zone 3 gardening

Our 2024 Garden: a surprise harvest! Plus updates

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Okay, so the garden is pretty much done.

The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!

What I wasn’t expecting was this.

That’s right. I harvested tomatoes this morning!

When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.

This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.

So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.

We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.

Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.

So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁

Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.

Normally.

It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.

Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.

Then she made herself a sandwich.

The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!

Then her fingers started to burn.

It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.

She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!

Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!

Gloves needed!

Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!

These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!

Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.

We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.

Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.

So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.

We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.

Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄

That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.

I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.

We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.

Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.

The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.

That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.

That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.

So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.

There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).

We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.

Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.

Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.

On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.

On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!

Ah, well. It is was it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: peppers are in

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Well, we tried…

When I uncovered the high raised bed this morning, it was clear the covers were not enough to keep the peppers from being damaged by the frost a couple of nights ago.

The eggplant and hot pepper bed also saw damage, though the eggplants and each end faired worse than the hot peppers in the middle.

So I just went ahead and started harvesting.

I had grabbed just the ripest of the hot peppers for now, though a couple of green ones broke off in the process. We’ll go back to tend to that bed, later.

With the bell peppers, I gathered almost off of them. I did leave behind the tiny ones that were too small to bother with, though I think some of the ones I did grab probably could have been left, too. It just seems a shame to leave them behind.

You can tell which ones are the Sweet Chocolate peppers, even when they’re green. They have a more elongated shape.

So these will be set out to ripen more before getting cut up and either frozen or dehydrated. Most likely the bell peppers will all be frozen, but the hot peppers will be dried and then powdered. We have quite a few ripe and ready to start on now. We’ll be using the oven to dehydrate them, so that will be an overnight thing.

The red onions in the high raised bed with the bell peppers were left for now. They can handle the colder temperatures, and most aren’t really ready for harvesting, yet.

Today is working out to be a very windy day, and we’re supposed to get rain, of and on, so we won’t be getting a lot of outside stuff done today.

That’s okay. There’s plenty of inside work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest before first frost, and getting a lot done!

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My younger daughter and I were able to get so much done today, all before our expected first frost.

Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re supposed to drop to either -2C/28F, or 1C/34F tonight.

Either way, we’re looking at frost tonight.

Strangely, there are absolutely no frost warnings. Perhaps the humidity is too low. The temperature alone is enough to cause damage, though.

Last night, my older daughter helped me cover the two beds that actually can be covered, and I’m glad we did. We dropped to 3C/37F last night, and that was enough to kill off the last of the squash and melon leaves. Even the Crespo squash was droopy, and they were the only ones that were still lush, green and growing.

My daughter started off by checking on the biggest Crespo squash. As she rolled it aside, the stem broke right off its vine.

This is what it looked like, underneath.

We made sure it wasn’t sitting directly on the ground, but this damage still happened.

That’s okay. We’ll just cut that part off and eat it first!

This one is mature enough that we should be able to save seed, too! It took four years of trying, but we finally got a mature Crespo squash!

The two that were growing in the bean trellis didn’t get to full maturity, so they’ll need to be eaten sooner, too. Or we could cut make a puree to freeze or something like that.

My daughter started off harvesting the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden ahead of me. She’d collected all the Forme de Couer and had moved on to the Black Cherry tomatoes by the time I was able to start helping her. The Black Cherries were so tangled up in the lilac branches, we had to cut our way through to be able see, never mind reach, the tomatoes. After a while, I grabbed a pile of cut up tomato plants to take it to the compost pile when I realized, there were plenty of tomatoes in the compost pile to gather.

So I grabbed another bin and worked on those.

I found a surprise!

I knew there were two types of volunteer tomatoes in there. A few Indigo Blues, and a whole lot of Roma VF from last year’s harvests.

I found a third type, completely buried by the others!

They look like a slicing tomato of some kind, but I don’t remember growing a red variety of slicing tomato last year. It was also the only one that had an almost ripe tomato.

You’ll notice a lot of the Romas are very pale – almost white – in colour. These were essentially blanched from being under so many stems and leaves. I’m really surprised by how many we got in there!

It’s a shame they never got to ripen. A few of the Romas had started to show a blush. Who knows how many of these will actually ripen once indoors.

