growing food

Our 2022 garden: a sad little potato harvest

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This afternoon, my daughter and I got working on the remaining potato beds.

The first bed I worked on was the mid season Bridget potatoes. They have been ready to harvest for a while, now.

Based on how things went after harvesting the early season Caribe potatoes, my expectations were very low, but it needed to be done.

I started off by pulling away the straw mulch. Most of the plants I dug up had nothing under them, but every now and then…

…I would pull back the straw, and there would be these lovely little potatoes, just sitting on top of the cardboard layer!

We had company while we were working.

This little bugger kept trying to climb my daughter while she was using the garden fork!

This one was content to just be held, but we had to put him down so we could work. It was so cute to seem him starting to fall asleep among the summer squash!

The soil was greatly improved since we first made these “instant garden” beds with the cardboard and straw. Granted, two days of almost constant, gentle rain did help soften the ground a lot, but it was much easier to dig into the soil with the garden fork. There were lots of worms and while I saw slugs, there wasn’t as much as I’d seen with that first bed I’d harvested.

The late season All Blue potatoes had more of a return.

This is it. We had 10 pounds of each type of potato. I doubt we got the same amount back. Certainly now with the Bridget potatoes.

One of the reasons I chose these varieties is because they are good for storage, but with so few of them, that’s not going to happen. Normally, we’d cure them, then bring them inside, but these got a wash down and we’ll be eating them right away.

Though we got more of the All Blue, we might actually have less. Unlike the Bridget, quite a few had insect damage. They also had scab on quite a few of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen scab on potatoes grown here before, even when I was a kid.

The straw got loosely returned to the bed. There may not have been a lot of potatoes, but there was an insane amount of crab grass rhizomes. We tried to pull out as much as we could as we worked, but that is something that requires a lot to get rid off. For now, the straw is back to try and keep them from getting worse.

I am thinking that these beds are a good place to build some permanent squash tunnels. At the very least, we can use the path between the beds as the path inside a tunnel. Though this has been a terrible year for the squash, we got enough growth that I could see which ones are the most enthusiastic climbers. I look forward to trying them again. For the permanent squash tunnels, I plant to make low raised beds on the outside. Since we wouldn’t be able to access the beds from the inside of the tunnel, they would only be two feet wide, with a four foot wide path inside the tunnel. I think I would like to build at least three tunnels, though we might not be able to get them all done this fall. They are going to be a lot stronger than the ones we slapped together to start with, though even those lasted longer than we expected them to.

Now that the potatoes are harvested, and since the melons in these beds are a loss, we can actually go ahead and start building something in this area as soon as we can.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: deer damage and harvested squash

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When doing my rounds, one of the things I’ve been making sure to check is for damage to the berry bushes we plants. Especially that one highbush cranberry that has been eaten, twice. Putting the old saw horse over it seems to be helping, and there are even the tiniest of green leaves appearing again. We’ve had a pretty constant and gentle rain since yesterday evening, so that is sure to be helping as well.

This morning, I found this.

Overnight, the self-seeded sunflowers had almost all their leaves eaten. The green beans also had a lot of their leaves eaten, along the length of about half the trellis. The pods got left, though. We have stopped harvesting the beans, though we could probably still be picking the green ones. They are still blooming and producing new pods, though in much reduced quantities.

Two of the self seeded (well… bird seeded…) sunflowers by the sweet corn also got et. There is no new damage to the corn, though. It doesn’t look like the deer went into the bed. Just munched the sunflowers at the edge.

I’m not sure if this is deer damage, or some small critter. One of the sweet potato bags got torn apart more, and the grass mulch turned over, which isn’t too unexpected. The bottle waterer in the black grow bag being knocked out is a bit of a surprise. Nothing else in that bag was disturbed.

Happily, the eggplants were completely undisturbed. I put everything back, including the mulch, and in the process found that the sweet potato vine that got pulled aside seemed undamaged, too.

I checked everything else closely, and nothing else seems damaged. I did, however, decide it was time to harvest the ripe squash and pumpkins, just in case. Except the giant pumpkins. We could harvest both of those, but I’ll come by with the wagon to carry them to the house, another time.

There is the one Kakai hulless pumpkin and three Baby Pam pumpkins. Both have more green ones on the vines that I hope will get time to ripen fully. I also harvested seven Red Kuri squash, leaving one to ripen a bit longer on the vine. These are all now set up in the kitchen to cure.

With all the other squash I looked at, I’m rather impressed with the Boston Marrow. We will still likely get only two that can be harvested – one of which is starting to turn colour – but I’m seeing a surprising number of little ones developing, plus more female flowers. It looks like they would have been very prolific, had we not had such a terrible spring. Definitely something to try again next year.

