chocolate stripe tomato

Our 2026 Garden: a surprise harvest – and I got him!

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I was feeling good when I headed out to do the evening cat feeding, so of course, I stayed out longer.

As I was feeding the cats, Colby actually wanted attention. So much so that I got him, and was finally able to dose his ear. Just one. The one with the wound behind it from being scratched so much. Not ideal, but better than nothing! The medication says to dose once ever 24 hours, so hopefully we’ll get it done tomorrow again, before we head out to my brother’s for the night.

Colby is such a handsome boy!

Depending on what weather app I check, we’re looking at going below freezing tonight. Cold enough that the frost cloth over the self seeded tomatoes won’t be enough to protect them anymore.

So I harvested them, to let them finish ripening indoors, leaving the tomatoes on their vines.

The vines themselves were remarkably strong and healthy, so I chopped them up quite a bit before dropping them on the bed for now. Some of them were even still blooming! The frost cover alone is not enough to explain how well they were doing. This section of the bed seems to be very well sheltered from the cold. Something to keep in mind, when deciding what to plant there next year.

I have been very curious about the nearby chicory. They never did bloom, and I could see no sign of flower stalks anywhere. Where there any roots? I decided to dig one up to find out. I used the handle-less garden for to do it.

It took a lot of wrestling and loosening of soil all around a single plant before I could finally pull it up.

So this is what chicory root looks like.

All of the tips seem to have torn off in the soil as I pulled it, even with all the loosening of soil I’d done first.

I need to look up how to process it so we can try it as a drink. I only harvested the one for now.

Okay, this is what I’ve found. After a thorough cleaning, they get cut into uniform pieces and completely dehydrated. Then they are roasted. After roasting, they can be processed into powder or granules for use. One site I found, though, skips the dehydration and the roots are just roasted at low temperatures until crispy.

Looking at photos, it seems they can have very different root shapes. I’m guessing different varieties? Most images show them looking a lot like parsnips; a single large root. Fewer images show them with multiple thin roots like ours has.

After rinsing it off with the hose, I broke off the greens and set them in the compost ring. The greens are supposed to be edible – at least while young – but we have no interest in them that way.

Since I was by the compost ring anyhow, I decided to clear the tomato plants from the bed next to it. I didn’t dig them up, but cut their stems at the bases, and tossed them all onto the compost ring. The next step will be to get all the protective collars out and give them a cleaning for the winter, then pull up all the elms that have been trying to grow in there.

I really, really want to get rid of those Chinese elm, and their billions of seeds.

I was just finishing up when my older daughter came out, looking for me. She had been quite worried about me, given my condition earlier in the day. The pain has gone away completely, and I was feeling like it was never there. I still made sure not to act like I normally would, though, because I can be really stupid that way and easily end up causing more problems for myself!

In talking about what I was doing, I mentioned the tomatoes and chicory, which my daughter had noticed before seeing where I was. As we went back to the old kitchen garden, I started talking about the HUGE beet greens in one of the beds, and how curious I was to see what they were. With some of the – much smaller – beets, we could see some of the roots, and they did not look very large. These, however, had no visible roots.

We were both curious enough to dig up the largest beet plants, and boy did we get a surprise!

Would you look at these giants! (and the three largest red beets, too) I kept my food in the picture for perspective.

These beets are from a package of mixed varieties, with nothing to say what those varieties are. So I have no clue, but these white beets look like sugar beets! We’ve never grown sugar beets before, and only ever seen photos.

What’s curious is how they have all spiraled like that. Even the little one.

From what we can see of what’s still in the bed, there are no other larger red beets, and maybe one more white beet like these.

My daughter helped me with rinsing them off and bringing them inside. The beets went into the kitchen to use right away, while the tomatoes went into the cat free zone. We’ve suddenly had issues with fruit flies and, unfortunately, hat to throw away a lot of the ripening tomatoes. Of the ones that didn’t end up in the compost, they got set in the bin with the newly harvested tomatoes, with paper towel below, and a lid.

Some of the chocolate stripe tomatoes, and the California Wonder bell peppers, however, were quite ready.

Those got put into produce bags and brought to the kitchen for the family to enjoy. I can’t eat tomatoes or peppers, so I’ll have to rely on them for feedback. I’ve already been told that the California Wonder bell peppers are worth growing again. We’ll see if it’s the same for the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes. They are awfully pretty.

So here we have a lovely surprise harvest.

It’s remarkable that I had tomatoes still on the vine in the middle of October!

The Re-Farmer

A very productive day – but I’ll start with the cuteness

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Would you look at that face?

In the second picture, you can see him enjoying pets.

Midnight still has a mark on his nose. For most of the summer, he had an odd wound there that would get bigger, burst, start going away, then get bigger again. Which was rather gross because he kept trying to rub his nose, wound and all, against us while demanding attention! At some point, it simply started to heal and now there’s just a bit of bald skin where it used to be.

Then there’s this lovely lady.

Fluffy lets us pet her regularly now, and is often found lounging on various beds and blankets.

Today, I finally got progress done in the sun room, which meant taking all the beds scattered on the floor out, as well as the food trays and water bowl, so clear the half of the room so the floor could be scrubbed. I put all the beds and blankets into the wagon and set it outside. It was always either Fluffy or Midnight in the wagon, enjoying a nap in the sun.

Once the floor was clear, I unhooked the shop lights from one end, then cleaned all the windows on the inside.

Then I did the outsides.

Then, since I had the bucket with glass cleaner and long pole window washing tool out anyways, I did the outsides of all the first floor windows.

Then I did the windows in the isolation shelter.

Plus the roof.

That done, I got the bucket refilled with all purpose cleaner to start on the floor in the sun room. I’ve got a broom with super stiff bristles on it and I used that to scrub the floor, because there’s no way a regular mop can do the job. It was a very dirty job, but I got a little more than half the floor in the room done. Then my daughter brought me a mop bucket and I used a mop to rinse the floor – which required several changes of water.

It’s going to take quite a while for the floor to dry. Once it’s dry, we can clear the other half. Most things will go outside, but the counter shelf will be moved to the cleaned half, since it’s easier than trying to fight it through the door.

I did get the lights set up again before doing in, and the wagon with the beds was tucked into the other half for the night, in case it rains. The cats are going to have to find other places to sleep tonight!

They have lots of places to choose from.

Through the window of the above photo, you can see the beds with the self seeded tomatoes. That got covered for the night. The other beds in the main garden area did not get covered again. Instead, I harvested.

There are a few California Wonder bell peppers and the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes that will be left to ripen indoors. The single Caspar eggplant is about as ripe as its going to get, so we can try that out at any time. It’s unfortunate that we got only one one successful eggplant, and even that is smaller than it should be.

This morning, my younger daughter and I made a dump run. When we got back, she went straight to the food forest to keep working on the transplants. Her sister took a break from working on commissions to come out and help. Even I was able to help out. With the 18 holes my daughter got done last night, I started by watering each of them – something that would have been good to do with all of the transplants, but there wasn’t the opportunity. Then we worked assembly line style, getting plants out of their big pots, then my younger daughter brought them to the pre-dug holes while her sister went along and put soil back around them.

I found more pots with self seeded willow in them.

Some, like in the photo above, showed signs that someone had already cut away willow earlier, and new ones had started to grow from the same stems. We tried to cut away as much as possible, but there’s just no way to separate their roots out. In the second image, you can see the pile of most of the willows I’d cut away, including from haskaps that had already been transplanted! The leaves are quite similar, but the stems are very different, which helped in finding where to cut them away.

Then my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers (just T3s now), so I left the girls to it and worked on other things. One of those was doing a scan of the truck. The check engine light had turned itself off a couple of days ago, but turned on again while we were driving to the dump. It was the same code as before, that our mechanic says is likely the gas cap. The other possibilities are all things we’ve taken care of already. I cleared the code, then sent our mechanic screen caps of the scan results, asking for suggestions. We’ll be doing our Costco run tomorrow, so it should be interesting to see if the light is still there.

By the end of the afternoon, this is how far the girls got.

