The garlic has been looking fantastic. In addition to the spots in the garden and the former mushroom area, Heather also planted some in front of the house. It took much longer to grow, but the plants are finally sprouting there, too.
As a bonus, the planting of the garlic inadvertently included the planting of a bunch of orach seeds, so we’ve been having a great autumn harvest of baby orach. And, it’s hard to see in the background of the first picture, but we have dozens of small purple kale plants, too.
Alden managed to harvest some potatoes that were growing over by the shed he was taking down. 🙂
It looks like a deer busted through the garden netting a couple nights ago. Thankfully, the only plant damage was a small amount of beans and kale. Heather and I stitched the netting back together and reattached it to the T-posts.
The impact of the gopher on our garden has been horrible this year. A tomato plant was taken out this week, and the dry beans have been about 50% devoured. It looks like the gopher is also feeding on the roots of the plum and pear trees.
I bought Heather a bunch of garlic for her birthday. I picked a ten-foot-long spot in the middle of row 4 in the garden, dug out a few inches of soil, and lined it with some chicken wire we had lying around and hardware cloth we got from ReStore. We planted about 120 garlic cloves there. Heather also planted a similar amount in the mushroom area. Both of those spots are Siberian hard neck garlic. I also bought her four heads of Music hard neck garlic that she will plan in front of the house, inside the French drain perimeter. We’ll see what happens. We feel like the threats against our garden are so serious that we’re not sure what the future will hold.
On the bright side, I guess: while digging the row in the garden to prepare for garlic planting, I came across an underground pile of potatoes that had been cached by the gopher. They came spilling out when I hit the spot with my shovel. I’m glad we were able to stumble across those potatoes, but it’s maddening what the gopher has done.
The corn that I replanted, they all sprouted. Who knows… So I thinned them today. The beans that I replanted didn’t do anything, so I planted newly-purchased beans today.
The gopher took out half of the peas, right in peak season. It demolished the roots and left the rest. At least we were able to take one last picking and then feed the plants to Nixon the rabbit. What a waste, though. We don’t know what to do.
Hardly any of the corn or green beans germinated. I guess it doesn’t pay to use old seeds. I replanted a bunch of seeds of both, but I don’t know if it will do any good.
Heather planted more dry beans, and she transplanted kale.
Perfect day for working outside today: cloudy and 70°. We tackled a bunch of weeds around the house and added wood chips.
Earlier this week, I planted the first 4 corn seeds, and Heather planted cranberry beans. Today I planned about 8 feet of bush beans. We also picked up some compost from the city, and I spread some around the plants.
I harvested about 2 cups of strawberries. I think that’s the most I’ve ever harvested from our own plants in my entire life.
Not all of the peas sprouted, but the ones that did look super healthy now and are about a foot tall.
Fezzik the buck is visiting for a few weeks, so we’ll probably have another crop of kids in the spring.
We have tons of orach sprouting in the garden from the stalks that went to seed. We’ll see if it lasts through winter. The Chinese broccoli is still going, and doing better, in fact, with the aphids diminishing as the weather gets cooler.
We haven’t had any mushrooms so far this fall, but we still have plenty preserved from last year.
We decided that try harvesting black walnuts from the tree across the road. They are notorious for their hard shells. First we gathered them and removed the meaty outer fruit, which can be used to make ink or dye. Now we’re letting them dry for a few weeks. Then we’ll try cracking them and extracting the nut meat.
We’re down to five chickens at the moment. We’re still getting some eggs.
Heather is doing the pumpkin drop-off site again by road, and the pumpkins are pouring in.
The garlic Heather planted a few weeks ago is barely sprouting. We’ll see what happens.
The peas just kept on peaing through the summer. We got the last of them, for the most part, a week or so ago, but we’re still getting a few more here and there.
The green beans finally started producing and we got plenty for a few weeks, but they’re about done now.
We harvested the last corn on the cob last week. It was probably about a week past it’s prime.
I planted Chinese broccoli in early August, I think. It bolted quickly, but I cut and used the stalks. It also got aphids real bad on the buds and flowers, so I tossed those parts. We planted kale right next to the Chinese broccoli a few weeks ago, and a few aphids were showing up there, too. But we’ve been able to start picking some kale (and chard) last week.
The potato and chickpea harvests have been good. The tomatoes were late this year, but they’ve been doing well. We bottled about 36 points of pizza sauce. We’ll make salsa with our next batch. Which reminds me: the peppers have been solid producers this year: banana, jalapeño, and poblano.
Our plum tree about killed itself this year. Literally, several branches broke from the weight of the fruit. We made some great plum BBQ sauce and sweet & sour sauce. We harvested a bunch of purple plums from Wayne’s tree a few weeks ago and dehydrated them.
Heather started planting garlic today.
We harvested two of the young goats with much-appreciated help from our son-in-law. It’s a hard thing to do. He got one and we kept the other. We put 20 pounds of meat in our freezer. Heather was able to sell the other two young goats this week. They went to a lovely piece of land a few miles west of here to work in brush management.
We have a gopher that just can’t resist bok choy. It took out the last of the bok choy from below yesterday and today. Luckily, the plants were left, and they crisped up in the fridge. We’re having Chinese food again tonight. I seeded some more bok choy in the place of the “harvested” ones.
Some Chinese brocolli sprouted. I reseeded the rest.
I reseeded some green beans once again. Tough going on green beans this year.
Only a few of the green beans in row 1 sprouted, so I replanted today. I came across some of the beans from the previous planting, and I can’t tell if they dried out or their sprouts were eaten. I saw ants in the area a few days ago. The beans on the other rows are doing better.
thevtomato plants are looking healthy, and the pepper plants are starting to look better.
We planted cowpeas in row 3. From east to west: pinkeye purple hull, red ripper, Ozark razorback. We planted cranberry green beans in the west end of rows 3 and 4 (beneath the trellises).
Heather pulled out the remaining kale plants from last year and hung them to dry so we can collect the seeds.
I planted about eight feet of Blue Lake bush beans on the west end of row 1. It’s been a grass-infested corner of the garden, so hopefully the bean plants and wood chips will keep the grass out.
Heather harvested garlic from the garden and in front of the house. The bulbs from in front of the house are small, but better than nothing.
I planted Oregon sugar peas and the first 12 sweet corn seeds in row 1 of the garden. The dirt on that row seems really compacted, so we’ll see how it goes.
We planted potatoes in part of row 2 a few weeks ago. They’re up and looking good.
We’ve had a good amount of volunteer lettuce and orach growing that we’ve been harvesting and enjoying at the dinner table.
We transplanted tomatoes and peppers last weekend.
We watched a deer decimate the fresh leaves on our grapevines yesterday. I’m glad the netting around the garden is working to keep them out.
The baby goats are all growing quickly. They’ve all been disbudded. In a few weeks, they’ll get banded and turned into wethers.
I think I’ve already ruined the new chainsaw engine. Not sure what’s going on.
The chickens got into the garden, so we locked them in for a week or so, and they cultivated it for us.
This past week was really rainy until yesterday. We’ll plant potatoes as soon as the soil is workable.
We finished splitting next season’s firewood. It will be about 50/50 maple and Douglas fir or pine. This year was mostly pine, which was hard to use due to some extremely pitch-filled logs.
We worked on some pasture fence repairs today, mostly pulling out some janky stuff and putting up new chicken wire to keep the chickens in the pasture.
We passed the cold frames on to a new owner today. They didn’t seem to make much of a difference in the garden.
We’re using some kale florets that we picked today in our stir fry dinner.
