zone 3 gardening

Our 2024 Garden: sleepy bees, afternoon harvest, and our mighty Crespo squash!

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Today was another one of those days where I just quickly fed the outside cats early, and left the rest of my morning routine for later. As I write this, we are at 16C/61F, with a “real feel” of 13C/55F.

I’m quite enjoying this, but it’s a bit cool for the garden.

And the critters.

Like these snoozy bumble bees!

Yes, there are three bees in that squash blossom!

Before I did what would normally be my morning rounds in the afternoon, I headed out to the town north of us to pick up more cat kibble at the livestock supply place. The inside cats’ kibble was out completely. With my mother’s upcoming eye appointment in the city on the day we would normally do our first stock up shop in the city, I decided to get two 40 pounds bags this time, for both the outside and inside cats. While I was in town, I hit the grocery store for a few items as well. Normally, I wouldn’t, as groceries are quite a bit more expensive, but not as expensive as the extra gas it would take to drive to the town nearer to home, where we usually do our smaller trips.

Once back home and everything put away, I gave both the inside and outside cats a light feeding. The outside cats were practically fighting each other to get at the bowls.

The inside cats, not so much! 😄

After feeding the outside cats, I could finally walk without having them try and trip me, meowing for food, and I was finally able to do the rest of my rounds. There was even things to harvest!

The two larger melons you can see in the photo fell off their vines as soon as I lifted them.

That little Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon is so tiny! With the stem completely shriveled up, though, there was no point in leaving it. I’m curious as to what it will look like, inside!

With the cooler weather, I wasn’t actually expecting to harvest tomatoes, but some of them looked ready enough. We have so many other tomatoes inside right now, these can stay in the bin in the cat free zone to ripe more before we use them. These are the Forme de Couer tomatoes – including one green one that broke off its vine as I was harvesting the red one next to it – and Black Cherry tomatoes. No San Marzano or Chocolate Cherries to harvest this time around.

Last night, my older daughter made a large pot of tomato soup using fresh tomatoes that was quite delicious. After I finished what I was doing outside, I got the Crockpot set up to make more tomato sauce/base. I used some of the small onions that were harvested yesterday, as well as 8 or 10 cloves of our garlic – the strings of garlic have been brought in from the garage and can now go into the root cellar, making room for the onions that can be braided. Then I just used up what vegetables we had on hand. This time, that included a Little Finger eggplant, one Dragonfly pepper (any more than that, and I probably couldn’t eat it), the one little green zucchini we had, and all the beans that were left over. It got whatever seasonings I felt like using (basil, thyme, paprika and turmeric, this time), plus salt and pepper, along with some olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Then as many tomatoes as could be fit into the Crockpot were added. This time, I seeded them, only to reduce the amount of liquid, so it won’t take so long to cook it down to the thickness we want.

This will be left to cook on high for a few hours, while there are people up and about to tend to it, then on low into the night, for maybe 6 hours. When the time runs out, the Crockpot automatically switches to the warm setting, which is still hot enough to keep cooking it. In the morning, it will be blitzed with the immersion blender, then go back on high, with the lid propped open to release moisture, until it’s cooked down to the thickness we want.

After that, we leave it to cool down completely, generally using some of it as a pasta sauce while it’s still hot. Once cooled, it’ll go into freezer bags and into the freezer. We can then use it later as a sauce, as the base for a tomato soup, or included in any “use watcha got” soup we make.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

When I first headed out to check on the garden beds, I just had to get some photos of the Crespo squash. Our mighty, mighty Crespo squash! It is absolutely thriving!

I actually found two new squash developing, including the first one you see in the slideshow below.

Yup. That’s in the cherry trees! That one looks like it will be a survivor. It’s even bigger than the one in the second image that I’ve been watching. I wasn’t sure if that one got well pollinated or not. It’s starting to look like it has, but the first one that started growing in the trees died off when it was bigger than this, so it’s hard to say at this point.

