I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!
I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.
There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.
I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.
After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.
Good for the digestion.
We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.
Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.
Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.
I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.
They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.
Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.
It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.
I went back to the corn/squash bed to get the formerly trellis fence set up. I set the posts as best I could. They had to go right at the corners for the wire to fit all the way around, so I didn’t have the option of moving them if I hit a root or a rock. So they aren’t quite as deep as they should be.
Once the posts were in, I set the wire back on the built in hooks in the posts, tightening things up as much as possible.
In the first image above, you can see my “door”. I wove a couple of 6′ support stakes through the wire, near the ends. The ends themselves just barely overlap, and I can hook them together a bit. The support stakes are long enough that I can drive them into the soil.
Well. Almost. One of them was hitting something and wouldn’t go any further. Probably a root.
In the second image, I tried to get a view of the top, which is wide open, of course. Ideally, it would be covered.
Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do this at all. Those squash should be sprawling all over, not barely meandering between the corn. I don’t know how big this variety of squash vine normally gets, but the Crespo squash we had last year in this spot spread out far enough to start climbing the cherry trees.
I’m hoping this will work. It should at least keep the cats out. A determined raccoon would get through fairly easily, but I’m hoping they’ll just be too lazy to get through the wire to get at the corn.
We shall see soon enough, I guess. The corn in this bed is developing faster than in the other bed, and there are some really nice looking cobs starting to form!
This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!
I had some help, too.
When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.
Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.
The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.
After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.
I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!
There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.
After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!
That was from roots.
These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.
Those trees have got to go.
Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.
Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!
In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.
When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.
We did finally get the predicted rain this morning, which made thinning the row of Atomic Red carrots much easier!
I’d manage to space the seeds out pretty well when I planted them, so most of the “thinning” I’ve done until now has been to pull up weeds and sprouted Chinese elm. Which is why what I pulled today looked like this.
They were all much bigger than I expected them to be! They look really small from the surface.
At that size, they’re useable, but too small to peel or even scrub. I washed them off with a hose before bringing them inside, the rinsed, trimmed, and rinses some more. As I write this, they’re soaking in water to try and loosen any last bits of soil stuck to them, before we use them.
Or just eat them as snacks.
They’re not at their best at this stage, of course; they’ll be much sweeter once fully mature. I did make sure to taste one, though – it’s a new variety for us – and they’re still quite good.
As we expand our garden beds, we’ll be growing a lot more carrots, as they are a good storage crop, and such a staple in the kitchen. We’re still trying new varieties, too. Now that we know how well they can do with winter sowing, we’ll be planting some this fall for next year.
In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.
The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.
The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.
The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.
The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.
When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!
There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.
We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!
We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!
I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.
It didn’t get better after a nap.
So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.
Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.
Anyhow.
I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.
After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.
Five.
Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five
Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.
I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.
Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!
As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.
Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.
They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.
*sigh*
I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.
Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.
I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.
Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.
After soooo much wonderful rain yesterday, I really wanted to see how things were going in the garden while doing my rounds.
When I got to the bed with the ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes, I decided to go ahead and harvest them. They’re a touch on the green side, but they will continue to ripen inside. I also grabbed the few bush beans that were available to gather.
I rather like the effect of the tomatoes reflected in the stainless steel bowl I put them in!
The next photo is of the one developing pumpkin that I hand pollinated; there’s another on that vine, but its flower has now opened yet. I’ve added support to the vine itself, to take some of the weight off the plastic trellis netting, but the pumpkin has already gotten heavier enough to start pulling down on it again. We will construct a sling for it soon. The vine can handle the weight. The temporary plastic trellis netting cannot.
The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers have had a lovely growth spurt and are getting quite tall. They should have seed heads by now, though, so it’s unlikely we will get anything to harvest. Even the Red Noodle beans have started to show signs of growth. Just barely. I don’t expect them to even start climbing the trellis before the growing season is done.
Of course, I checked on the new food forest transplants. Especially the Opal plum, with its fresh new growth.
And newly missing leaves.
I guess all that rain washed off the anti-deer spray I used on it, and the protective frame.
I went and got the piece of chicken wire I’d used to try and protect the Albion strawberries last year. It turned out to be just long enough to to around the frame. This, at least, the deer will not be able to get through!
The big crab apple tree that has the small but delicious apples is just reaching its peak period. Many of the apples are looking very red right now, though there are still plenty that aren’t ripe yet, among them. We could probably start harvesting some crab apples now, though they’re so small, it’s a lot more work to use them for any cooking. I grab a few on the way by to munch on as I do my morning rounds.
