Fall harvests

This post is dedicated to my mom who passed away on Oct. 23 of 2010. She loved gardening and was always hugely enthusiastic about hubby's gardening endeavors. I think I have a photo of her, when she visited us one year, helping to pick hickory nuts meat out of the hickory trees that grow on our property. It's very cute. If I find it, I'll post it next time.

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So it's officially autumn and we've had two frosts. But, thanks to floating row covers, we still have a good bit of veggies to harvest.

Yesterday, hubby picked the following goodies: from back to front - choi sum, green onions, celery, and dill.

We froze the choi sum for later, but hubby put the other three things into salmon cakes (it was what's for dinner!).

He also harvested salad makings: spinach, leaf lettuce, and bib lettuce. Here they are all shredded up in the spinner.

I love still being to eat from our own garden this time of year!

Are you harvesting anything tasty from your garden? If you are, tell me what you're growing. If not, I encourage you to grow a fall garden next year.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Autumn gardening

How did we commemorate the beginning of October? By gardening, of course!

If you're not out there weeding and planting and tending this time of year, you won't have a nice fall/winter crop to harvest. You don't need a fancy greenhouse either, just some row-covers if you plant cold-hardy crops. If you want to go the fancy greenhouse route, check out Eliot Coleman's books to learn more.

Here are the kids, weeding (before harvesting tomatoes and peppers); no, they don't always have goofy grins while weeding, but they don't complain about having to do it either:

So what are we weeding and tending to? Well, there's choi sum:

and lettuce:

and carrots:

and don't forget the cabbage (although that was planted a while ago) :

Another nice fall crop is kale. It's highly cold tolerant.  Hubby grew 2 different varieties this year:

We're also harvesting some end-of-summer crops like potatoes (no pic, sorry) and sweet potatoes:

Sweet potatoes as big as footballs (with the density of bowling balls) -

Here's a more mature choi-sum that hubby's been harvesting already:

Hubby re-planted some summer squash after vine borers killed our squash plants earlier this summer.  We've been getting a really nice harvest from them.  Both the patty-pans:

and the summer squash:

Because we needed room for the new plantings, hubby pulled out a bunch of volunteer dill plants and I hung them up to dry.  Who needs Halloween decorations when you have these?

I hope you're running a nice Autumn garden yourself!  Next up: tomato pie recipes.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The Gardening Edition

I know everyone and his/her dog are talking about what they are growing right now, but I'm going to too because 'tis Spring and a homesteader's thoughts turn to gardening fancy.

To complement this whole gardening post, I've added a "garden seeds" (Hometown Seeds) link on the right hand side, and I invite everyone to check out Theresa Loe's amazing gardening blog, Garden Fresh Living.

On our little homestead, dh has been busy planting and tending (while I sit on my fat duff and write stupid blog posts about it). Here he is, watering the broccoli seedlings:
Dh is trying a biodegradable corn-starch based cover to cut down on weeds. He's growing cabbage and broccoli through the cover.
I checked on our asparagus; alas, nothing is up yet.
Hmmm, the blueberries aren't doing much either:
Inside the greenhouse is a different story. Here are some kale that have over-wintered (among the weeds):
Dh started some (more) broccoli from seeds, along with celery, frisee, and red cabbage. Can't remember what the other trays were. Will have to ask him and come back to fill in. My mind is like a sieve. It's sad.
Here's ds#1 picking cilantro from the greenhouse. The tall stuff growing with the cilantro are leeks.
A close-up of the very cute leeks:
This is one of the fruit trees that we need to put into the ground; it's a nectarine. The others are a peach and a cherry.
More seedlings in the greenhouse, from left to right: choi sum, bok choi (which didn't germinate well, so there's hardly any there), and radishes.
And a peek at our house in its drab winter surroundings. The little plot you see in the foreground is what we call the small northern garden.
Well, that's it for now, folks. Not too exciting yet unless you're out there knee-deep in dirt doing the work. I forgot to mention that dh also planted carrots and beets. They're not the best spring crops; they do better in the fall when there's a much longer cool period for them to develop lots of sugar. But, it'll still be nice to have a few in the spring.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

More gardening fun

Sometimes when I'm talking to people and I groan about weeding, adding that "we have a big garden", some people reply, "oh, we have a big garden too." I always feel like saying, "um, you don't understand; we have a BIG garden."

Our garden has a little over 50 10x3 feet beds, not including the orchard area. Yes, I'm sure there are many people whose gardens are bigger than ours, but it's not usually likely, unless they grow for a living or are homesteading.

I'd like to take you on a little tour today. Here the kids are, helping us spread grass mulch on the plants. They're in the main fenced garden. In the foreground, you can see the north-side fenced garden where spinach, edible pod peas, and potatoes are growing.

The west end of this north garden has dh's "experiment". He's growing wheat this year, both to feed the chickens and also to use as straw bedding in the fowl hut. It's an experiment because he originally had put in wheat just as a winter cover and intended to pull it out in early spring. He got busy and the plants got too big, so it was on to Plan #2.You can see, behind the wheat, our greenhouse, one of the chicken tractors that our friends JGTH left for us when they moved back to the West Coast, as well as our shed (and the attached fowl hut).

Another part of the experiment involved digging holes in the middle of the wheat to grow our melons (watermelons, cantaloupes, and honeydews). A different experiment that dh is trying this year is using grass clippings as mulch. He found and bought a nice clippings catcher for his Toro mower from someone on eBay, and it's probably already paid for itself in making our grass clippings useful.

Here is it, mulching the tomatoes...and garlic...and strawberries...Red Russian Kale was a veggie that ds#2 picked for growing back in 2006, and it's self-seeded itself ever since. Love it when that happens!Lastly, on our tour today, we'll take a peek inside the greenhouse. To the left, you can see the cilantro flowering and going to seed with broccoli plants among them. In the back, we have onions growing in front of eggplants. And to the right is where dh was starting up corn and edamame - which is another experiment. Usually dh puts them right into the ground, but because we've had such a problem with voles eating the seeds, dh decided to sprout them first, then transplant them.This last photo is a close-up of the onions and eggplants:"Hope you've enjoyed this look at our garden. I've not shown you the stuff in the south garden, which includes carrots, choi sum, bok choi, raspberries, squashes, cucumbers, and more onions.

So, next time I complain about weeding, you'll know why! Do you enjoy weeding or do you dislike it?

Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams