Well, so much for trying to support the sunflower in the old kitchen garden.
We had high winds again this morning, and the last of the three flower stalks on the remaining sunflower in the old kitchen garden finally broke. It was actually still upright when I came out this morning, but by the time I came back to the house, it was lying on the ground.
Sadness.
While checking the garden beds, I did get a little bit of a harvest this morning.
It all could fit in my pocket! :-D
This is the largest I’ve ever let a pattypan squash get. Any bigger, and they start developing their seeds. One of these days, I should try letting some fully mature. At that point, when the seeds are removed, they leave a cavity that can be stuffed for roasting, which I do want to try. We just really like them at this stage, though. :-) For next year, I plan to try other varieties of pattypan squash, and hope to grow some to save seeds, too. Since I accidentally bought three summer squash collections for this year, instead of one, we don’t actually need to buy more squash seeds, but I like to try new varieties.
That is definitely one of the biggest benefits of having a garden. There are so many varieties that are just never in the stores!
I am just amazed that we still have beans to pick, this late in the season! Even a single yellow bean. :-D
If the mild temperatures continue, we will be getting more yellow beans, too. There are new beans growing, all over the row! From what I could see while picking the green and purple beans, we will have more to pick for at least a couple of weeks, unless a frost hits, first.
After seeing that insanely high reading on this thermometer a few days ago, I’ve been making a point of checking it more often. This time, it seems to be reading low. It was chilly this morning, but not that chilly!
Ah, well. It’s a Dollar Store thermometer. As long as it’s close, it’ll be useful.
This morning was the first time I uncovered the lettuce to weed and thin them. The cover may keep the critters out, but it’s so long, it’s awkward to move on and off, unless there are two people.
These seeds had been from the bottom of a baggie they had spilled into, so I was expecting a mix. It looks like they are almost all the same type, with the exception of two Buttercrunch. Today is the first time we have been able to harvest lettuce this year! The first time we planted them in the spring, the groundhog got to them before we could. The lettuce is just loving these cooler temperatures.
What I am most curious about is this…
There is a tomato plant growing here! It’s looking very strong and healthy, too. I think that’s a dill growing beside it. Dill self seeds easily, but a tomato? Where did that come from? And why did it sprout so late in the season? This bed had spinach in it, first, and this tomato is growing past the sticks marking the ends of the rows I sowed the lettuce in. No additional soil had been added. Very strange!
While weeding this bed, I was on the lookout for the radishes we’d planted in the other half. I found a couple, but they were really tiny. I have no idea what happened to them.
The Bright Lights chard is doing well. We’ve harvested leaves a couple of times from these. They are liking these cooler temperatures.
We have completely abandoned the carrot bed the woodchucks had decimated repeatedly. I’d tried to at least keep weeding it a bit, but it was just too much. And yet, you can see carrot fronds among the weeds! It should be interesting to see what we have, when this bed gets cleaned up for next year.
The Hopi Black Dye sunflower in the old kitchen garden had three stalks with flowers on it. In our recent winds, one of them broke, so I added the supports for the plant to try and save the rest. This morning, I found a second stalk, broken on the ground.
We didn’t really have a lot of wind last night.
I suspect kittens.
I’ve been catching them playing in this garden, right on top of the netting over the carrot bed and the beets by the retaining wall. The carrots are on the edges of the bed, and the kittens have been playing in the middle, so those aren’t as affected, but the beets are being flattened. That bed was already struggling to recover from being et by grogs, and not doing well, so I guess it’s not really a loss, but I find it interesting that the kittens seem to really like playing on top of the netting, instead of on the ground or paths beside it!
Thinking ahead to next year, I believe we have enough salvaged boards in the barn that can be used to make low raised beds here. It would be a good place to make contained areas, such as with square foot gardening, as we turn this into a kitchen garden, and we start to plant more herbs that may have a spreading tendancy. If we have actual frames on the beds, that will make it easier to set up sturdy covers to protect from voracious critters and insects – and playful kittens!
I think we should dig up the rhubarb and transplant them somewhere else. They are not doing well here, likely because they are right under the ornamental crab apple trees.