The Baby Pam pumpkins are supposed to be an excellent pie pumpkin, but with just these three little ones, there isn’t enough to make one! We’ll find some other way to enjoy them. I do look forward to trying the seeds in that Kakai pumpkin. We already know we like the Red Kuri squash, and I promised one of those to my mother. I think next year, we should plant more of them.

I’m thankful that we at least have these to harvest. We planted so many more that just didn’t make it. Hopefully, we’ll have better growing conditions next year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: not much going on

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We got a small harvest this morning.

With the beans either done, or being left to dry – and the red noodle beans still don’t even have pods yet! – and the cucumbers and peas finished, there isn’t a lot to harvest on a regular basis. The carrots, turnips and beets are being left to get as big as they can before we pick them. Same with the potatoes. The peppers and eggplant could use quite a bit more time to mature. The sweet corn still isn’t ripe enough to pick. The Yellow Pear tomatoes have huge amounts of still green tomatoes on them, and are also ripening the fastest. The other tomatoes are ripening much more slowly. There are quite a few green patty pans growing, but not so much among the rest of the summer squash. The winter squash, of course, need to stay on the vines for as long as possible. What we have of it, anyhow!

These cucumber leaves show one of the reasons we want to focus on barrier hedges as we plant trees and bushes. This is all dust from the gravel road. Thank goodness my mother’s lilac hedge is there, or it would be so much worse!

The green zucchini is still having issues with the male and female flowers not blooming in sync, so pollination isn’t happening. The developing squash soon turn yellow and die off. This one has been chewed on by a mouse or some other small rodent. I suppose it’s good that the squash still feeds something!

We had a super light rain this morning, which is supposed to continue off and on throughout the day. Then we’re supposed to warm up again over the next few days. It should be interesting to see how much more things manage to ripen during our mild grace period!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: morning harvest and deer damage

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I checked my weather app last night, and read that we were to get rain and thunderstorms this morning.

This morning, I checked the app and it told me “rain will end in 45 minutes”.

There was no rain.

We’re going to have to water the garden today.

Which is not a complaint. We have a garden to water, still! Though the evenings have been chillier than forecast, we’re still frost free.

While checking all the garden beds, I spotted some deer damage in the sweet corn.

The silks were nibbled off!

It looks like a deer ducked under the rope fence (so much for the bells and whirligigs to startle them!), walked along one side of the corn, nibbling the silks all along the way.

I did find one cob that had been pulled off and left on the ground.

I’d been able to check the other nibbled ones, but with this one I could peel it entirely. They are still not ripe. I think the cool evenings are slowing things down.

We’re supposed to have highs between 17C/63F (today) and 14C/57F (in a couple days) over the next while, before temperatures rise above 20C/68F again. We’re supposed to stay above 20C for several days before dropping to the mid teens again. One of my apps has a 28 day long range forecast, and according to that, we won’t hit overnight temperatures low enough for a frost risk until almost a week into October.

Every mild day is bonus right now, and allowing our garden to continue to produce.

I love those G Star patty pans!

The onions are from the curing table for today’s cooking, but the rest is fresh picked. The Yellow Pear are filled with ripening tomatoes – much more than the Chocolate cherry. We have to figure out what to do with them all.

A couple of Sophie’s Choice tomatoes were ripe enough to pick. I will use those to save seeds. The paste tomatoes went into the freezer for later processing.

As I write this, my older daughter is in the kitchen, trying to use up a whole lot of vegetables for lunch, to go with the short ribs that were in the slow cooker all night. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: morning harvest, curing onions, and a garden tour video

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I did recordings for a garden tour video on Sept. 10 – the date for our average first frost – and meant to post the finished video yesterday. I ended up leaving my computer on all night while the video uploaded to YouTube, only for it to not process. Which meant I had to close it and start over.

It really irritates me that YouTube will let you upload something for hours, but if the processing fails, there’s nothing there. All that time, lost!

But it’s done, and here it is! Our September garden tour video – and it’s much shorter than my last one!

This morning, I got a small harvest.

It seemed strange to pick those tiny, misshapen Purple Beauty peppers, but they are ripe, so leaving them isn’t going to help anything.

I picked the largest G-star patty pan and could have picked more, but decided to let them get bigger. I’m so glad those are finally producing.

There was just one cucumber to pick and I didn’t even try to pick any pole beans. What little is left can be left to dry on the vine. I was able to pick a decent number of Cup of Moldova tomatoes, but the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes seem to have just stagnated. They’re not really ripening. I suppose when the time come, and we pick the remaining green ones to finish ripening indoors, they will still be fine.