By the time I got the compost tomatoes done, my daughter was almost finished the old kitchen garden, so I moved on to the main garden area, bringing the wagon with the Crespo squash, to start harvesting the squash and melons. Then my daughter joined me and started harvesting the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes.

I found several melons were already “harvested”! One had a hole in it and was essentially hollowed out, so I’m guessing a mouse got that one. The others looked more like racoon damage.

Once the squash and melons were picked, plus a few patty pan squash, I cut down and went through all the corn stalks to find the cobs I’d left to go to seed.

*sigh*

This was all the racoons left me, and it’s not even dried out enough to have viable seeds.

Ah, well. Live and learn!

That done, I got another bin and helped my daughter with the last of the tomatoes. There were so many San Marzanos in the main garden area! Then we did the tomatoes that were at the chain link fence.

Here is the entire harvest.

The bin with the cat next to it has the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from the chain link fence in it, plus the tiny tomatoes from the volunteer tomato plant that I found among the potatoes. There were so many perfect little tomatoes! Not a single one had a chance to ripen. We have no idea what kind of tomatoes they were, either.

My daughter had already moved the previously harvested winter squash from the garage to the house, so now these squash are set up in the garage. It looks like some of the blue squash did get to fully mature, but most of them seem shy of full maturity, so they won’t be able to properly cure. They are still quite edible, though. They just won’t last as long in the root cellar than if they had fully matured and cured. Still, some time set up like this in the garage will help them last a bit longer.

Once we were done with the harvesting, my daughter uncovered the box of the truck, and we loaded up with as many bags of cans as we felt we could properly secure.

Which turned out to be maybe a third of the pile!

The whole thing got covered with a tarp and strapped down with ratchet straps. We set two up in an X across the pile, plus two more across the front and back. It was pretty windy, though, and once we got to highway speeds, the tarp was billowing under the straps more than I liked.

We stopped at a gas station to tuck the tarp back in place, then secured it more using Bungee cords. It still billowed, but nothing that was a potential problem.

This is the first time we’ve gone to this salvage place, but they were easy to find. I’d called for instructions yesterday, so we knew where to go to start. After talking to someone in the office, she directed me to where we should pull up, and staff could unload the truck.

My daughter and I started taking the straps and tarp off while they brought over a couple of bins with a forklift to bring them to the scale. All the cans are in transparent bags, so they could see that there were some tin cans in there, too.

That was okay for them, but good for us.

The tin cans go for 10 cents per weight.

The aluminum goes for 50 cents.

When they’re mixed up like this, they basically figure out something in between.

After everything was unloaded, we moved the truck again, and I went back to the office to wait. I had thought I stopped out of the way, but I turned out to be wrong, when a very large truck pulling a very long trailer came in! One of the office staff asked if we could park on the street. When I moved the truck, though, there wasn’t enough room to get by the trailer. I went back inside while my daughter waited until the truck could pull ahead, then she found a place to park.

As I was waiting in the office, I heard some staff going back and forth and saying something about “getting her a magnet”.

Then a guy came up to me and handed me a red keychain with their company name and number on it. It turns out, I was the “her”, and the keychain has a strong magnet on its end. This is for the next time we bring in a load; when we back stuff up, we can use the magnet to make sure there’s no cans with steel in them mixed in.

It means we’ll have to re-bag all the cans again, but the difference in price makes it worth is. With sooooo many cat food cans, plus the pop and energy drink cans, it is quite a loss to not get full price on the aluminum because there’s half a dozen tin cans scattered among them.

In the end, we brought 208 pounds, which got us just over $17. While they did give us an in between price, we still could have gotten quite a bit more, if we didn’t have those tin cans in there.

Live and learn!

It was very nice of them to give us the magnet, too. We have magnets, of course, but this one will be much more convenient!

That done, my daughter and I made a quick stop at a gas station, then headed home. We made a point of not covering the box again so that, once at home, we could give it a cleaning. The truck has screw holes in the bed from when it was a commercial vehicle hauling trailers. A remarkable amount of dust from the gravel roads gets in there!

I know it’s just going to get full of dust again, but it sure did feel better to finally wash that out with the hose!

Then we filled the truck again, this time with our garbage. We were overdue for a trip to the dump!