The next photo shows one on a vine that’s stretching into the spruce grove. I’m pretty sure that one was successfully pollinated, and has a good chance of survival.

The next photo is of another surprise find. It was buried in the tall grass, so I weeded around it and set it on a brick to keep it off the wet ground.

I didn’t try to get photos of the two larger ones growing inside the bean trellis, but I just had to get a photo of the largest one, with my foot for perspective. THAT is more like they are supposed to look like. Though this one is still small for the variety, it’s the largest we’ve ever managed to grow, and I’ve been trying to grow these for something like four years now!

This new bed and location is definitely ideal for this squash. Even the deer are leaving it alone! Which is surprising, since they go through the path right next to the squash, to get in and out of the spruce grove, and I know they were eating the sugar snap peas in the bed not far away. The first year we grew these, the deer and groundhogs got to them several times before we could get enough barriers around them.

Now, we just need the frost to hold off longer, to give them a chance to mature more!

It would be great if we had another mild winter like last year, but that was a strong El Nino year, and this year we’re getting a strong La Nina – which typically means a colder, harsher winter, in our region. Which seems to be what the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting, too.

We shall see.

Until then, I’m going to appreciate the upcoming warm weather that’s in the forecast for the next week.

I know the garden sure will, too!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvesting onions, and prepping half a bed

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Well, I harvested the onions this evening, and there turned out to be more than I expected! At least, more than I expected to have survived! 😄

The variety of yellow onion we tried this year is called Frontier, from Veseys. I’m actually impressed with how big they got, even though they were flattened and had their necks broken so early on!

The first photo in the above slideshow is all the onions from the bed shared with the summer squash, and all the onions I could find under and around the San Marzano tomatoes. I know for sure I’ve missed some in that bed! The tomatoes are quite dense, making it hard to see, but I still found quite a few.

I also harvested a few shallots. There are others I left, as they had not been flattened and are still growing.

In the second photo, you can see what I used to lay them out to cure this year. That’s a home made bed frame, and they’re laid out on metal mesh window screens we salvaged from the barn, years ago.

Some of them have enough stems on them that they can be braided, so those ones will get braided and hung up in the garage to finish curing. The ones that can’t be braided will be brought into the house to be used first.

That done, I had a mess to clean up.

In the first photo of the slideshow above, you can see that, even with a mulch, the weeds are taking over. The main concern being the Creeping Charlie at one end.

The first thing to do was remove the mulch. We won’t be able to use the grass clippings as mulch again, since so many roots and rhizomes are mixed in with it now.

In the next photo, the soil had been broken up – our soil tends to get very compacted – to be able to remover as many weeds, roots and rhizomes as I could.

Including elm tree roots. Yes, even after clearing those out in the spring, they are once again reaching that far away from the trees!

I had considered skipping the weeding, but I’m glad I didn’t. I shooed away a remarkable number of frogs that were hiding in there!

In the next photo, you can see the pile of stuff I cleared out. That will be for burning, not composting. The bed itself was tidied up and levelled.

Of course, while working on this, I found onions that got missed! You can see those in the next photo. They are now on the screens to cure.

The last photo shows the finished bed. Boards that had been used to frame the bed space while it was being shifted over in the spring are now holding down plastic for solarization. We’ve got some hot days coming up, and that should be enough to start cooking the soil and killing off any weeds, seeds and roots.

But no frogs. I made sure they all got a chance to hop away!

Unless the wind manages to blow the plastic away, boards and all, this will stay until spring. When the summer squash and shallots in the rest of the bed are cleaned up for the winter, I should be able to cover the rest of the bed, too.