As difficult and sometimes disappointing as things have been with gardening this year, particularly with the drought, it has showed us a lot about what works, and we can do to improve things for the future.
When I did my morning rounds, I didn’t harvest anything, as there didn’t seem to be any need, yet. Then I did my evening rounds, and found that a lot can change by the end of the day!
Spoon Tomatoes (and Potato Beetle)
Mosaic Medley tomatoes
As you can see, the tomato plants are dying back, and yet there are so many tomatoes! In the photo with the Spoon tomatoes, I had already picked the ripe ones, so all the red you see are ones that are still not quite ready.
One of my daughters joined me, and we ended up filling two red Solo cups, almost to the top – our biggest haul of these tiny tomatoes, yet!
I was really surprised when we checked the summer squash, and I saw the Madga squash. It was noticeably bigger than when I checked it this morning! Same with the zucchini. We won’t get much more zucchini this season, but there are so many little pattypan squash. It was starting to get dark fast, though, so I’ll see what we can pick tomorrow morning. I think there are even beans to pick, too!
There’s nothing like heading outside to do my morning rounds, and being greeted by so many kitties!
It’s going to be hard to tell those tabbies apart. :-D
Ghost Baby even made an appearance this morning. She is very shy and skittish, so I didn’t try to move any closer to get a photo. My apologies for the horrible zoom shot. She kept going from tray to tray for food, but she’s shy even of the other cats. I did eventually see her at a kibble tray by herself, so I’m happy to say she did get something to eat.
Our mild days and overnight temperatures continue, but I’m still surprised by how many squash and gourd blossoms are still opening.
So pretty!
On the down side, it looks like the lack of pollinators has lost us some Teddy squash. A couple of the smaller ones got wizened and fell off, and it looks like we’re going to lose one more. Which leaves us only 2 Teddy squash, one on each plant, that are actually growing.
I did my rounds a bit earlier and faster, as I had to drive my mother around for an appointment and some errands. There was even plans for her to stop by at the farm for a visit, but after her appointment and one other stop, she was just too tired. We’ll have to do it another day. However, my brother had visited her yesterday, and left a gift for us.
This is a bag of dill! It’s huge! The whole plants are in there, in various stages, so we’ll have dill leaves to dehydrate, crowns to use for pickling, and dried seeds to plant next year. I want to find a spot that can be a permanent dill bed, so they can reseed themselves year after year, and not be growing around other herbs or vegetables.
My mother was so tired from the trip, she practically kicked me out after I picked up the bag! :-D
I had a more welcoming response when I got home. I noticed the kibble trays were empty, so I topped them up a bit. While I was doing that, Nosencrantz came up and let me give her enthusiastic, full body pets and ear skritches!
More progress with her, at least! :-D Still no luck with the others. :-)
Today is likely to be the last hot day of the year. As I write this, we are currently at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 30C/86F. We are expected to reach 28C/83F with the humidex making it feel like 31C/88F. We are supposed to get a couple more days in the mid to low 20’s before the highs start dropping to the mid to high teens. So far, overnight temperatures are also still supposed to remain high enough that there are no frost warnings.
I headed out to do my rounds later than usual this morning, and we had already reached 22C/73F.
There has to be something wrong with the squash tunnel thermometer. It may have felt warmer than the 22C it was when I took this photo, but there is no way it was feeling like 42C/108F! Not even being in full sun, like it is, should result in that extreme of a difference. I suspect the dial is stuck. I haven’t been looking at it since the temperatures finally cooled down, so it may well have been sitting at this reading since our last heat wave.
In checking the sunflowers, there was only one little pollinator that I saw! I think the heat waves we had over the summer killed off a lot of our pollinators. There just wasn’t enough food to sustain them. The mild temperatures we are having means more of our sunflowers are actually budding and opening their seed heads, but I don’t know that they’ll have a chance to be well pollinated.
Some of the Mongolian Giants are finally taller than me. Hopefully, the opening sunflowers will lure any remaining pollinators to them. They may not have time to fully mature, even with our predicted mild temperatures, but they will at least provide some food for our surviving pollinators.