I had planned to go to a different landfill in our municipality, but I don’t know the area it’s in, so we went to our usual one.

I was really glad to have my daughter with me! The pit area is a real disaster. My daughter got out before we went into the pit area to make sure there wasn’t anything that might puncture a tire. While she kicked things out of the way, I slowly crawled along behind her with the truck until she could guide me in backing up to the pit. Not as close as we normally would have gone; too much broken glass!

And nails.

She was finding and kicking away nails, the whole distance!

This place has really gone downhill. The previous municipal council had fired the guy that used to take care of the landfill. I don’t know what the new council is doing, but the attendant that’s here now is not someone physically able to maintain the pit. Which is fine, if being an attendant is the only part of her job description, but whoever it is that’s been hired to use the heavy equipment to clean where we’re supposed to drive up to the pit is not doing a good job at all. Even the equipment being used is different, and the tracks on that front end loader is just destroying the gravel driveways.

But, we got the job done, and so far, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any flat tires, thanks to my daughter!

As we were leaving, my daughter wondered about being able to go to town and pick up something. It had been a long time since either of us had eaten, and she was thinking of perhaps treating us.

After talking about it, we decided that, between the two of us, we could pick up some fish and chips for all of us for supper.

Which was about when we got a message from my husband. The pharmacy called. When he had his prescription refills delivered, they didn’t have enough to fill one completely. They now had the amount they owed him.

Well, that was handy! We would have time to do that, before the pharmacy closed at 6pm.

A trip to town, it was!

As we were going along, we ended up stuck behind some slower moving traffic, so it took a bit longer to get to the pharmacy. I was going to just dash in, anyhow.

As I was walking in the door, behind two other people, a staff member let us know…

…they were closing in one minute – and she locked the entry doors behind us!

It turns out, they close at 5:30.

Thankfully, my husband’s prescription was quick to find, and it was already covered, so it just needed to be handed to me, and I could go!

From there, we went and got the fish and chips to bring home, plus a quick stop at the grocery store for something else my husband needed. We could finally go home!

We weren’t quite done yet, though!

One home, my daughter took care of bringing in the hot food, while I started bringing the bins of tomatoes into the old kitchen.

I have no idea what we’re going to do with them all.

In previous years, we kept a bin of green tomatoes out and my family just snacked on them as they ripened. They were all small grape, cherry or pear type tomatoes.

I know there are lots of things that can be done with green tomatoes; we’ve just never done them. I wouldn’t be able to eat them, so it’s a matter of finding things the family would like.

What we don’t have is the space to lay out so many green tomatoes in what should be a single layer, to ripen indoors. It would have to be in the living room – the cat free zone – but it’s a disaster right now.

Until we figure that out, all five bins are now laid out on the chest freezer in the old kitchen. That room is too dark and gets too cold to be able to leave them there to ripen.

Once we were finally able to have our supper, things still weren’t done!

It was back outside to recover the two beds for the night, so the peppers and eggplant will survive. The hoses had to be prepped so they wouldn’t have any water in them to freeze, and I even remembered to close the doors in the side of the garage the squash and melons were in, so they won’t get as cold.

And now I am FINALLY done for today.

I’m hoping to actually get to bed before midnight and get some real sleep for a change. My attempt to do so last night was a total failure! 😄

There is, of course, lots to do outside. This is one of the busiest times of the year, as we get ready for winter, while the weather holds!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: Some garden destruction!

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We had a lovely mild morning today. We supposedly had rain last night, but nothing noticeable. I’m going to have to go back out to water the remaining garden beds today.

As I write this, my various weather apps tell me we are at 15C/59F. I just made a trip to the town north of us. There’s a bank with one of those signs with a rotating display that includes time and temperature. According to that, it was 21C/70F.

I’d say the sign is right and the apps are wrong!

I did a harvest this morning and completely forgot to take a photo of it! There were some Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry tomatoes to harvest, an orange bell pepper and a hot pepper, a surprising amount of beans, and some San Marzano tomatoes.

What I did not harvest was melons, but something did!

Considering the size and weight of the melon, and the fact that it was taken out of a raised bed and into the middle of a path, I’d say racoons did this.

Racoons did NOT do this.