I was debating which project to work on today, but everything it still so wet, I might just stick to indoor projects and start some laundry. No hanging on the line, today, even though we’re not expecting rain. It’s still too humid. We’re also still under an air quality warning for smoke, though we are now on condition yellow instead of condition red.
We have had enough rain that even the grass has come out of dormancy and had started to grow again. We might even have lawn to mow, instead of having just a few patches growing. The overgrown area where the old garden used to be is going to need cleaning up soon. I’d left the alfalfa that was coming up to bloom for any pollinators we might have – there’s a lot less these days, than in the spring, probably because of all the smoke. Their bloom time is ending now, and the burdock is starting to get big, will start flowering soon, so we need to cut all that back before the burrs get too nasty. We might be able to start on that tomorrow. Depending on how things go today, I should be able to go in with the loppers and cut back the poplars saplings that are trying to take over.
I didn’t get a picture but the rain came down so yard yesterday that the almost white lengths of maple used in the wattle weave bed in progress are now grey with splattered soil from inside the bed! Which is saying something, since the soil is all pulled into the middle, to make room to work on the wattle weaving.
According to the forecast, today and tomorrow are going to reach a relatively cool high of 19C/66F, but the day after, we’re expected to scream up to a high of 28C/82F, with a possible small rainfall in the early evening. Then its supposed to drop down to more humane highs, hovering around 20C/68F, for the next while. No more rain, though. The monthly forecasts sees only one more rainfall between tomorrow and the end of the month. It also says we can expect the temperatures to climb up to 31C/88F on the last day of the month, and 33C/91F by Sept. 1st.
We’ll see what actually happens.
If we’re going to get any sort of harvest with the winter squash or pole beans, we need to have all of September to be warm. Especially the overnight temperatures, and that’s where things get dicey.
What this does show me is that, as we build our raised beds, we’ll have to think ahead to including ways we can cover them to protect them during cold nights, or even create mini greenhouses, with frames that can go over relatively tall plants. I couldn’t cover the radish bushes to protect them from the deer, for example, because none of the covers I have had room for them, except the box frame which is currently protecting the corn bed. We are working to keep the same dimensions on all the beds, so the covers can be interchangeable. The beds in the East yard are all 3’x9′, and that’s the size we’re working with. The log beds in the main garden area will all be 4′ wide on the outside which, with the thickness of the logs, means about 3′ of growing space inside. They will all be 18′ long, so two covers will fit on each bed. Once we have chickens, some of those covers will be mobile chicken coops, too, so we can let the chickens clean up and fertilize the beds after they’ve been harvested from.
Every year has been a different gardening year – especially weather wise! – and every year, we learn a bit more of what conditions we can expect, and can plan around in the future.
That is a process I expect will never quite end, and I’m okay with that!
In the first photo of the above slide show, you can see more of the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes are ripening. There are more than what’s visible in the frame of the photo.
The second photo is of some wonderful new leaves coming up on the Opal plum, recovering from what the deer ate.
Last of all is a developing pumpkin. Sir Robin was happy to pose for size reference. 😄
We apparently had rain not long before I went out this morning, so no garden watering needed. In the evening, though, I did water the things that need it the most; the winter and summer squash! I did the melons, to, even though I really don’t see any chance of them growing. Some are blooming, though, so you never know!
Late this morning, I headed out to meet my brother, SIL and their grandkids for a surprise lunch with my mother. That turned out not at all as planned, but it worked out in the end. I brought along several take out containers of the turkey and vegetable soup I made in the slow cooker yesterday (I had it for my breakfast, too) for her freezer. During lunch, I ordered a 3 pc chicken and fries, then packed up most of the fries and the biggest piece of chicken for my mom to have for supper. Between two very active young boys and having to distract my mother when she started to go into one of her odd tirades, we were all very exhausted by the time lunch was done! The boys did really well, considering how many hours they’d spent in a car. My mother wanted them to go to her place, which was not an option. It’s soo small and too full of things rambunctious children could get into and hurt themselves or destroy. They ended up going for a walk with my SIL when we were done, while my brother focused on getting my mother home and I went ahead with their stuff along with what I brought for her. I had time to get the meals I brought into the freezer, and left the restaurant food on the counter to cool, then get to the side door and open it before they had to fight with keys. My mother can get in and out of my brother’s car without a stool, so he could park closer to the side door she prefers to use.