These are the Hopi Black Dye transplants that got chomped by a deer. They have all recovered surprisingly well, and are budding and blooming. They don’t need as long of a growing season as the Mongolian Giants, so it should be interesting to see if any of these get a chance to mature.
The green peas are enjoying the cooler temperatures we’ve been having, and I’m seeing more pods developing. This photo is of one of the pea plants growing among the Dorinny corn, the remains of which are being left to go to seed. The three blocks of sweet corn are still green, but they aren’t really growing. At this point, I don’t expect anything from them, really. They’re just there for the peas to have something to climb. Any pea pods we get is just gravy, as their main purpose is to fix nitrogen into the depleted soil in this area.
The winter squash and melons are the ones I am monitoring the most right now.
Remarkably, even as the plants are dying back, we are still getting fresh blooms, and the newer Red Kuri squash are getting noticeably bigger.
The mutant seems to have stopped getting bigger, and is now deepening in colour and developing a harder skin.
As this other, larger Red Kuri is still doing.
I did a nail test on the oldest of the developing Red Kuri, and you can see the mark left behind. Still not ready.
The Teddy squash are also still managing as well.
If we do end up getting frost before any of these larger squash can fully mature, we will still be able to harvest them and eat them. We just won’t be able to store them for long.
The melon vines are dying back faster than the winter squash vines, but their fruit are still hanging in there! I was able to pick this Pixie melon, only because the vine it was attached to had died back completely. I suspect it isn’t quite ripe.
My daughters discovered something about these little melons. After they are cut in half and the seeds scooped out, they make perfect ice cream bowls! I’m not big on ice cream, but I finally had some last night, in half of a Halona melon. It was quite excellent! :-D
I am glad we found these little, short season melons. They have been among the most enjoyed producers this year. I think we will try different short season varieties next year, but the Pixie and Halona are definitely varieties we would grow again. I’ve also saved seeds from some grocery store melons that I plan to try. They are larger varieties, but if we start them indoors early enough, and we don’t have another drought, we should be able to grow them. :-)
Heading out to do my morning rounds is pretty awesome these days. ALL of the kitties come running!
I even got to give Nosencrantz full body pets – but only while she was eating! Toesencrantz started to come close, but she was too nervous with me being so close, and kept going away. So I left, to give her a chance to eat.
The other eight kittens, plus Potato Beetle, converged on the kibble house! :-D What a crowd! Gosh, they’re getting big. :-)
While I was out by the furthest garden beds, I started hearing some exciting meowing. It took a while, but Rolando Moon came over from wherever she had spent the night across the road, all excited. She let me pet her, then followed me as I went around the garden and made my way back to the house. As we got closer to the house, she would start hissing in between her meows, even though there were no other cats in sight. She was sure on the lookout for a nasty Potato Beetle!
By the time we got to the kibble house, all the other cats were done eating and were gone, so she had a chance to have breakfast in peace.
There were a few squash large enough to pick this morning; a small enough harvest that I could fit them in my jacket pockets! :-D
I found another Madga squash ready to pick, and even one of the mutant sunburst patty pans – the one that’s part green, part yellow – was a nice size to pick, and even one zucchini was ready.
Just one.
While going through the squash tunnel, Rolando Moon ran ahead of me to the end, then flung herself to the ground, waiting for pets.
Right next to a zucchini.
When I had picked squash yesterday, I was carrying them in my arms rather awkwardly, and it looks like I dropped one! :-D
With the fix on our main entry door hinges giving out, we’ve been using the sun room to go in and out of the house. This requires going through a door into the old kitchen, where the cats are not allowed. The door is an old style door with a skeleton key lock on it – though there is no key for it anymore. From there, there is a pair of doors going into the sun room; in the summer, we leave the solid, inner door open. The outer door, which has a window with a screen that we keep partly open for air circulation, is a sort of buffer between the old kitchen and the sun room, in case an outside cat is in the sun room, or an inside cat sneaks into the old kitchen. There are a couple of them that REALLY want to get into the old kitchen!!
Finally, there are the sun room doors. Once again, for the summer, we leave the inner, solid door open, while the outer door, with its screen window partially open for air circulation, is one last barrier. I used to leave the sun room doors open while working outside and have to go in and out frequently, but sometimes an outside cat slips in to investigate and I accidentally close them in when I’m done, so I try to keep that one closed most of the time, too.