They got 18 haskap into the pre-dug holes, then dug and planted another 7, making for 25 transplants done today. There are still another 10 large pots waiting to go into the ground that will need larger holes dug, before we can switch to the ones in the trays that don’t need such deep holes. In the third photo of the slideshow above, you can see what’s left.

It’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to work on them tomorrow, but we might be able to finish getting things in the ground on Monday. At least for the pre-measured area. Once that’s filled, we can start sticking more of them wherever we can find space.

After that, we go back to clear out the rocks that got dug up. Then the soil around each one will get raked smooth, and finally a water trench will be made around each one.

Then we can start hauling over wood chips and start mulching.

Meanwhile, we have various garden beds that need to be cleared out. The carrots need to be harvested, but those can wait, since they handle frost just fine. At the very least, a bed needs to be prepared for the garlic, which needs to be planted this month.

On the plus side, we should have a couple more weeks of relatively mild weather before overnight temperatures start consistently going below freezing. Which I am grateful for. Today I saw one of those Facebook “X years ago today” photos come up. It was a photo taken out of the living room window, 8 years ago, and there was snow on the ground. I think we even had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend, that year. So I am quite happy with the weather we’ve got happening right now! In fact, it was a perfect day to be working outside today, and not get too hot while doing it!

I’m also happy that I was feeling well enough to be outside most of the day, and finally work on the sun room, too. We’ll see how things are with our Costco trip tomorrow. I’ll definitely bring the walker along and have my daughter push the cart, instead of using the cart as a walker, just to be on the safe side.

Lots to be thankful for.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: harvesting onions and tomatoes

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Today was too wet and windy to break down that fallen tree this afternoon, but I did manage to get some progress in the garden.

First up was to harvest some onions.

On the right and on the board in the middle are the Red Wethersfield onions that were interplanted with the bush beans in the high raised bed. The largest ones were all on the south end of the bed. The others were probably too overshadowed by the bush bean leaves to get as big.

The ones on the right are the Red Long of Tropea, which were interplanted with the caraway and along the west side of the bed with the (already harvested) turnips. On the other side of that bed, by the Daikon radish are the Red Beard bunching onions, which are looking very tall and strong.

I forgot to look for the onions that were planted near the celery, Those aren’t even visible anymore. Out of sight, out of mind!

That one tomato is a Chocolate Stripe tomato that I found fallen on the ground.

While checking other beds, I noticed some red tomatoes.

The little ones are supposed to be Blueberry tomatoes. 😄 The other, larger ones are Manitoba tomatoes. Then there’s that Chocolate Stripe tomato off to one side. They are now all set aside in the cat free zone to continue to ripen.

After harvesting the onions and the tomatoes, I checked on the summer squash and found a bit of wind damage. These are being grown vertically, but some did not get tied off high enough, yet, and one had been blown over, bending at the highest tie. So I spent a while going through all of them and securing them to their vertical posts with garden wire.

It isn’t a lot, but it felt good to be able to do at least that much in the garden!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: winter squash and a harvest

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After a draining morning, I lay down after taking my pain killers to wait for it to pass.

It didn’t, but it at least got less severe.

Somewhere past 3:00, I headed back outside with my walker. I fed the outside cats, then say with the fishing rod toy to keep Sweetie busy so the littles had a chance to eat. We have storm warnings for tonight (as I started this, I could hear thunder in the distance!), so I took the bigger carrier we had set up for the kittens to explore and put it inside the catio, setting the door mostly closed. Then I headed to the garden.

One thing I noticed over the past while is that some of the winter squash on the chain link fence are producing more female flowers! I was even able to hand pollinate a few this morning.

Most of them are these Butterneck squash. There’s at least one that looks like it’s going to wither away, but the ones I got pictures of all look pretty darn good. I also spotted a new Black Futsu female flower that was open and hand pollinated it. Why I bother, I don’t know. It’s Sept. 6 today. There is basically no season left for them to mature! Still, I want to give them all the chance they can. It should be interesting to see how big they get before it gets too cold.

We will, however, have one winter squash this year, at least.

The outer shell of the Arikara squash is getting pretty hard. I should be able to cut it and set it to cure fairly soon. All the other squash that started on this plant have died off, almost as if it pruned itself.

