Wow, the fall has gone fast! We've been busy with lots of non-gardening things but we have managed to get to the end of the harvest season as well.
The weather has been uneven this fall. We pulled the carrots after a snow storm (which was unpleasant) and decided to abandon the rest of the bad beet crop.
The tomato harvest has been killing us. I called our reinforcements in mid=October and much tomato sauce was made and frozen.
We pulled down the bean trellis in the front and moved some raspberry suckers to the raspberry hedge on the side. Jess and I then dug the Jerusalem artichokes out.
We bought maybe five of these three or four years ago. They are quite prolific and a touch invasive.
This was the haul this year. The three in the front of the picture below are just smaller than a baseball (left) to just under a ping-pong ball (right). We planted about half the crop in a new, sunnier spot this coming year (in the hopes that they would bloom).
The rest we guerilla gardened in the hope that they will stabilize a slope.
We then did one last tomato grinding. I decided to just freeze the pulp (6 litres) as I'm too busy to sauce it. I turned the excess skin and seeds into soup stock for the Hallowe'en pumpkin that I roasted this morning.
We have some wine in the basement to bottle. I've been going to the local gardening club meetings (there is talk of a community garden) and I agreed to do a talk in December about turning stuff you grow in your garden into hooch. So the rhubarb wine needs to be bottled and I am apple jacking out back. With a late season heat wave, I'm hoping to kayak the next few days.
I'm pretty sure Jerusalem artichokes are listed in my Weeds of Ontario guide...
ReplyDeleteLet me know when you give that talk - I'd love to attend. I had a real desire to turn my apples into something resembling hard cider, but lack of knowledge (and space) deterred me.