When I came into the sun room after finishing my rounds this morning, I spotted a cat jumping off the old wood cook stove in the old kitchen, though the window in the old kitchen door. My initial thought was the Fenryr had once again slipped by me so fast I didn’t see her.
Boy was I wrong.
You see, the old door leading from the house to the old kitchen has… issues. Sometimes, when it seems to be closed, the latch doesn’t actually catch. Then, after a while, the door simply pops open.
By the time I came back, it was wide open, and most of the cats were in the old kitchen, exploring.
As soon as I opened the door from the sun room, there was a rush of cats going into the sun room.
Thank goodness that outside door was closed!!
It took a spray bottle and a few minutes, just to get the cats out of the sun room and into the old kitchen, so I could close that door. Then it took a few more minutes to get them out of the old kitchen and into the rest of the house, so I could close that door. Only then could I empty my jacket pockets of vegetables onto the big freezer, though as I hung my jacket up, I spotted a Nicco in the little niche by the wood cook stove, hiding under my late father’s folded up wheelchair. At that point, I left her along, put things away and, by the time I came back, she came out on her own and I was able to get her to leave.
Inside and outside cats all together, I had 28 cats to deal with this morning! And I didn’t even see the three mamas, yet. :-D
It has remained too damp to try cutting wood, so I worked on a few other things today. One of them was to start getting the remaining chimney blocks out of the old basement, to where they will be set up for next year.
The blocks themselves are not too much of a problem. I can carry them well enough. The main problem is the stairs. If I could simply walk up the stairs, it would have been fine. However, I don’t do stairs well at the best of times, and these stairs have unfortunate dimensions, as well as being unusually steep, to fit into the space available. Which meant setting the blocks down on a step, then cautiously lifting it up, one step at a time, with one hand, while hanging on to the rail with the other. Slow going, and rather dangerous. :-/ Once at the top of the stairs, my husband would open the door for me, keeping the cats away, and slide it aside while I went for another. With his back injury, even sliding them was probably more than he should have done, but he managed.
For now, I only got three out. There are four more left in the old basement. There’s one more in the new basement, but I’m keeping that. It was the perfect height and solidity to use as a surface when I was doing some wood carving.
As I was carrying them out to the yard, with my husband getting the three doors I had to go through for me, while also keeping the cats at bay, I got curious as to how much they weighed. My husband estimated about 25 pounds, but I knew they had to be heavier than that. So I brought over our scale to weigh the last one before taking it out. It turned out to be 53 pounds, so not bad at all. Mostly just awkward. As I sit here writing this, I am starting to feel issues with my right shoulder, from lifting them up the stairs the way I I had to, though. :-/ Fifty three pounds is a bit much for one arm, while scrunched over and squeezed between two walls and a rail!
Of the ones that were outside, all but one were used for the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. The last one is hidden behind the three I brought out, leaning against the tree. We will have a total of eight blocks by the time the rest are brought up from the basement.
This is where they are going to go, when it’s time to clean up the cucamelons and gourds. We were intending to have them here for this year’s garden, but were not able to get them out of the basement in time, so I want to get that done little by little until they are needed. In this spot, the ground slopes just enough that there is a larger gap under the chain link fence. The cardboard flaps we pushed up against the fence before adding the soil ended up falling under, and the soil started washing away when we watered, so I had to use boards I found in the barn to short it up. The blocks will eliminate that problem, and will make good “containers” to plant into next year.
With that done, I got a few other things done, including picking up more fallen branches from yesterday’s wind, eventually heading over to check out the Crespo squash. I’d noticed more flowers opening, and I wanted to see how the two squash that were forming were looking.
It was a pleasant surprise to look at one of them, and find another little squash developing!
Then I spotted another one, high above the hill they are planted in.
Then I spotted another…
And another…
And another!!!
Which is when a started to walk around the critter barriers, looking closely for any more, and counting.
I spotted twelve. !!! A full dozen, that I could see, baby Crespo squash!
Some were very tiny – even smaller than the one pictured above, while others were surprisingly large.
