It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like…Springtime?

So, it’s the 15^th of December and honeybees are still working over the flowers on the lettuce in the garden. The temperature was at a record high yesterday. I was actually able to pick some fresh herbs from the garden for dinner last night. This doesn’t feel right to me. This is New York State. It doesn’t even feel like just an extended autumn. The warmth and the rain and the smell of the air all remind me of springtime. Strange. At least I got to enjoy the bees, though they seemed rather frantic.

Usually by this time of year nearly all insect life outside is dead or asleep. I’m not used to seeing so many tiny creatures still active.

Putting the Garden to Bed

It’s been a strange autumn. We had a frost in early October then a snow storm and then 70 degree weather again. Then the weekends were rainy. So, it took me quite some time to actually put the garden in order for the winter.

The first hard frost was enough to kill nearly everything in the garden but it was a couple weeks before I could get in to clean up everything. It is always a bit sad to see everything suddenly brown when just a day earlier it was all brilliant and green. But it’s also nice to know that the growing season is done and it time for the next step.

I like to pull out all the dead plants in the fall. Some people let them stand and then till them into the soil in the spring. I like the look of a cleaned up garden bed so I pull everything out. Some of the dead plants I put into the compost bin. Some I leave on the beds. I don’t really have a scientific process for this. It just depends on what I feel like that day. For example, the eggplants, though they barely produced any fruit, set out deep roots. When I pulled the plants, a lot of soil came with them. So, I decided to leave the plants lying in the garden bed so I can shake some more soil off of them in the spring. The tomatoes, I removed to the brush heap in the back. Toward the end of the season the leaves got brown and spotty so I don’t want the plants lying on the soil. Similarly, when the fungus hit my chard and beets mid-season, I put the infected leaves out back. The lettuce, when I finally pull it will go into the compost bin.

Even as I type this, just days before Thanksgiving, the lettuce is still going strong. I was going to tear it out two weekends ago when I took care of the rest of the plants but a honey bee was working over the tiny lettuce flowers. The weather was so hot after I planted the second round of seeds that the lettuce came up bitter. But the plants looked nice so I just let them grow. Now I am pleased that there was something there for the little pollinators to work on later into the season.

Lettuce flowers

The strawberries got their straw and the asparagus got a good thick layer of maple leaves. Conveniently, there are a couple of maple trees near the garden so I just had to rake some leaves over and toss them over the garden fence. And even though it has been quite windy at time since I put the leaves down, the combination of the raised bed and the fact that it has fencing along two sides has kept the leaves in place.

Shh, the asparagus is sleeping.

So, for the most part, the garden is ready for its long winter’s nap.

And here are a few autumnal photos from around the yard.

The Garden's Last Hoorah

This last week of chilly weather has made it clear that autumn is upon us. The garden, however, seems to think it is springtime. Or at least some of the plants are giving things another go. The acorn squash plants have put on three new squash, each the size of a walnut. One year, when we were living on the mountain, we actually got two full rounds of acorn squash. The ones in the second batch were smaller and didn’t have a very long storage life but they were still tasty. I don’t think we’ll have time to see these new squash come to full maturity.

Acorn squash, round two.

The squash are not the only plants trying again. The tomatoes have put out a bunch of new blossoms as have the purple and fillet beans. A single new kohlrabi seedling has even appeared. The yellow squash has set fruit for the first time this season. Too bad they probably won’t get big enough to eat. It’s unusual for a single type of plant to fail me several times in one season. The cucumbers are giving it another go too. The peppers are still trying hard as are the eggplants. This isn’t really a second attempt for either of them as they have been very slow to produce the whole time.

More blossoms on the tomatoes.

Cucumbers making one final, pitiful push.

A new spiky eggplant flower

The rattlesnake beans have put on a fresh batch of blossoms as well. I’m really enjoying those beans. I grew them primarily for shell beans but as I picked the dried pods today, I also was able to pick a generous handful of fresh beans. With the new blossoms and tiny beans just starting, I may get more fresh beans before frost comes. As for the dried beans, we got 3 ½ cups from about a dozen plants. I’m not sure if that’s good or not but I’m pleased.

New bean blossom.

Rattlesnake beans to shell.

Beans!

Rattlesnake beans ready to become baked beans or soup.