I think I might pick up more of those dollar store dining table protectors. They’re not a particularly heavy duty vinyl, but they are stronger than the clear plastic garbage bags I’d used in the spring. They are also completely clear and transparent, rather than slightly opaque, like the plastic I used today, or the bags I used in the spring. I think the vinyl might help the soil become hotter and do a better job of cooking the weeds. If nothing else, we can see through it and can tell if actually doing the job, or if it’s acting like a greenhouse for the weeds, instead! 😁

Tonight, we’re expected to have an overnight low of 11C/52F. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer than today, but the overnight low is supposed to drop to 9C/48F. After that, we’re supposed to get hot again. We’re now looking at a couple of days at 25C/77F, and lows of 15C/59F.

As for those temperatures cold enough for frost that the long range forecast was saying might happen within the first two weeks of October, that has changed again. The possible frost has been pushed back another week or so, though we are still expecting to get chilly nights.

I’m actually seeing possible snow on the last day of October – just in time for Halloween!

Who knows, though. The forecast will change again, soon enough! I just would like it to keep changing towards warmer nights for awhile. Since moving out here, we’ve had years when the first frost didn’t hit until November. I could do with a repeat of that!

It’s going to be interesting when I do my end of year analysis of how things went this year, as part of our planning out next year’s garden. This year has turned out completely different than how we originally planned! Having so many winter squash and melons to transplant made one huge difference. Shifting the beds to their permanent positions rather than building new ones was another big change. Then there was having to work around all that rain we had!

All things considered, I’m just happy to have as much as we do, this year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a morning of peppers

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Things definitely not chilly last night, though not – thankfully – frost chilly. We dropped to 6C/43F. Our expected high today is only 17C/63F, with tomorrow about the same. Then we’re supposed to warm up again over the next week, and even reach temperatures as high as 25C/77F before they start to drop again. Even the long range forecast into October has changed to warmer predictions, though we are still looking at potential frost. What gets me are the days we’re supposed to hit 25C/77F again, but have overnight lows of 3C/37F! Talk about temperature whiplash!

The garden seems to be okay with this, for the most part. The tomatoes, of course, aren’t ripening very quickly. The beans seem to be loving it, though. The Crespo squash is a surprise. While all the other squash and pumpkins are dying off, the Crespo squash is just thriving, growing and blooming. I’m not seeing any end of season die off at all!

This is what I was able to harvest this morning.

There are a few San Marzano tomatoes, all from the main garden area, none from the retaining wall blocks in the old kitchen garden. Hidden on the bottom of the colander is a single green zucchini. It’s small, but I picked it anyway, as it’s not going to get any bigger. There’s a whole three Chocolate Cherry tomatoes under there, too.

There’s all three types of beans in there. With the Crespo squash growing so enthusiastically, it’s hard to see the green Seychelle beans that are sharing the bed. Like the squash, the bean plants are thriving and blooming, as if it were the start of the season for them, instead of well past. There were more of the Royal Burgundy and Carminat beans than I expected, and they are still blooming, too. Even the one surviving Seychelle plant with the Carminat has a few beans on it, and is blooming.

I had a bit of a surprise while digging around to find the beans. I spotted a Carminat vine that didn’t make it onto the trellis netting, and was instead going under some winter squash vines. I gently pulled it out to see if I could get it on the trellis – and found a several huge pods! So we have more pods that might give us seeds, if the weather holds long enough for them to dry out.

With the peppers, I decided to go ahead and pick most of the Dragonfly peppers, as well as quite a few Purple Beauties. There’s a couple of Sweet Chocolates in there, too, though one of them turned out to be mostly green on the side I couldn’t see very well.

There were several peppers that are getting very yellow, but still not quite ready to pick. As for the variety that is supposed to be more or an orangey-yellow, they are all completely green, still.

Later today, when things are warmer and drier, I will head back to the garden and harvest yellow onions. Almost all of them had their necks bent down quite a while ago – most by cats, but some by the weight of the tomato vines they were planted around. No sense in leaving them to get mushy in the ground. I’m not entirely sure where I will lay them out to cure in the sun, though, since our picnic table is no longer useable, and the old market tent’s frame is broken.

I think I’m going to have to pick up another Walmart cheapie canopy tent. We’ll just have to make sure not to set it up where any trees can fall on it!

With the chill of the night, there were no Forme de Couer or Black Cherry tomatoes to pick today. I’m really hoping the upcoming warm weather stays for a while. We don’t have a lot of cat free space we can use to lay out green tomatoes to ripen! Another reason why getting another canopy tent would be useful.

And another picnic table. Probably a basic kit we can assemble ourselves, then paint.

When we get to building the outdoor kitchen we’re planning, that would be a good place to include areas where we can set out or hang produce to cure before they go to the root cellar. With the cooking surfaces we have in mind, we could even do large batch canning if we wanted.

All in good time!

For now, I’m just happy with a colander full of peppers and a handful of beans!

The Re-Farmer

[addendum: you know, if I followed the feedback suggestions on WP’s AI Assistant, my blog posts would be insanely long and even more verbose than I normally am! 😂😂]

Our 2024 Garden: triple harvest!

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Harvest was split between morning and evening today!

I did a double harvest as part of my morning rounds today. Here is what was ready to be picked.

Three Summer of Melons blend melons were ready to pick this morning, as were some Dragonfly and Sweet Chocolate peppers, a handful of beans, a few Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, a G Star patty pan squash and a Goldy zucchini.

After brining those in, I grabbed another bin before checking on the tomatoes in the Old Kitchen Garden. If you click to the second photo in the slideshow, you’ll see a few San Marzano tomatoes, some Black Cherry tomatoes, and mostly Forme de Couer tomatoes – including a branch I found that had broken off.

I’ll admit, part of the reason I wanted to pick eggplant this morning was to see how the new set up worked, with the vinyl wrapped around the box frame. You can see that in the last photo of the slide show. It seems to be holding up, though we haven’t had a severe wind to test it out yet. More importantly, having the overlap in the middle of the long sides made reaching into the bed to harvest easier than having the overlap on the short ends. So far, I’m happy with how it’s working.

Soon after I finished my morning rounds, I grabbed a melon and a couple of bell peppers for my mother, then headed out to her place for lunch, then helping her with her errands. That took a while, so it was very late in the afternoon by the time I got home.

I’ve been eyeballing the winter squash and pumpkins for a while now, and decided it was time to harvest the ones I was sure were fully mature. After picking, they will need time to cure. Normally, I would have set them up on the picnic table under a canopy tent, but the picnic table is finally giving out and can no longer hold much weight, and the frame on the canopy tent was finally broken beyond our ability to jerry rig it. In the end, I decided to set them in the garage, in front of my mother’s car. The back door and one of the front doors are kept open to allow for a cross breeze, which I hope will be enough for them. We moved the swing bench into the space in front of my mother’s car, now that all the bags of cans are outside, so I put a couple of boards across the arm rests to set the squash on.

After brushing off a whole lot of dust and old spider webs!

Then I grabbed the wagon and a utility knife and headed for the garden!

These are the ones that I felt were ready for harvest.

It’s a good thing this wagon is rated to 300 pounds, because all those squash together were pretty heavy!

In the next photo, you can see them laid out on the boards. I tried to put the smaller ones in the middle, and the heaviest over the arm rests.

In the middle front is a small, dark green squash. That is the first Crespo squash that formed. It got to this size and just didn’t get any bigger over the weeks, so I figured I may as well pick it.

There are four pumpkins from the free seeds I got from my mother’s town. Their pumpkin festival is this weekend. While with my mother, she told me one of her neighbours had some beautiful pumpkins in her section of the garden area. My mother offered to buy one, but she said not; they are for her grandchildren. So I offered my mother one of ours. She said yes – but just the smallest one.

She doesn’t want to actually do anything with it. She just wants to have a pumpkin for a few days. Just to make her happy! Then we can take it back and do whatever we planned to do with it. 😄😄

The rest are from the Wild Bunch mix of seeds we go, so we don’t know the names of them. I thought the two green, flattish ones were a Turban squash, but those get very bright and colourful. They might be a Buttercup squash, but from the images I can find, those are smoother. Still, that’s the closest I can find to what these might be.