This is all that’s left of my kohlrabi, after the flea beetles were done with it.

*sigh*

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop down to 4C/39F. Not quite frost temperatures, but we’ll definitely cover the two beds where it’s even possible to do so. I don’t think we’ll harvest the last of the other things until tomorrow, though. I’m taking a chance with that, but we’ll see how it goes. Just watering the garden really well will help things handle the temperatures a little bit.

It’s all one day at a time in the garden, this time of year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: tiny harvest and WE HAVE SEEDS!

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After the last couple of days, I plan to take it relatively easy today.

Part of “taking it easy” for me includes finally doing my morning rounds as usual!

Since I’d gathered a larger harvest yesterday, I didn’t expect to gather anything today. I did find a couple of things to pick though. A handful of Carminat purple beans, a single green Seychelle bean, a hot pepper and…

… our first onion seeds!

The clusters still look quite green, but I noticed some of them had already started to drop seeds among the melons in the trellis bed. So I grabbed a clean bucket and tried just shaking the seeds into it. Things were still too damp with dew, though, so I broke off the seed heads that were starting to drop seeds and dumped them into the bucket whole.

Quite a few seeds were dropped into the bed, so I think we can expect a fair number of self sown onions in there in the spring!

There are still some seed clusters that are very green that got left on the plants to be gathered later. For now, the bucket of seed heads is in the house, sitting in a sunny spot in the cat free zone. We’ll collect more seeds after the seed heads have dried off.

I made no effort to separate types of onions in here. There was really no practical way to do so. There would be only two types of onions – a red and a yellow – that we had tried growing last year. At this point, if we are going to start growing onions from our own seeds, there isn’t as much need to keep track of varieties, or even keep the seeds separate. It’s not like we’re going to be packaging them up for sale or anything like that.

Which means that when we start seeds for next year’s garden, we’ll be having Onion Surprise. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest time, and our first yellow peppers!

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I had another sleepless night last night (courtesy of the cats!), so my daughters took care of most of the morning stuff. That let me get at least a couple of hours of sleep before I headed out to the garden, just before noon.

We got a smattering of rain yesterday evening, so I used one of the side walls from the broken market tent to cover the onions that were curing outside. Once things were warmer, I uncovered them again, so they could get some sun and air flow.

Speaking of air flow…

We’ve got some warm, sunny days coming up, and mild overnight temperatures, so I lifted the bottom half of the vinyl sheets wrapped around the box frame over the eggplant and hot pepper bed.

As you can see in the foreground of the photo above, Syndol is checking out the eggplant and hot peppers I harvested out of there this morning!

This is the rest of today’s harvest. We have a first today!

Finally! Some yellow peppers!

Yes, a couple still have some green on them, but I wanted to get some of the weight off the plants. It was much the same with the few tomatoes I collected today.

Also, yes, that is a mutant Little Finger eggplant on the left! I actually remembered to bring pruning shears to cut the stems – they are surprisingly spiky! – and it was rather a surprised to cut one stem and get two eggplants! There are two Classic eggplant in there, too. I’m harvesting a bit smaller, as the large ones we’ve harvested before were getting pretty seedy inside. Mind you, we could leave some longer just to collect the seeds, but it’s probably too late in the season for any of the ones still on the plants to have viable seeds to collect.

The long, straight hot peppers were easy to harvest, but the curled one was so twisted around the stalk and another pepper, I ended up breaking off the top of the pepper itself, rather than the stem.

We also have one melon today, and one purple Dragonfly pepper. The colour is very much the same as the eggplants!

Pretty darn good for near the end of September in our area!

The German Butterball potato plants have all died off, so we should be harvesting those, soon. A few of the winter squash are starting to look ready to harvest and get set aside to cure, too. The one Jebousek lettuce that seeded itself should have seeds ready to collect, too. The kohlrabi look like a total loss, though. The flea beetles just decimated them. 😢 We finally got some to actually grow, and this happens. *sigh*

As we build up our raised beds, making it so they can be covered with insect netting is going to be important! I would really like to grow kohlrabi and cabbage and brassicas in general, but it looks like that’s just not going to happen until we have a way to protect them from those flippin’ flea beetles!!

All in good time.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

For now, I’m just happy with what we have!

The Re-Farmer

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