The yellow bush beans around the Arikara squash are producing quite nicely, and I had plenty to pick from a relatively few number of plants. I also found a single red Manitoba tomato, hiding under some leaves that I picked. Then I went to the high raised bed and picked the bush beans there…

… after I picked the two Chocolate Stripes tomatoes that were ready.

In the above photo, all the beans to the left of the tomatoes are from the later planted beans by the Arikara squash. Everything to the right of the tomatoes are from the high raised bed. The yellow beans in that bed seem to have had a second life and are suddenly producing quite a lot, again. There’s only a couple of green bean plants, and they are not at all productive.

I didn’t keep this. I got a bowl for it all, then wheeled over to my brother and SIL’s caravan and offered it to them. They were quite happy to accept. After my SIL transferred them to their own container and brought back my bowl, we were able to stay outside and chat – I just sat on my walker rather than try to climb up into the caravan. They have stairs with a hand rail now, but they came outside rather than have me hobble my way in.

Unlike my mother, with her snarky comments about the little tomatoes I brought her, it was nice when my brother and SIL quite appreciated the beans and tomatoes I brought for them! They have been growing some things on their balcony, but no beans. My SIL is thinking that, next year, she’ll try to grow enough tomatoes to do some canning. This year, they have cucumbers and cucamelons that have done quite well!

We got all caught up with the birthday visit with my mother this morning. My brother hadn’t had a chance to go into detail with my SIL yet. My mother was so all over the place, it took both of us to describe things and figure out what she was saying. Part of the challenge is that her sense of time is completely gone. There was something she’d said that my brother thought had happened recently, but I’d caught her mentioned the town she used to live in, which means it could have happened several years ago. In some things, we had to mash together things, my sister had told me my mother had said to her, compared to what my mother had told me, compared to what my mother had told my brother, and work out what was actually intended. It’s like putting together a puzzle, but half the pieces are still missing, while pieces from another puzzle show up randomly, too.

Still, we do the best we can.

I can hear that the rain has started. My SIL was very happy to have gotten the mowing done!

It would be really awesome if the weather holds long enough for us to actually get more winter squash.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: muskmelons, eggplant and tomatoes

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Late, but they are showing up!

After dropping kittens off with the rescue late this afternoon, my daughter and I drove to town so she could order a prescription refill. While that was being filled, we made a quick run to the grocery store for a few small things (taking advantage of being in town), then back to the pharmacy to pick up the medications. Then it was home for supper.

After supper, I headed outside. I got the soaking tub drained, then cleaned out the cat carriers we used for the kittens. They are ready to use again, if we want to use the two biggest ones.

The soaking tub got refilled with detergent again. Next time I drain it, it’ll be to wash the individual cat beds, blankets, etc. in the wheelbarrow, then they’ll go back into the tub for rinsing with vinegar.

Once the tub was refilled, I went to water the garden. This time, I remembered to take some pictures. Slide show below…

I knew we had one little musk melon forming but as I looked around the vines, I found three more surprisingly large ones!

The chances of them fully maturing before first frost are very low at this point. The long range forecast has changed, of course, but it still shows potential overnight lows of 3C/37F in a few weeks, then it’s supposed to warm up again.

Goooooo Super El Nińo!!! Keep that frost away! 😄😄

If we can cover things, they might still make it. I might even cover them with plastic to create greenhouse tunnels.

In the other photos of the slide show, you can see our one Caspar eggplant. You can also see a flower on the ground. There were two flowers on two different plants. I was trying to carefully cross pollinate them, but one of them broke off. Ah, well.

Last of all are the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes. They have cracks at the top like the Manitoba tomatoes are getting. That type of cracking can be caused by a few things. One is inconsistent watering, which is possible. The other is extreme temperature fluctuations. Which is far more likely!

Today’s high was 25C/77F. Our highs are supposed to stay in the 20’s over the next week, then stay in the high teens. It’s the overnight lows we need to watch out for!

Who knows. We might actually get a melon or two this year, after all!

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again

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I had done so well yesterday. Feeling almost completely normal again.

This morning, my body gave me a great big F you.