The garden is apparently not ready to be put to bed yet. That’s okay. It’ll be nice to get those last few beans and tomatoes. We did do some final harvesting, though. We pulled all the carrots and dug the rest of the potatoes. The potato harvest was not overwhelming by any means but the carrots made up for it. 

Our meager harvest of potatoes.

Carrots enjoying some afternoon sun.

The corn and pumpkins are definitely finished. There is no way that either will be attempting a second round. The plants are completely dead. The corn was rather disappointing. I think it was the variety. It made small, irregular ears that grew up through the leaves. Weird. I plan on looking for a different type next year. But I collected the stalks and bound them together to decorate the front of our house. We got two pumpkins but one was chewed on while still on the vine. It still makes a decent decoration with the other pumpkin and a ceramic chicken.  

This corn is finished.

One perfect little pumpkin.

All decorated for autumn.

More Uses for Old Materials

As the garden is just plugging along doing its late summer thing, there’s not much to write about. So, I’m going to go back in time almost a year and tell a tale of recycling.

It used to be a pool, now it’s an arbor.

As I’ve detailed in previous posts, my Shaker garden was created almost entirely with materials salvaged from an old pool that was in the backyard. The only things we had to purchase were plastic to line the plywood and soil for the raised bed. Extras like mesh netting to keep the rabbits out and all the nails, screws and other fasteners were repurposed from previous projects. There was quite a bit of wood left over from the pool after the garden was built.

Still some wood waiting for another project.

My husband was able to make work benches in the basement and the garage from pieces of the pool. He also made a wonderful grape arbor. Behind the garage there is a pair of grapevines. They were just growing on the ground and climbing the nearby trees when we first moved in. So last October he decided to make an arbor for them. He took some of the longer boards from the pool and made four uprights and a top frame. He then used his circular saw and a chisel to make notches for the crossbeams on the top of the arbor.

He then dug four holes at the back corner of our garage and we worked together to square the thing up. The vines themselves were more toward the center back of the garage so once the arbor was set he guided them to the nearest upright. Then we waited through the long winter until spring when the dormant vines woke up again. The vines must have liked the arbor. By the middle of June, they had crested the top and began winding their way through the crossbeams.

First grapevine buds of the spring.

Little leave and grapes in early May.

Look at those vines go!

We let the vines grow with little care. We tucked them up into the arbor occasionally but otherwise did nothing special to them. We found that Japanese beetles really liked the grape leaves. Since we had no plans for the vines and the beetles seemed content with the leaves rather than chewing up other plants around the place, we let them go. The leaves are a nice shape for dolmas, though. I’ll have to get on them next year before the insects do.

Japanese beetles are destructive but rather pretty.

The grapes themselves are nothing special. If we really wanted grapes to eat or make into jelly or whatnot, we would probably pull out the vines and plant different ones. As it is now, the vine is more of a decorative thing and I like it that way.

Past-ripe grapes.

A lovely sight from my back porch.

And the birds like it too!

Putting Up Our Harvest

Years ago, when we lived on the mountain, we had to buy a chest freezer to store all the extra produce from our garden. We have no plans on plugging that freezer in this year but we still have more vegetables from the garden than we can eat fresh. So, here are some of the things we did with the extra veggies.

So many tomatoes!

I intended to make a big batch of cucumber pickles when it wasn’t too hot out. Unfortunately, we had a very dry spell after a very wet spell and that stressed out the plants enough that the cucumbers went bitter. I felt really bad throwing dozens of cucumbers into the compost but they just weren’t edible. I did have a small heap of cucumbers from before the plants turned. There weren’t enough to warrant pulling out the water-bath canner so I made a small batch of freezer pickles instead.

I used the recipe for Freezer Dills in the book Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman. (This is a great little book, by the way, with lots of basic information and beautiful illustrations.) The recipe is also available on Grit magazine’s website.  I have yet to try them but I’m sure they will be a wonderful treat when the snow starts flying.

Pickles in the freezer

I also decided to pickle turnips. I had not heard of pickled turnips before but the power of Google showed me that they were, indeed, a thing. So, I decided to give them a try. There are a bunch of recipes available online. I ended up using one from Eating Well. I filled two quart jars and look forward to trying them.

