Apples, potatoes, carrots and bulbs

Well, September got away on me, mostly because we were busy actually harvesting and processing what we grew this year.

Despite the wet, wet summer, the heat loving plants have started producing and I expect we'll get a few squash to add to the cucumbers and tomatoes we picked this week ahead of cooler temperatures.

We've had a pretty decent crop of root veggies. Most of the potatoes are now in and cured. I left some beets out to maybe get a frost. I also turned the rest of the basil into pesto and froze that.

I split the carrot harvest into those we'll eat fresh and a bunch that I blanched and froze. There are also a few left outside so we can maybe eat fresh carrots into November.

Jess rescued me from the apple nightmare. We got about 1500 off of the two trees. Half we gave away. The other half we ate or processed into sauce and pie.

This also gave me the impetus to clean up the preserves closet. I only ended up tossing three jars of ancient jelly (fire weed).

This week, Jess and I are planting some fresh bulbs in the front yard as well as next year's garlic crop. The problem we're grappling with is a nest of very angry wasps (think Tasmanian Devil swarms) in the daylilies that border the sidewalk. So we'll get half of what I wanted planted and I guess we're waiting for a hard frost to finish this job!

The rest of our work this fall is doing some bed reclamation from aggressive raspberries in the back.

Hopefully, we get enough time this fall for me to make some progress here.

So many apples

Harvest has begun to ramp way up! After a cold and wet summer, the heat of August is moving things along.

I was sure cucumber crop was a bust but suddenly, we have dozens of tiny cucs growing. Some are these small, ball-like ones. Others are these more traditional field cucumbers.

The plum trees are also starting to bear, albeit the crop is still pretty small as the trees are young.

The tomato plants are also beginning to provide a few to eat. 

There is also a large patch of sunflowers that I had nothing to do with planting.

The garlic finally dried enough that I could trim them up and then they returned to the garage for another few weeks of curing. I will probably plant next year's crop towardws mid-September.

We have been carefully thinning the carrots and this is paying dividends in terms of big-ass carrots at the end of the season. Mt hand span in 9 inches (thumb to pink) and most that we have harvested have been in this range.

Our early apple tree is loaded. I picked over 600 apples just standing on the ground. There ar eprobabky another 200 or so I can get with the ladder.

We have made pie filling, sauce, and multiple crisps. We've also given a couple of hundred apples away. The late tree is looking similarly loaded.

It got so crazy I had to go buy more jars!

I hope to dig some potatoes next week an start cleaning up some of the beds for the winter.