The hazelnut harvest has begun.
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.
Finally got the first picking of green beans this weekend. Peas are still producing, which is nice.
I did a weeding blitz in the garden a few weeks ago and tackled it again today. We have some stubborn grassy spots that I’m not happy about.
Heather planted peas in row 1 and potatoes in row 2.
We have a pretty good supply of chard and a little bit of kale. And thousands of little orach plants all over the place.
Lots to catch up on…
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.
I transplanted an evil olive tomato.
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.
And we still have mushrooms coming out our ears.
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.
A little January lettuce harvest before the temps go into the teens for the weekend. (It’s been growing since fall… super slow. The lettuce in the cold frame was larger, but just barely.)
An endless summer. Today’s high was about 65°. More mushrooms are still coming up. I picked a few more small peppers and some kale.
Heather made some grape juice from Merrie’s Concord grapes.
November 1st, and we’re still picking peas. They’re not as good as summer peas, but I won’t complain!
I was wrong about the mushrooms being done. We got one more flush, probably a couple pounds. They seemed to be fine through our first frost, too, which was last night. But it was a light frost that even the tomato plants survived.
We harvested a few acorns, and some Jerusalem artichokes that voluntarily grew by the outside water faucet, today.
We lit our first fire of the season in the woodstove yesterday. We still have a lot of splitting and stacking to do for next season’s firewood.
I think the mushroom harvest has finally ended. Wow! I’m pretty sure we have a year’s worth of dehydrated mushrooms thanks to Heather’s work.
The new growth on the artichoke plants looks great. They’re over two feet tall. Im excited to see what next year brings.
As of yesterday, we were still harvesting tomatoes and the late summer planting of peas. They’ve definitely slowed down, though, with fewer hours of daylight.
Heather pulled two potato plants today and got several pounds of potatoes. Here’s the biggest one:
She also harvested a rutabaga. There are several more out there. Plenty of kale and chard, too. And we haven’t even touched the leeks yet
Heather planted garlic in the garden and around the grapes around the beginning of October. It’s already sprouting.
We started moving some firewood into the carport for this season’s burning. We still have a lot of wood to split to get ready for next season.
Wow, the first rain of the season, and the winecap mushrooms are fruiting. It’s like magic! We’ve probably picked a gallon in two days. They’re huge.
Artichokes: I learned that they start their new growth for the next year in the current year. You’re supposed to chop down the old growth as soon as it’s done producing artichokes.
This evening brought the first rain of the season. We’re supposed to get a couple inches over the coming week. So we were busy outside today. We moved a lot of wood chips, put some tarps on things, and did a lot of general tidying.
Heather is dehydrating a bunch of peppers and onions. They smell so good.
We started harvesting our second pea planting of the season yesterday.
Heather pulled out the bush beans yesterday. We’ll get some dry beans plus some beans for planting next year. I turns out the beans kept on producing, and I think if we had kept harvesting, they would have kept coming.
The artichokes are sending up second sprouts now. I need to read up and learn what that’s all about.
Tomatoes are finally in. Here’s one picking.
We also picked 10+ gallons of purple plums from the tree across the street.
Oh my, so much to catch up on since July!
The deer are still in the neighborhood but not in our garden. Success! (They’ve gotten to Grant’s garden, though.)
Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions, coriander, green beans, celery, kale, and more kale… all doing well. We didn’t keep up with the cucumbers, so they grew huge and stopped producing more.
The corn didn’t get enough water this season, so some of the plants and ears are small. That will be pretty easy to fix next year.
And the rhubarb, wow! We just planted it this year, and I’ve had to harvest some stalks because the leaves were so large and heavy that they broke.
We got plenty of blackberries from our own land in early August, but even on September 1st we were still able to pick more. I have a blackberry rhubarb crisp with hazelnut topping in the oven right now.
The artichokes also delivered this summer. I had to give them each an occasional bucket of water to keep them going.
Plum harvest was not than sufficient; in fact, we didn’t even get around to harvesting all of them before it was too late… but we got enough. The Bartlett pears are coming in right now, and the tree is loaded. (It’s also loaded with Asian pears, but they’ve never been tasty from this tree.) Grapes will be coming ripe next.
To top things off: Heather bought a dairy goat yesterday. Day one was tough, but she had a comparatively smooth milking experience this evening. The goat is still experiencing relocation trauma, but it sounds like things will settle down over the next couple weeks. We’re keeping her separate from Karen the sheep, but we’ll get them together soon.
This is our second basket of beans, picked a few days after the first. It takes over an hour to harvest this amount.
Our trail cam recorded one deer the night after we put up the netting, and none since. Even the roses by the front porch are blooming again. Not sure why they disappeared so completely
With the deer gone, the peas have given another nice flush of pods to harvest.
We installed three lines of 50lb monofilament around the garden a few days ago. The same day, the field across the street got mowed. The guy who mowed said he saw several deer bed areas. Since that day, the garden is doing better, but we don’t know if it’s because of the monofilament fence or the mowed field.
The volunteer orach plants (from the ones that went to seed last year) have been doing really well. We got our first handful of bush beans today, and there are tons of blossoms. I think the peas are done (healthy vines but noore blossoms). The third planting of corn is sprouting.