Turnip pickles

Back in June I made two jars of pak choi refrigerator pickles. We got into them last week. They are very vinegary (maybe a bit too vinegary for some people’s tastes) but they are really good on hotdogs. The white stem parts are nice and crunchy. I’m definitely going to plant more pak choi next year.

During the winter, I bring soup to work every day for lunch. During the summer, it feels odd to make soup but with all the wonderful fresh vegetables coming out of the garden I had to make a batch of minestrone soup. There are a lot of recipes out there for summer minestrone. The August issue of Cooking Light magazine has a good recipe and it happened into my mailbox just as I was wondering what to do with all my veggies. Homegrown carrots, green onions, tomatoes, squash, green beans and chard all went into my massive soup pot along with cannellini beans and ditalini pasta to make a wonderfully hearty soup. We ate some for dinner and I put the rest (three quart-bags full) into the freezer for later.

Bags of summer minestrone in the freezer

We are currently being inundated with tomatoes. I love fresh tomatoes on sandwiches and salads but it’s beginning to get out of hand. I don’t want to throw out any because I didn’t get to use them in time. So, today I made some tomato juice. I was going for tomato sauce but we didn’t grow sauce tomatoes so it was a bit more watery. No problem. The juice will be a great base for soups and sauces. All I did was cut up the tomatoes and simmer then for about 45 minutes. Then I pushed them through a sieve with a wooden spoon to get rid of the skins and seeds. (This is one time when I really miss my mom’s old food mill.) I then put the juice into zip-top sandwich bags in 1-cup servings. I laid them flat on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen, I will transfer them to a gallon size freezer bag.

From tomatoes...

...to tomato juice ready for the freezer.

And since I was heating up the house to process the tomatoes anyway, I decided to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And yes, I did put two dozen of them up in the freezer so we wouldn’t just eat them all!

Mmm...cookies!

And a cardinal, just because.

Overdue Updates

It’s only the middle of August but it feels like things are starting to wind down in the garden. Powdery mildew has settled on the pumpkin leaves but the pumpkin itself has already turned orange so I’m not worrying about it too much. I’ve started pulling out plants that have finished up for the season. The kale is gone as are the snap pea plants, the green onions (they never amounted to much), and the remaining arugula. I salvaged what I could of the chard and pulled the rest of the plants out. The garden peas are finished but the rattlesnake beans are woven into the vines so I’ll leave the plants for now. I still need to pull out the kohlrabi. Most of the plants decided not to bulb so there’s no reason to keep watering and feeding them. I’m also thinking about pulling out the green beans though they are starting to put on a second, spotty batch of blossoms.

Some things in the garden seem to just be starting up. The basil is finally about six inches tall with enough leaves to spare a few at a time. The egg plants are just putting on blossoms. I don’t think I’ll see any of their fruit this season. The peppers are also quite slow growers. There are only three or four peppers total on the half-dozen plants. The cantaloupes are taking their time, too, and the few, tiny melons that have set are oddly oblong in shape. I’ll just have to give all those late bloomers some time and hope for the best. 

Eggplant blossom...no fruit yet

This green pepper should be turning red soon

Tiny cantaloupe

 The zucchini plants have almost given up. The two or three small squash still in the garden are probably the last I will see this summer. I did get a half-dozen or so zucchini, though, so I’m content. The tomatoes are still going like gang-busters and look like they will be for some time. The Early Girls are a good all-around tomato; Juliets are great for salads, mixed with pasta or sliced on pizza; the beef steaks are fantastic sliced on sandwiches or atop fried eggs; and the pear tomatoes are tasty snacks by the handful. I’m glad we’re getting a good amount of each variety.

Beef steak tomatoes on the vine...

...and Juliet and pear tomatoes on the windowsill.

Since foiling the rabbits’ attempts at grazing the garden this spring, we haven’t had any mammalian problems in the garden (knock on wood). Bunny sightings have dropped of late but I still see one every once in a while. The deer are still enjoying the back yard, especially the apples that have started to fall from the tree. A couple of hummingbirds have re-discovered the feeder and butterflies have been enjoying our blossoming butterfly bush. I was raised in the county (mountain country, not farm country) and it’s so nice to have such a plethora of wildlife right out in my suburban backyard.

Oh deer!

Hummingbird

Butterfly on the butterfly bush. Makes sense.

What the?!? It's a baby cardinal!