There are two of those green ones that might be Buttercup squash. Then there are two of the slightly elongated orange ones with a point at the blossom end that looks a bit like a second them. Finally, there are two large orange ones that are round and slightly flattened.

Some of these have some damage to the skin. I tried to put them on boards or bricks to protect them from damp soil, but these still got too wet on the bottoms.

We’ll just have to eat those ones, first.

These will stay in the garage for a week or two before being moved into the root cellar, or eaten.

Except the pumpkin that will be going to my mother, of course!

I’m pretty happy with this haul. There are still more winter squash in the garden, and I hope the frost holds off long enough for at least some of them to finish ripening. The long range forecast has changed again, of course, and right now it looks like we won’t get cold enough for frost until we get into the second week of October. If this is at all accurate, we’ve got at least 2 – 2 1/2 frost free weeks ahead of us.

A lot can happen in two weeks!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: morning harvest, and look what I found!

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I had a really slow start to the day. For some reason, I just couldn’t fall asleep last night. By around 3am, I was hungry, so I got up to eat, then went back to be. I finally fell asleep somewhere around 4 am.

I still woke with the light, 2 or 3 hours later. I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats for me, so I could try and get more sleep.

Which sort of worked.

I finally got up around 11 and was sitting down to breakfast by about noon. That’s the one bonus of having my daughters take care of feeding the cats for me in the morning. Normally, I do my rounds and morning routine before I eat, which usually means I’m famished by the time I get inside.

By the time I finally went outside to check on the garden, it was mid afternoon. We’d reached our predicted high of 24C/75F. I don’t know what the humidex was at the time, but as I write this, coming up on 7pm, we’re at 21C/70F, while the humidex puts us at 24C/75F.

I feel like that’s on the low side.

Here is what I was able to harvest while checking on the garden.

Those three melons sure take up a lot of space in my giant colandar! One of them looks like it’s a bit over ripe, but it did not want to break free from its vine.

There are actually a few San Marzano tomatoes in there, but they rolled under the melons, along with some of the Black Cherry tomatoes. Since I harvested so many Forme de Couer tomatoes yesterday, there wasn’t much that needed picking today. There was one larger G Star patty pan I decided to pick.

What I was really happy to see was that red Cheyenne pepper! I was eyeballing it yesterday, when it still had a green tip. There’s another one that’s almost ripe that I will likely be picking tomorrow. The hot Cheyenne pepper plants have a LOT of peppers on them, so we will likely have enough hot peppers to preserve and supply us for a very long time. My daughters tried having one with a meal, using an entire small ripe pepper. Small as it was, it turned out to be too much, so they know to use a much smaller quantity in the future. This one large pepper would be enough for many meals.

Everything in the garden was most definitely feeling the heat. We keep getting vague forecasts for possible rain, but I decided to go ahead and water the garden, anyhow. I’m glad I did. Looking at the weather radar, it seems the system is going to blow right past us. The weather app on my computer actually says we are getting rain right now, which we are not.

While watering, I noticed that we are finally having more bell peppers starting to blush. The purple ones get dark very quickly, and we’ve got a couple Sweet Chocolate peppers that have started to turn. Today, for the first time, I could see another colour. I couldn’t tell if the one pepper I could see will be turning orange or turning yellow, but it is definitely getting bright.

When I got to watering the west melon bed, I found a lovely little surprise among the leaves that are dying back.

It’s a Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon!

It’s absolutely tiny – about the size of a softball. I’m very happy to see it, though. After spending most of the summer assuming the big vine in the bed was the one surviving watermelon, only to finally realize it was a winter squash, I thought we wouldn’t have any watermelons at all, and that the transplant had died.

