A few days ago we transplanted some collard someone gave us on row 3.
Today we planted dry beans on row 4. We had to pull out a bunch of chard that was going to seed to make room for the beans, but we have plenty of young chard plants all over the place. We also transplanted a sungold tomato plant on row 3.
We’re still trying to keep on top of pulling out grass. It’s pernicious.
Today we transplanted four jalapeño pepper plants on row 6, two Juliet tomato plants on row 6, a clump of three lemon cucumber plants on row 3, and six delicata squash plants on row 1 (that’s a lot of squash if they all thrive). The flower seeds on row 1 haven’t germinated. I wonder if it’s because the top of the soil has been dry. Down under the mulch, the soil is still rather wet (not yet crumbly).
We have chard sprouting all over the place, with both chard and kale going to seed right now. We have way less orach this year (due to the cardboard and wood chips), but more than enough for us to eat.
The grass is really aggressive in the southeast and southwest corners, but I’m doing my best to attack it every couple weeks.
Still picking… A colandar of chard, kale, and mustard greens today.
We tried our best to rip out the hops roots from the garden and moved them to the northwest side of the pasture. We put some raspberry roots in their place in the garden.
Heather got some large cardboard for weed control and we covered a row with it. We’ll try to get a bunch more.
I weeded the volunteer kale patch, and it really needed it. It also needed to be thinned, so we ended up with about a meal’s worth of baby kale from the effort.
Still picking chard!
Temperatures have been warm this December (lots of days in the 50s). We’ve had two atmospheric rivers in two weeks.
I think I probably harvested the last of the orach for the year last week. (When we plantedthe garlic, we inadvertently “planted” a bunch of orach seed that had grown over summer, and sprouted a ring of orach plants around the garlic. It has been feeding us for a couple months.)
I’ve also been able to continue harvesting chard, which I guess will last until we get a frost.
We have lots of kale plants, but we wonder if the birds and bugs are harvesting a lot of them (on top of what the deer took when they broke into the garden).
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.