In the wee hours of the morning, I woke. I did two things. I used the bathroom and fed the inside cats. That’s it.

By the time I got back to bed, the pain was starting.

It was still there when I got up for the day. It wasn’t too bad, so I headed out to feed the outside cats.

Good news. Flopsy showed up for breakfast! Then disappeared again. At least we know one of the disappeared cats is still around.

I also saw this little one…

I had to zoom in from half way across the yard, then crop the photo, to get the above image. This cat goes into that splay legged position, like it’s ready do run away in a flash, quite often.

I hadn’t done their water yet, but didn’t want to scare the little one away from the food, so I went around to the main garden area to start watering that garden beds, partly to judge just how well I was doing, and if I’d be going to Costco or not.

I took it easy and didn’t do a really deep watering; we weren’t expected to get unusually hot today, so that was enough. By the time the main garden area was done and I moved to the other side of the house, the cats (and a few skunks) had all had a chance to eat, so I refilled their water bowls in between watering different beds.

We are now up to four luffa seedlings, with a second one showing up next to the oldest one. Each spot got several seeds, so it’s entirely possible more will show up, still. Even with only 55 days to maturity, it’s getting really tight for them. They will have a chance only if have a very mild fall and no frost until the end of September.

Which, given that this is a Super El Nińo year, might actually happen. At this point, the shorter daylight hours will also have an effect.

By the time I was done, I knew going to Costco was going to be an issue. I could handle the drive, but not the shopping. Not without making things much worse.

The problem was, my younger daughter, who is the only one that can come with me, was dealing with her own very different pain issues today, too.

I decided to pain killer up and try lying down for a while, to see if things would improve.

They did not. The tramadol seemed to have zero effect. Not only that, but the bleeding kicked up again, too. *sigh*

After waiting a long enough time, I tried taking the T3s and lying down again.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to nap. As soon as I lay down, I got covered with cats, including some that don’t normally cuddle with me like that. At one point, I had 5 cats directly on me, and I don’t know how many against my legs. I ended up with Shadow right against my side, and Clarence right against him, both draped over my bicep.

This was my view when I opened my eyes.

Both images are of Shadow, just inches from my face. So close that my phone’s camera (which I keep close by in case I need to message for help) measured as dark and used the flash. His face looks mashed because it IS mashed. By Clarence.

I had updated the family on our group chat about my status, still willing to go into the city later in the day, if someone could come with me. My husband had already suggested I wait until tomorrow. My older daughter came by later and basically said the same thing.

*sigh* Another day wasted because of this pain. I am so glad the surgery is happening in just a couple of weeks.

Eventually, the pain did recede a bit. My daughters were working on supper – my younger daughter was looking really rough today! – and I felt well enough to do the outside cat feeding again. Once that was taken care of, I did a light version of my evening rounds. I find the fresh air and moving around helps. Mentally, if not necessarily physically.

While doing that, I noticed that the old, leaking water barrel by the apple tree and gooseberry bush was looking surprisingly full of water. Usually, it leaks until there’s only about half a foot of water on the bottom, but I could see the water line was at about 3/4 full.

So I took advantage of that and watered just some of the fruit trees and berry bushes. I wasn’t up to hooking the hose up to do all the ones I normally water. It actually felt pretty good to do as much as I did, and didn’t make things worse, which I was grateful for.

While checking the main garden area, I noticed these are getting nice and big.

So far, only one of the Chocolate Stripe tomato plants has developing tomatoes. They’re looking pretty good!

I’m going to have to get that canopy tent set up soon. The garlic looks about ready to harvest, and I plan to hang them under the canopy tent to cure. I’ve got one kohlrabi and a couple of green pattypan squash (Green Scallop Benning) that I will be able to harvest tomorrow. Of the five types of summer squash I’ve got, one of them has not had any flowers yet, male or female. The Lemon squash. The yellow scallop squash at least has male flowers blooming, if no female flowers, yet.

Now, near enough to the end of the day that a trip to Costco is out of the question, I’m actually feeling a lot better.

If only that can last through tomorrow, and I can finally make the trip in, and not need to drag a daughter along, too.

The Re-Farmer