They are supposed to get quite a bit bigger, but I don’t care. By the colours of the stripes on the outside, it may even be close to ripe.

I wonder how many more surprises like this I will find, as the leaves and vines die back?

I took footage for garden tour video on the 10th – our average first frost date – but haven’t had a chance to actually make the video. Now I’m glad it got delayed, as I can include things I missed, like this watermelon, when I’m editing it.

Gosh, September is already half gone.

Where did the time go??

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest firsts

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After doing my rounds this morning, I had a bit of a harvest – some planned, some unexpected!

There is what I gathered this morning.

The melon on the right is the first honeydew type we’ve harvested, having already fallen off its vine when I checked it.

I decided to harvest a few young eggplant today, even though they can still get larger. I really look forward to trying them. The last time we were able to grow either of these, we only managed to have very little ones to harvest before the frost. We enjoyed them, so I expect we will enjoy them at their bigger size, too.

The two together are the Little Finger eggplant, while the one on the other side of the green Seychelle beans is a classic eggplant. The Seychelle beans growing with the Crespo squash, have had a growth spurt and suddenly have loads of flowers. There are even a few green beans from the single plant growing with the Carminat beans.

The purple beans are almost all Royal Burgundy bush beans. There’s just a few Carminat pole beans in with them. They seem to be picking up on the blooms, too. I guess they liked the rain we finally got last night? We didn’t get a significant amount, though. I probably should have watered the garden this morning, anyway, as we got pretty hot today.

The peppers are the Dragonfly variety. Some of the pepper plants were falling over under the weight of their fruit. As I was straightening one to add more support to it, a branch broke off! Those are the Sweet Chocolate peppers, with only one starting to show a blush of colour. They should still ripen, so I left them on the branch and brought them inside, too.

I did not harvest any tomatoes, today. We harvested so many yesterday, I decided to wait. Last night, I decided to start a slow cooker tomato sauce, to use up as many tomatoes, and some other vegetables we had on hand, as I could. That included a couple of Uzbek Golden carrots, a couple of small onion bulbs, that one shallot I found pulled up, several cloves of garlic, the remaining beans we had, and even one Purple Beauty pepper that hadn’t been used yet, all chopped very fine. I added the usual salt and pepper, plus what herbs I had in my cupboard, some olive oil and apple cider vinegar.

Then I started adding the tomatoes.

I used all the San Marzano tomatoes I could find. Those didn’t yield much per tomato. They were a lot like peppers, with a hollow space in most, and the seeds clustered around the core. That did make them easy to deseed and core, but there wasn’t much tomato left after that.

All the Black Cherry tomatoes we had went in, and then I started on the Forme de Couer. Those, I just kept chopping up until I couldn’t fit any more in the slow cooker. No de-seeding or coring needed with those!

That still left us with quite a few tomatoes – and I didn’t even start on the basin of tomatoes we picked yesterday!

We kept the slow cooker going through the night, with occasional stirring. The warm setting on the slow cooker seems pretty high, so even after the time was done and it switched from Low to Warm, it continued cooking.

In the morning, one of my daughters took the immersion blender to it, and we turned it back to low. I propped the lid slightly with a wooden spoon to let the steam out, though we eventually put it on high, so we can cook it down to a thicker consistency.

My brother and his wife came out this morning. My brother was towing a piece of farm equipment that was very wide, and my SIL followed in her car with her hazard lights going. He was able to only go about 50-60 kph and sometimes, he later told me, that was too fast!

When they got here, my SIL gave me some vinyl table protectors she had been about to put into recycling until she heard I’d picked some up to put around the eggplant and pepper bed as a sort of greenhouse. I was quite happy to take them! I had a large melon for them and it reminded her to ask if I had any more tomatoes I was willing to part with.

Oh, was I happy to hear that!