I did not expect a variety that produces such large fruit would also be so prolific!
The problem, of course, is this.
The first official day of fall is only 5 days away, and leaves are already starting to turn.
The certainly won’t have enough growing season left to reach the size shown in this photo from Baker Creek.
Well, at least I know that, if started indoors early enough and protected from critters, it will grow well in our area. I want to try these again, next year!
We were having a lovely rain when I headed out to do my morning rounds. Though we have been getting the odd showers for the past while, things were still starting to dry out. With the high winds yesterday, I actually watered the old kitchen garden, when I noticed all the beet greens were wilted.
With the cooler temperatures and things in the garden winding down, we’re gathering things every few days or so, and the amount we harvest is getting smaller. Mostly, it’s just summer squash. My daughter had recently picked summer squash, so when I went through the garden beds this morning, I wasn’t expecting to actually pick anything.
I was rather surprised to find even a few larger summer squash! The Magda squash have been slow growing this year, so finding two of them large enough to pick is a treat. There are lots of little sunburst pattypans, and after my daughter had already picked the larger ones, I certainly didn’t expect to find more so soon. Yes, I know they can get much larger, but this is the stage we like them best. The only thing that wasn’t a surprise was the big zucchini. Usually, we pick the squash soon after the flowers fall off, but the flower on this one was solidly attached. Even though it was of a size we would normally pick it at, we left it. When I saw it this morning, I just had to pick it. Any bigger, and it’s going to start getting becoming a winter squash! :-D Maybe some day we will let some zucchini reach that point, but not this year. :-)
We are supposed to continue to get showers through the afternoon, but I’m hoping things will have a chance to dry up a bit. I really want to tackle that tree that came down in the wind. We really need to get started on any high raised beds for next year. If we can get even just one bed done, I will be happy. I also need to prepare three beds for the garlic we ordered. I were intending to order double what we got last year, but after talking about it with the girls – and looking at our budget – we got the same amount as before; a collection of racombole, purple stripe and porcelain music, 1 pound each. Though the beds they were planted in before are available, we want to rotate them into other beds that did not have alliums in it. Unfortunately, those beds are still being somewhat used right now! However, if I am able to get enough out of the tree to build a high raised bed, it will have fresh garden soil and amendments added to it, so it won’t matter if it’s in a location that had onions this year.
If it’s too wet to break down the tree today, I should still have tomorrow. The weekend is supposed to get quite hot, and we’ve got plans for Saturday. Next week, we’re supposed to get several days with rain, and then things start cooling down a fair bit. As long as I can get enough pieces cut, while it’s dry, we can get some progress on a bed.
Though our overnight temperatures have not been cold enough for frost, some of the more delicate plants were showing signs of what I would otherwise consider frost damage. Some of the cucamelon leaves are showing signs, and part of a Ozark Nest Egg plant had a vine that was growing the highest, suddenly start dropping this morning.
Everything is all winding down, which means things are getting busier. There’s a lot of work to prepare beds for next year, and getting it done often depends on the weather.
In other things, I’m happy to say that since we installed that shut off valve and, in the process, adjusted the pipe so it wasn’t touching another one, and padded it with vibration reducing material, that very disturbing noise we would sometimes hear seems to be gone. It’s hard to say for sure, since the noise didn’t happen every time the well pump turned on, but so far, it’s encouraging.
Something else seems to have gone away.
The woodchucks.
I haven’t seen any of them in almost a week, now. Usually, I’d at least see one peaking out of the entry to their den under the pile of wood, or eating the bird seeds near the living room window but, lately, nothing. I was wondering if they might have gone into hibernation, so I looked it up. They tend to hibernate from October to February, so it’s still too early for that. But then, the sites also said they mate after the come out of hibernation, and we so them going at it in the summer, so who knows.
We have been really fortunate with the frost holding off so far. If the long range forecasts are right, we won’t get a frost for at least two more weeks, possibly longer. Other areas in our province have already had their first frost, so I am really thankful that it’s held off in our area so far.
The continued mild temperatures is giving the garden more time to recover and progress, and we even have some new little surprises this morning!