The onions that had been left on the netting overnight are now set out to cure out of direct sunlight. We are supposed to get rain in a few days, so if they still need time to cure, they will be protected under the canopy tent. We’ll be able to braid the Red of Florence onions, but will have to use a mesh bag to store the yellow onions, and even the ones that still have greens on them, the greens aren’t strong enough to handle being braided.

The next big job in the garden is to harvest the Brigit potatoes. I’m not looking forward to it, after how difficult it was to harvest the small bed of Caribe potatoes, and how few potatoes there were. It’s going to be a lot of work for little return.

Not today, though. I’m rather sore from digging this morning. I seem to have pulled something in my neck while wresting with that rock, and it’s starting to hurt pretty bad. 😕

Time to pain killer up and work on something more sedentary for now.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: harvesting onions – with a helper!

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In between helping my daughter when she needed an extra pair of hands while building the cats’ water bowl shelter, I harvested most of our onions.

These are the yellow onions from sets – there was no variety name that came with them. The netting was very handy to hold the onions for me!

I also had a helper.

This little beast was traipsing through the Black Nebula carrots, like he was on a jungle safari. Every now and then, when I tossed an onion on the netting, he would leap up from below to try and catch it! Then just hang there until I unhooked his claws and set him aside, only for him to run back into the carrots and hunt down the next onion!

The little bugger even tried it from under the mosquito netting while I dug up the Red of Florence onions. Those were split between two beds, and both are on the netting now.

We aren’t expecting rain for several days, so I’m actually going to leave them on the netting to cure for a while. Quite a few of the yellow onions no longer had their greens, but of those that do, they’ll get braided and hung up to finish curing indoors.

The Red of Florence onions, with their long shape, were a lot easier to harvest.

There are still the Tropena Lunga onions in the high raised bed, but they haven’t started to fall over yet, so I’m leaving them to grow some more.

We don’t have as many onions as I would have liked. The ones planted in the bed by the chain link fence might have one or two worth harvesting, but that’s it, and the red onions from sets planted with the yellow pear tomatoes are really small. I’m not sure if there will be much out of those.

Note for future reference. Plant a LOT more onions. These will only last us a few months, and certainly not the whole winter.

The yellow onions from sets were not any bigger than the ones we started from seed, though we don’t have other yellow onions to compare to, since they didn’t survive after transplanting. Nor did the shallots, both from seeds and from sets, planted in the same bed. At this point, we’re not seeing any advantage between starting from sets or from seed in the final product. Which means that next year, we will likely do both, again. We seriously need a better set up for starting seeds indoors. One that keeps the cats away! We’re actually looking at making a removable hardware cloth door between the living and dining rooms, as well as similar barrier over a shelf that is open on both sides. If we can keep the cats out of the living room, we can dedicate the room to starting seeds and not have to be constantly protect them from the cats. Having to keep the seedlings in the aquarium greenhouses, and under the plastic cover in the mini greenhouse, didn’t allow adequate air circulation, even with fans, and made it more difficult to provide adequate lighting.

We will have the winter to figure that out how to do that, though. 😊

For now, we at least have some onions to harvest!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: morning harvest and first corn!

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Okay, I probably should have waited a bit longer…

… but I picked our first corn!

It’s hard to judge ripeness. This variety doesn’t get large cobs but, at the same time, with everything struggling so much, they may still be smaller than typical. We did take a peek, and the kernels seem a bit on the small side, but whatever. It can still be eaten!

The pole beans are certainly winding down. Except the Red Noodle beans, which haven’t even started blooming yet, even though there are buds. The golden zucchini is looking wonky – but at least there is something to pick.

Last night, as far as I know, we never dipped lower than 20C/68F. Which is warmer than forecast, and just wonderful. The night before, the temperatures dipped to 7C/45F, which was lower than forecast. If the forecast is close to accurate, we shouldn’t have frost until possibly the beginning of October, but… well, the forecast hasn’t been very accurate for the overnight temperatures, that’s for sure. Which means it’ll be hard to know if we would need to cover some of the temperature sensitive vegetables for the night. Not that we’d be able to at all for the squash beds – they’re just too large – but we’d be able to protect some of the others.

I’d rather just have mild overnight temperatures!

The Re-Farmer

Crab apple harvest

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This afternoon, I headed out to see what I could get from the one crab apple tree that has tasty apples. Most of the apples were well out of reach, but after trying a couple of things, I found I could use the hook at the end of the extended pole pruning saw, at its longest, to grab branches and give them a shake.

Then ducking, so I wouldn’t get beaned in the head. Those things are hard!