I bagged up the last of the Forme De Couer I didn’t have room for last night, then brought another bag and the basin for her to take as much more as she wanted! (She can’t come into the house, as she is allergic to cats.) They’ve had so much going on this year, they didn’t really do much in the garden, and the few tomatoes they planted this year aren’t ripening yet, so I was more than happy to share the bounty! We still have tomatoes in the freezer from last year! 😄

My SIL headed home soon after, and I helped my brother secure a new tarp over the box on the dump truck. He’d already parked and unhooked the machine he’d hauled, and was planning to come back with another load on the trailer.

After he left, I was able to work on a few things I haven’t been able to get to, with all the running around I did last week, but that will be for my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: the most tomatoes, yet – and a baby luffa

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Oh, what a day it’s been! I’ll cover that in another post, though.

When I got home, my daughter was doing a walkabout, checking the yard for fallen branches and whatnot. We are supposed to get rain today but, so far, it’s just been sprinkles. I hope we get more, because I’ve been holding off watering the garden for it.

Instead of rain, we’ve been getting gusts of high winds. The catio Gouda is still in for 1 more night just has the temporary plastic roof over it, and the wind was tearing it loose from the cord that’s tying it down. We ended up putting a large floor mat on top to weigh it down, then added weights to that, to keep it from being blown off. I’m so glad we did, because that plastic would have been blown right off, not long after we did it!

Gouda, however, seems to be doing okay in the catio. He’s not too pleased about being stuck in there – and the other cats are not pleased about not being able to go in and steal his wet cat food! He only has to be in there for one more night. The catio’s walls are all mesh, but he does have his box nest with a blanket in there, and is using it. The catio is also sheltered by the house on one side, and a tree on the other, and branches above.

I’ll still be much happier when the isolation shelter is done, with a fully enclosed top level.

After we took care of that, we went through the garden beds and ended up picking another melon that had fallen of its stem, and a handful of the purple pole beans.

Then we started on the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden.

They haven’t been harvested for the last couple of days.

My daughter ended up bringing over the basin from the old kitchen to hold them all!

In the basin is a few San Marzano tomatoes, a whole lot of Forme de Couer tomatoes, and Black Cherry tomatoes.

In the second photo of the slide show, I was able to zoom in for a picture of a newly blooming female luffa flower. There is one other that I spotted, but there are no male flowers at all, anywhere. The male flowers bloom in clusters, making them easier to spot. I supposed it’s possible there are some way up high and hidden among the lilac branches, but it seems unlikely.

We have a whole bunch of things we will be doing with tomatoes over the next while; one of them is going to be using the slow cooker to make a sauce. It’s big enough that we should be able to use most of the tomatoes we’ve got waiting to be processed, along with a few other vegetables we have that can be included.

I won’t be starting on that for a while, though. I need to just sit and decompress for now. Much progress has been made in getting my mother into supportive living, as she has been wanting for some time now, but my goodness, am I ever mentally exhausted right now!!

I’ll cover that in my next post. Just writing about it, as much as I can on a public blog, will be very therapeutic!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: first onions

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While doing my rounds this morning, I found a few tomatoes to pick. We have enough in the house now, that we can start looking into makes sauces or soups, or other ways to process and preserve them.

My initial thought was to make a big batch of tomato soup, and freezing it in individual portions. With that in mind, I picked our first onions of the year.

We planted a lot of onions, but we’re not going to get much out of them, as far as size goes. So many of them have already had their stems broken, like the ones I picked this morning. Most look like they got rolled on by cats or something. I’m not sure, when it comes to the bed that’s almost all onions in the main garden area. The ones planted in the old kitchen garden were definitely flattened by cats. They actually seem to enjoy napping on the onions! The ones planted around the San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area have been crushed by the tomato branches.

My plans to make tomato soup, however, changed rather quickly. I found out my brother was on his way, along with the guy with the triple axle trailer. I ended up spending most of the day outside, and got quite a bit done in between loads.