We’ve got two more Ozark Nest Egg gourds forming! That makes for a total of three. I did not see these two when I checked the garden beds yesterday evening, so this is pretty much overnight growth.
This is one of the new ones, from outside the fence. They have such pretty flowers. :-)
The Tennessee Dancing Gourds are one I don’t have much concern over. Though there are a lot of little gourds developing still, there are quite a few “large” ones like this, that have reached their full size, but are still ripening on the vine.
One of the few remaining Halona melons came off its vine this morning. There are a couple of somewhat larger ones left that might have enough time to fully mature, plus a few more tiny ones that won’t.
In the background of the photo above, you can see the biggest Pixie melon in its hammock. These guys could really use the extra time, it looks like.
We’ve still got Red Kuri developing, and they are growing fast at this stage – and you can even see a new squash developing in one of the photos.
The mutant is my favourite! :-D I’m just fascinated by it. It’s shape is different than the other Red Kuri, which can be expected with cross pollination, but it is also getting bigger than the others. If this is the result of cross pollination with the nearby Teddy squash, I would have expected it to be smaller, not bigger! The Teddy squash are a miniature acorn squash and their mature size should be smaller than the Red Kuri. For a hybrid to be bigger than either parent type seems quite unusual. I hope this has time to fully mature, because I really want to see how it turns out!
Speaking of Teddy squash…
We have another new baby! Of the two plants, the one that had only a single squash developing, now has two.
The other plant still has four developing squash, with the one in the photo being the biggest.
While checking the Crespo squash, I was able to find an open line of sight to get a picture of the one developing fruit that I’ve been able to see so far. It should be interesting to see how far it gets, before the frost kills it all. We certainly won’t get the large, green, lumpy pumpkins we are supposed to, but even a little one will be interesting to see.
The cucamelons are an odd one for this year. The plants are growing up the fence rather well, will plenty of blossoms and fruit beginning to develop. Unfortunately, most never get past the size you see in the photo above. They just drop off.
I did find a single, mature cucamelon. Which I ate. :-D It’s the first larger one I’ve seen in quite some time. This suggests a pollination problem, unfortunately.
And finally, we have our potato bags.
I’m not sure what to make of these! They just don’t seem to be dying back. Oh, the two varieties at the far end are looking a bit like they are dying back, but they also got hit the hardest by the grasshoppers. The two fingerling varieties just keep on growing!
When we first decided to use the feed bags to grow the potatoes, I expected to continually add soil over time. It was after learning that all four varieties are determinate, not indeterminate, that I changed my mind. They would not benefit from having soil continually built up along the stems, so only a single layer was added to protect the developing potatoes from light, and that’s it. The purple fingerlings, however, just keep getting bigger and bigger. Which leads me to think that these may actually be indeterminate potatoes, and would have benefited from continually adding more soil. I don’t know. It should be interesting to see how many potatoes we get when we do harvest them. I don’t image we will be getting many, but we shall see. If we decide to go with grow bags again next year, we will have to make sure to choose indeterminate varieties, which means finding a source for seed potatoes that actually labels them as determinate or indeterminate.
Until this year, I didn’t even know that tomatoes had those labels, never mind things like potatoes!
The girls joined me for the evening rounds last night, and my daughter found a ripe Pixie melon!
I had checked them in the morning, and none were coming loose from their stems, but by the end of the day, one of them finally did. :-) It isn’t even the biggest one that has a hammock to support it. Hopefully, this means the other Pixie melons were ripen soon. While we did pick one Pixie melon to taste test, it was still under ripe (still delicious, though!), which makes this the very first ripe Pixie we have picked.
Meanwhile, this morning, I finally picked grapes. Here is our harvest for this year.
Yup. That’s it. About a week ago, I did find another cluster with a whole three grapes on it, and I ate them.
This year, we will cover and insulate the grapes for the winter. These are supposed to be hardy to our zone, as far as I know without knowing the exact variety they are. However, even the hardy ones have a hard time things like month-long polar vortexes. Not even that one cold night in May that left us with no berries and almost no crab apples could be blamed for the lack of grapes. It took these so long to start budding, I feared the polar vortex had killed them off.
The Re-Farmer 