Then it was just a matter of gathering them off the ground. The damaged ones got tossed towards the spruce grove, so I wouldn’t have to pick through them again when I had to shake the tree again. With so many apples, I could afford to be picky.

The deer and any other apple eating critters will be in for a treat, tonight!

I got somewhere between 15-20 gallons of apples, and I only shook the tree twice. There are still lots on the tree, but I was out of buckets.

With so many apples, I scrubbed out the wheelbarrow, then used it to give the apples a cursory wash with the hose. The amount in the photo is from the two smaller buckets.

I had to prep a third bin to hold them all.

I love these bins! They interlock to hold together, and even when stacked one on top of the other. They are still just corrugated plastic, though, and can only hold so much before they start bending under the weight while being carried.

For now, the bins are sitting in the dark and relatively cool of the old kitchen. I’ll set aside a bucket for my mother. When she was last here, she insisted in picking apples into her walker, but they were nowhere near ready for picking. They are in their prime right now, and taste so much better. We do have crab apples on some of the other remaining trees, and I do try them every now and then (except the one tree with apples so small, it’s basically an ornamental tree). They don’t taste very good when ripe. When not quite ripe yet, they’re pretty awful. There was one tree that tasted pretty bad right up until the ripened, when they suddenly became tasty and sweet, but that part of the tree died over the winter, leaving only the suckers that had been allowed to grow, so only the not-tasty parts of that tree are still alive. 😕

Tomorrow, I will start de-stemming the apples and cutting them up, and will be using the fermentation bucket from our wine making kit to make a large batch of apple cider vinegar. There will be apples left over, even after taking some out for my mother. We haven’t decided what to do with them. In the past, we’ve made apple jelly, but our Bernardin canning book with the recipes we used is still missing.

I wonder if I lent it out to someone? I can’t remember. I do remember offering to lend it to my SIL, but she just took photos of the recipe she wanted and left the book. I do have other cookbooks with canning recipes, but I’m less sure of their safety.

I suppose I could just go look at their website, but having the book is really handy.

Anyhow, we’ll figure out what to do with the surplus. Then also decide if we want to harvest more, or leave the rest for the birds.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: some progress, and a little harvest

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It’s just past 10pm as I start this, and we’re still at 21C/70F, and the higher winds of earlier today have died down to a lovely calm. I found myself looking for reasons to get the fire going, but I really need to get some sleep tonight! Sleep has been frequently interrupted for the past while. 😕

Lack of sleep wiped me out enough that I was feeling quite ill this morning, to the girls took care of feeding the critters so I could try and get at least a couple of hours in. With Leyendecker still in recovery in my room (no, he wasn’t the one keeping me up at night!), and my daughters still having their days and nights reversed, my younger daughter has been taking her “night shift” and sleeping in my room, to keep and ear out on Leyendecker while I’m out. (He seems to be doing all right, though still having difficulties voiding, so we are monitoring him very closely) In the end, it was almost noon before I finally was able to head outside and do my rounds – minus the critter feeding.

Of course, a fair amount of that is spent checking things in the garden. Things like this.

Here we are, into September, and the Red Noodle beans are just starting to show flower buds!

This Kakai hulless squash was the first to develop and is looking like it’s ripe – but it’s about a quarter the size it should be. If the weather holds, there’s a chance we’ll have a couple more, larger ones. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins are going rather well, compared to the other winter squash. Only the Baby Pam pumpkins are managing as well. The Lady Godiva should give us at least 2 fully developed squash by the end of the growing season, with a few more little ones developing. Likewise, the Styrian variety has a couple large pumpkins that should be harvestable by the time growing season is done, with a couple more developing.

As for the Baby Pam, we have a little few bright orange pumpkins that could probably be harvested, that are smaller than they should be, but there are others that are still growing and turning colour that look like they will reach their full size – which isn’t very large to begin with.

This Georgia Candy Roaster is one of two stunted plants that were just covered in slug trails this morning!

While watering this evening, I was amazed to find female flowers among the Georgia Candy Roaster, and even one Winter Sweet. I hand pollinated them, just in case, but I think it was too late for one of the Georgia Candy Roasters.

While harvesting, I was surprised by how many Yellow Pear and Chocolate Cheery tomatoes were ready. I took the few G-Star patty pans that were on the plant killed off by a cut worm.

A few more of the Cup of Moldova tomatoes were ripe enough to pick, and into the freezer the went, with the others needing to be processed.

I keep saying I need to get those done, but the fact that they are in the freezer actually frees me up to work on other things. But that will be in my next post!

As for the garden, it’s a waiting game. So far, we’re not looking to have cold temperatures or frost for the rest of the month. With our first average frost date on Sept. 10, that is very encouraging. I plan to do recordings for another garden tour video on that date. Hopefully, thing weather will hold and things will have time to catch up.

I’d really like a chance to try those red noodle beans!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: dead plants, and a disappointing harvest

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I didn’t head out to do my morning rounds, other than feeding the cats outside, until after I got back from town with Leyendecker, so it was more afternoon rounds than morning!

There were a couple of pleasant firsts that I found in the garden.

This is our very first canteen gourd! Until now, there have been nothing by male flowers. I don’t think it actually got pollinated, but even if it did…. well, it’s September, so there’s no growing season left for it.

I wonder how these would have done, if we hadn’t had such a horrible spring? I wouldn’t mind trying them again. This year was so bonkers, I can’t use it to judge if we can actually manage to grow them here.

It’s the same with the luffa.

Male flowers have finally started to bloom!

Too late for these female flowers. They’re already done, and the developing luffa is going to just dry up and fall off.

There is hope for these ones, though.

Now that the clusters of male flowers are starting to open, there will be flowers available to pollinated these developing female flower buds.

Not that it matters too much. There isn’t enough growing season left. These were started so early indoors, because they need such a long time for the sponges to develop and dry out. They should have been blooming by July, not September!

Ah, well. Something else I wouldn’t mind trying again.

One of the disappointments of the day was found when I took a closer look at the one G-Star patty pan squash plant that was drooping.

It was drooping because the stem was severed! Looks like cut worm damage.

*sigh*

Of course, this happened with the one plant that had the most developing squash on it.

I did get an okay harvest, at least.

Those green beans are both pole beans and bush beans planted with the sweet corn.

What a pain those were! The grass clipping mulch will be great for the plants, but the grass stuck to the beans like crazy. Once they got into the colander, the grass clippings spread to all the other beans, too. Rinsing them off with a hose wasn’t enough. I ended up dumping the beans in a bucket of water, twice, before I could finally get the grass off. Even after swishing them in the water, every bean pod I pulled out ended up with grass floating on top of the water stuck to it, and I still had to hose them – and my hands – off to get rid of it. Who know grass clippings and bean pods would act like Velcro?

There were a few ripe Cup of Moldova tomatoes ready to pick. Those got cleaned off and went into the freezer with the rest.

Now that we’ve brought Leyendecker home from the vet, and I was able to use my daughter’s card to pay for it, we no longer have to delay our city stock up shopping. I still have the tomatoes taking up space in the freezer, though, and I just haven’t had time time to make the tomato paste; it needs to be tended pretty constantly for the hours it will take to get to the right thickness, and too much has been going on. I’ll probably have to split things into two trips, though, so I can make sure the first trip doesn’t have a lot of stuff for the freezer.

Later in the day, I was back out in the garden to see what I could get out of the Caribe potato bed.

This is an earlier variety, and they’ve looked ready to harvest for some time.

The potatoes never grew well, and quite a few never sprouted at all, due to all the flooding we had. I wasn’t expecting much.

The first thing to do was to pull back the straw mulch.

Oh, dear!

What you are seeing in the straw is a whole lot of slugs! I’ve never seen so many slugs all at once before. The whole bed was like this.

The next problem was trying to use the garden fork to dig around where I knew the potatoes had been planted.

We’ve used this bed once before, couple of years ago. I remember digging around in it. What I don’t remember is there being SO many rocks. It was almost impossible to get the fork into the ground, even with how much softer it was with the mulch. What I did manage to turn was full of healthy, active worms, at least, but there is no way we can grow in this spot again, as is. If we ever do, it will have a raised bed on it.

Not that it mattered, in the end. This is all the potatoes I found.

I planted more than I took out. Those two largest potatoes? They’re all chewed up by slugs. One of them is practically hollow.

I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s still disappointing.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the other two varieties will be much better. The Bridget are looking ready to harvest, too – what little there is. The All Blue are a late season variety, and some of them are still blooming, but…

*sigh*

With how successfully my mother was able to grow potatoes here, I had really hoped for better results. Yes, the flooding this spring did its damage, but it’s been a lot of years since anyone’s been picking rocks out of the garden. A lot of years with the frosts heaving more and more rocks to the surface. For it to be so rocky, I couldn’t get my garden fork to dig more than a couple of inches is just insane.

Potatoes are one of those staple crops we want to grow in large quantities for winter storage. Quantities that are more than what we could do in the raised beds we plan to build. With so many rocks in our soil, we still will need to build things up quite a bit to be able to have any crop worth mentioning.

It may be more efficient to get indeterminate varieties and grow in potato towers, instead.

The Re-Farmer