One does not necessarily imagine golf courses and food gardens going hand in hand, so I was more than pleasantly surprised to be invited to Talking Rock/Quaaout resort on Little Shuswap lake in September to see just that. Executive chef Gene Dery is actively engaged in supporting local growers and farmers in an effort to make '100 mile diet' foods available to guests. Last spring, he enlisted Kamloops garden guru Arlene Soloman to create a new vegetable garden with the assistance of husband Gerry, garlic farmer extraordinaire.

Designed in traditional medicine-wheel shape, this shows the "yellow" section; among other things Arlene planted 'Sun Cherry' yellow tomatoes, yellow zucchini, Hungarian yellow peppers, and 'Teddy Bear' sunflowers.

Arlene in the garden

Arlene, Gerry and the chef showing off their baskets

Harvest Basket

This is the marketing manager of the resort, Lisa. The photograph shows the bar, made from pine-beetle-infested wood.

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Greengage plums, radishes, and yummy pears.

Juicy, fragrant melons.

Something corny going on....

There's a real downhome quality to this farmer's market - folks gather there each Saturday to visit, and buy beautiful produce!

A bucket of beautiful purple onions - who can resist?

Gourmet onions and something purple in the bags? Could it be carrots?

Loved the signage.

No farmer's market in September is complete without Dahlias!

Burpee's Golden Beets - I bought these too!

Red Lake Farm had the best red-skinned potatoes (Norland?) I've ever tasted. Great cooked with whole garlic cloves, then mashed with cream and butter.

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Last month I visited my friend Arlene Soloman, creator of the lush herb garden at Thompson-Rivers University as well as mastermind of the new food garden at Quaaout Lodge where the restaurant is endeavouring to practice the 100-mile diet.

What a pleasure it was to discover this hedge of Mahonia (Oregon Grape) laden with fruit. I had never seen so many berries – hopefully it doesn’t portend an extra-cold winter ☺

We proceeded to pick the berries gingerly. Mahonia is almost as prickly as holly, so it was not without minor injury, but well worth it. Our picking yielded a large box of berries.

It was easy enough to get the berries off the stems and into a pot and adding a little water. But boy, do these berries stain – they’d make great natural dye.

A brief conversation with herbalist Elaine Stephens was well-timed – she’d made Mahonia jelly and used white wine, so I poured in a little Gewurtztraminer, half an orange cut up as well as the requisite cups of sugar.

There was lots of pectin in the berries so they needed only a bit of certo, and could probably have done without any. This jelly is delicious and will go well with savoury food like chicken, and be lovely with crackers and goat cheese!

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Sweet Peas! They did not like the terrible temperature range - from cold ("can we turn the furnace on in July, please?") to hot as Hades, with horrible humidity. Cupani did OK but these others - Royal Navy and Mrs. something-or-other seemed to succumb. The usually long stems were short and stunty within a week or two of bloom start! The photo shows yellowing leaves, seemingly enation virus (occurring early here, usually found more in fall), spread by aphids. Indeed, I did find aphids on these plants.

My experiment this year: to cut down the sweet peas now, and see if they come back in cooler fall temps (should we have them.) I'll let you know what happens.

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Geranium 'Rozanne'. Not only does it attract tons of buzzing pollinators, it also looks beautiful, gets huge, and has been blooming like crazy since mid-May! What a good plant this is.

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Here's Eryngium amethystinum.

This plant is amazing, seeding itself strategically, also acting as a perennial, blooming all summer into fall. It is a-buzz with all types of bees. If you take a look, you'll see many, many types of bees, syrphid flies, wasps, etc. taking a drink of the 'interestingly scented' nectar! Why they are attracted to it is a mystery - the flowers (actually 'florets' which beneficials prefer) smell like sweaty socks.

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Music Box - my absolute favourite small sunflower. This one has lovely rings - each plant surprises you as they are OP seeds and readily interbreed. Music Box forms a little 'bush' and continuously flowers. You can cut them, too! Eventual height about 1.5 feet tops. This one peeks out behind my nasturtiums with NO APHIDS - yes, that's right. The reason: I planted broad beans. In my garden, aphids seem to prefer them with a vengeance. Try growing a 'mule' broad bean or two somewhere in your garden. They are pretty unsightly covered with aphids, but you can still eat the beans :-)

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This year virtually all my zucchini had blossom end rot. (?) All were tiny, and mostly rotten inside. A big waste of space, I am thinking. Not until about two weeks ago did they start to produce. Our gardening group here in Kits thinks that zucchini ONLY grows when you a) aren't looking, or b) go off on vacation for four or five days. Upon your return, they are the size of baseball bats.

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Renee's "Monet" salad mix - growing well in a cast-off wooden box. Keep lettuce well watered, and grow it quickly. It's liking this cool weather (today!)

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Broccoli, cooling off from the recent crazy heat, cut back a bit, fertilized and amended with mushroom manure, should produce nicely all fall into winter. Potatoes have been growing in the foreground, and all stems/leaves have died down, indicating potatoes are ready to dig. However, I am leaving them in the ground as an experiment, planting a whole lot of previously-seeded starts of Asian greens called 'tah tsai' - little spoon-shaped, glossy green rosettes on top of the potato area. I hope to harvest this crop for stir fries & dig the potatoes at a later date. Many are the 'fingerling' type which have been growing in this garden in various places for many years. They're waxy, and yummy in salads!

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