The tomato soup will have to wait for another day. With the way things are going, I might have to get my daughters to do something with the tomatoes, instead.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, we’ve got our very first Frontier yellow bulb onions harvested.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: first ripe melon harvest – for reals

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Not long ago, I found one of the Summer of Melons Blend melons had turned yellow and was looking misshapen. When I picked it up, it fell of the vine. Technically, that should have meant it was ripe, but it didn’t look ripe. We haven’t cut it open yet, though. Too much other stuff going on.

Just a little while ago, my daughter and I did a sort of Florida weave to support the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area. That didn’t take long at all. My daughter’s been working on commissions, still mostly at night, lastly, so she hadn’t seen the garden in a while. As we were looking at the melon bed near the tomatoes, I noticed one of them had turned yellow, and fallen off the brick that was keeping it from direct contact with the ground. I went to put it back, and discovered it had fallen off its vine completely!

How handy, that my husband’s giant self healing cutting mat is still on the dining table. 😄 You can see that it’s about 8 inches long.

In the next photo, you can see the stem end. That’s how it’s supposed to be with melons, when they are fully ripe.

We haven’t cut it open yet. We’ll probably do that – and the little one – this evening, so we can compare.

I can hardly wait to try it! Being part of the Summer of Melon’s blend, we have no idea what variety it is, but if we like it, I want to save some of the seeds.

September 5, and we finally have our first melon.

Five more days to average first frost.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: evening harvest, with another first! Maybe two

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I hadn’t planned on harvesting anything while doing my evening rounds.

My garden had other plans!

I ended up using the bottom of my shirt to carry everything, because I didn’t have my usual giant colander that I use for harvesting and washing the produce.

My shirt got very loaded down!

Before I got to that point, I spotted these seed heads.

While shifting and preparing the low raised beds, I spotted a small plant I recognized as a flower that shows up in our main garden area. Rather than tossing it with the weeds, I decided to transplant it into the log framed bed, with the onions I’d been finding. I had no idea if it would survive a transplant.

Well, not only has it survived, it has thrived! It has become quite large and, while the flowers are not particularly large, the seed heads are amazing! Each one of those puffs in the photo are bigger than the palm of my hand.

I don’t want it to seed itself in the raised bed, so whenever the seed heads open like this, I gather the seeds and let them loose in an area just north of the beds. I figure at least some of them will manage to germinate, in the spring.

While checking on this bed, I also spotted one of the larger melons starting to look a bit yellow. I went to pick it up and it fell off its vine, so I included it in my harvest.

Since this from the Summer of Melons mix, I have no idea if this is a variety that turns yellow like this at maturity. I suspect not, to be honest. Still, we’ll crack it open and see what it’s like inside. So I’m not sure if this is a “first” for the melons or not.

You may notice something else different in the photo.

A bright red Cheyenne hot pepper! Red from stem to tip! There was another, next to it, that is about half red. We grew these previously, in grow bags, but they stayed green. When we had frost predictions, we tried to protect them, but were late covering them up one nice. The next morning, I harvested all the green peppers that weren’t frost damaged, and we set them up in the living room. They did turn red as as they dried, eventually, but they didn’t look very palatable. So I’m very happy to have some ripening while still on their plants!

I think I could have harvested several Dragonfly peppers. Some are quite large and so dark a purple, they look black. I will wait a bit, though. I think we’d end up with too many to use quickly, so I want to be prepared to dehydrate some of them, before I bring them in.

As for the cherry tomatoes, they got all mixed up while I was carrying them in my shirt. I honestly can’t tell the difference between the Chocolate cherry and the Black cherry! I’ll have to ask the family if they can tell the difference by taste.

I’m really quite happy with the harvests we’ve been getting. I had been so sure that we’d have almost nothing to harvest regularly this summer, except maybe tomatoes, since we have four varieties. Granted, this is the sort of harvesting we should have been getting in July and early August, not in September, but I’m just so happy to have anything at all!

If the temperatures stay mild enough, though, we should have a pretty awesome harvest of winter squash and melons! I’m quite looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer