Harvest wrap-up

Apologies for the lack of posting. September has been busy and I've been hampered by a twisted knee so sitting down to blog has dropped down the list some.

We have been busy. I finally racked off the summer wine. The strawberry wine seems to be a success. The rhubarb wine tastes good but has picked up some bacteria that gives it an off scent. Aerating has not resolved the issue and the chemical solutions look too complicated to bother with so I think this batch is headed down the drain. A good lesson on (I think) the risks of over-sugaring.

We finally picked the tomatoes one evening when the risk of frost looked real. Of course the frost didn't materialize.. . The window sills are now full of trays of tomatoes ripening. That triggered a quick tally of what we still had in the basement freezer from last year.

Interestingly, pressed-but-not-sauced tomatoes were the only thing we had too much of. So these frozen discs of tomatoes were sauced. We'll likely sauce and then freeze this year's tomatoes (less to freeze and in a more useful form). I also have a bunch of smaller tomatoes that I am oven roasting right now to freeze.

We have managed to stay on top of the apple crop with pies and eating them fresh. We still have sauce from last year so no need to add to the backlog!

We also picked the pole beans yesterday. These could have stood another few weeks of growing but I'm not sure we were going to get that.

I've been holding off on getting a load of manure for the beds. But I did buy a few bags in order to amend the soil ahead of planting garlic.We put in 51 plants this year (which is about right for a year or so of eating). You can see Jess below using the reliable "hang-loose" spacing method to get the cloves in about 6 or 8 inches apart.

I have a bit more work to do in the beds out front before ordering manure. We'll see how my knee feels this week! Today we are also drying the remainder of the herbs for winter storage. If I get time, I'm going to try to jelly the mountain ash berries from the back (another experiment in local foraging).