We both had to head out as soon as she was settled in. By the time we got out, my SIL was almost there with the boys. We’d talked about them coming her to the farm afterwards, but that went out the window. They’ll be coming out next weekend and staying overnight in their new abode, so we’ll get to visit with them and the boys soon.
As we were settling her in, my mother made a point of telling us not to make “surprises” like this for her anymore. Which we really can’t do. If we plan this stuff and tell her in advance, she works herself up and behaves even worse – downright cruel, in fact – than if she doesn’t know about it, first.
At least my brother was able to get a visit in, and she got to see her great grandsons. Of course, all she cared was to lecture them about making sure to take them to church. This was the time! When they’re young! Of course, they had just gone to church with her earlier (which was not planned). My SIL had to repeatedly tell her, they don’t live with us. It’s not up to us. They don’t live with us.
I was sitting next to my mother and repeated to her with slightly different working, that they don’t live here.
Well, where do they live, then? she asked.
…
Uhm… with their parents?
That one really threw us. It seems that my mother somehow decided that the boys being with my brother and his wife today meant that they… have moved in with them? Or she forgot that they live with their parents in a different province?
Something to bring up with the home care case coordinator, that’s for sure.
It was really good to see the boys, though. I haven’t seen the younger grandson since he was a babe in arms, still.
We also got some surprises at home today. Kitten surprises! That will get its own post, though.
There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.
There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.
This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.
I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.
The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!
Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!
I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.
Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.
Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.
In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!
There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.
We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.
The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!
The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄
Just a quick garden post before I cover the rest of the day.
We have a first!
I harvested just a few things to include with supper. There was one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato that was ripening earlier than the others, and I decided to wrestle my way through the protective netting to see how it was. It came off the vine very easily, even though parts of it look a touch greener than red.
I also checked the one Black Beauty tomato. That’s still hard as a rock.
So the family will get their first taste of a new variety of tomato. I also picked some Uzbek Golden carrot, a couple of Napoli carrots, and some Swiss Chard, all from the winter sown beds.
We had quite a bit of rain last night. I’d used about 3/4 of the full rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden yesterday, and it was full this morning. I can really see a difference in the garden. Things that have been stagnating for more than a month are showing new growth. The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers have all shot up in height, and I can see where flower heads are starting to form. Even the summer squash … well… some of them… have had a growth spurt. We had more rain this afternoon, too. There is a huge system slowly rotating over the prairie provinces right now, and I am really praying that this means some of those fires are getting rained on!
Seeing how much of a difference it made in the garden, in such a short time, does give me a bit of home for this gardening season.
These were damaged quite a bit by that one cold night was had, shortly after they were transplanted. It set them back and, while I saw them blooming, I was beginning to think there would be no eggplants forming at all.
Today, while watering, I finally spotted some! In fact, in the space of a couple of days, there are now more eggplants forming that there are of the peppers, in the same bed. There are still only three peppers forming among the 9 plants. Just one eggplant has more than that forming!
Now, the question is… do we have enough season left for them? Normally, these would have 80 days to maturity from transplant. We have barely 30 days of growing season left before average first frost. I’m still going by Sept 10 as our average first frost date, even though the 30 year adjusted averages that just came out now says our average first frost dates are between Sept. 21 and 24. If I look at the monthly forecasts in my desktop weather app, we might not get frost until the second half of October. Since moving out here, we have had everything from a blizzard in October to first frost in November. So really, there’s no way to be sure. With how badly our transplants and spring sowing have been, in general, I’m really hoping for a long, mild fall. If that does happen again, we might actually have stuff to harvest and preserve for the winter. With the way things are going right now, we have just a few things we can harvest every couple of days, to supplement a meal or two.
While watering this evening, I am actually noticing some growth. I might be imaging things, but even the red noodle beans seem to be looking a bit greener, and a bit bigger. The Giant Fordhook chard I planted as a fall crop, where the Royal Burgundy bush beans failed, are still just barely there, but they are getting bigger! The winter squash are blooming – no female flowers, though – and I even spotted a couple of tiny zucchini forming! I don’t know if they got pollinated before the blossoms closed up. They weren’t open when I did my rounds this morning, or I would have hand pollinated them. The pumpkin vines are doing well. Two of them are quite a bit ahead of the others, and the female flower on one that I hand pollinated is now a growing pumpkin. I’m training that one up the trellis, so we’ll need to make a hammock to support the weight of the pumpkin. When the trellis is finished, it will be built to hold the weight of winter squash of all kinds, but we’re not there yet!
It isn’t a lot, but I’m pretty excited about any progress we get right now!
The Re-Farmer 