outside inside, however, brought insects, most of them I managed to eradicate. Some aphids still roam around,  damaging my calendulas, but that is all.

I could have spared myself all this trouble if I had used new, sterilized soil and made new plantings inside.

Later on, I installed two more fluorescents on a home-made structure, each light being hung perpendicular to the roof window I have in the attic, a window that's oriented West. Enlarging this space like this allows me even more plants coming from outside. 

From this portion of my indoors garden, we occasionnaly eat eggplants, peppers, sorrel, kale leaves, cauliflower, broccoli and pelargonium leaves (yes, it's edible!). 

I also have from there one or two young tomato plants that are just starting to grow and potatoes that have begun making stalks and leaves. Another tomato plant started from the smallest cutting, started producing flowers. Add to that a few tubers of jerusalem artickokes freshly planted in a big container (with the intention of simply putting the container outside this spring, since it is such an invading plant and it's almost impossible to get rid of once it's there).

A couple more ornementals have found a place in this spot, an heliothrope plant amongst them, which exhales an exquisite vanilla perfume every evening.



My garden under the roof window in the attic, viewed from the side.
My two fluorescent fixtures cost me 35$ each and I used wood scraps
to make the holding structure. I also recycled old mirrors
to multiply the light, but aluminium paper would have worked too.
I also bought two small fluorescent fixtures for 5$. I plan to fix them on the wood
beams to give a better lighting source to those plants that aren't as close to the window as it should.

Front view of the garden. Notice the small orange peppers 
hanging from the green plant on the right.  The two big plants on the left are eggplants.

My plants in the attic are less vigorous than the ones in the hydroponic system, but these ones had to spend some energy to acclimate plus the insects that came with them did some damage. 

A tiny pepper... but so fresh, so delicious!

An eggplant, ready for harvest. 
Its tiny sibbling, left, needs a little more time to ripen.
Bringing these eggplants inside to save them from the frost
rewarded my with a dozen of fruits.

In conclusion

Winter gardening inside doesn't beat outside gardening in the summer of course, but still, I find that between germinations from the kitchen and the summer vegetables that I either froze, dried or prepared one way or another, being able to put fresh produce on my table, even if only ponctually, blesses me with infinite gustative satisfaction. Even more, I can still garden in winter!

I won't even try to deny this : the simple fact that these produce come from my home and were nurtured by me modifies my perceptions about their taste and makes them oh! so much better!

Bounty right in the middle of January.
The eggs comes from a collegue raising hens.
I receive a dozen once in a while in exchange for perennials divisions 
that I gave her last spring.
My fresh, homegrown vegetables, from left to right :
watercress, garlic stems, rosemary, mint, sorrel and kale;
dried thyme at the bottom; swedish turnip leaves in the white plate;
 and in the transparent plate, tiny "Doe Hill" peppers, 
"Red Robin" cherry tomatoes and "Slim Jim" eggplant. 

I baked this beautiful omelet with the ingredients from the photo above this one, 
adding some ham from half a pork I bought from a local producer, 
olive oil, salt and pepper. The zucchini and potatoes do come from the grocery store,
but my fruit ketchup is made mostly of ingredients I have grown and harvested
last summer.

Check my next article on windowfarming to learn more about it!