End of season wrap-up

Alright, with the garden basically to bed for the year, I now have time to catch up on posts for the past month!

We spent a fair bit of time filling buckets with horse manure at the equine centre and then bringing it home and replenishing the garden beds. You can see the steam coming off the pile in the photo below. Jenn and Jess were troopers. We made a lot of trips.

We had good results, including this crazy cucumber.

The cantaloupes were a success (after years of trying) and I'm keen to try a different melon next year. Maybe also a corn field out front.

We had a pretty good harvest of pumpkins (which were also fun to grow). We have half a dozen jack-o-lanterns this year and maybe a dozen of the smaller baking pumpkins. We'll do another pumpkin patch next year in a slightly sunnier spot.

The frost held off until very late October so we had to harvest the second apple tree before it frosted. I made a lot of apple sauce and it had a very nice pink hue to it. The apples were also great eating fresh.

We had a lot of fires this autumn as I burned up twigs, branches, and old tax records and boxes.

Jess and Jenn harvested the carrots. Some were as big around as her wrist.

We also broke the banking converted two in-ground beds at the back into slightly raised beds. My plain is to put a wire arch between the beds (where Jess is standing) and grow vining plants (cucumbers, melons, etc) so the fruits hang down under the arch and are off the ground. The rest of the beds can be hotter veggies (papers, basil).

The tomatoes went on and on and I finally just had to cut the plants down so we could get on with prepping for next year. We're still eating tomatoes and have given pounds and pounds away. More red tomatoes next year, I think.

I dried a bunch of the smaller tomatoes and they are a nice snack. I also tried drying pineapple, which was a big hit.

I still have some berries to jam but did two batches of raspberry and one small batch of haskaps. Very tasty and looking forward to bigger harvests next season. We ended the year but putting a couple of hundred new bulbs in at the front for some early spring colour.

Overall, this was a great year. The heat was great for the plants but meant the water bill was huge. I finally broke down and bought a fan-shaped sprinkler for the front bed. There is still no snow so I will continue to putter outside. The leaf rake calls! 

Apples, garlic, carrots

We're headed into harvest season so I have called out reinforcements. Jessica was up the ladder to pick the early apple tree.

We ended up with 60 or 70 pounds of apples and most were of good size.

A bunch went into crisps that are either in the freezer or in my belly.

I dried 18 apples in the dehydrator, filling five one-litre jars.

I then sauced about seven litres full. We'll do more saucing and some apple butter with the second tree after a frost.

Watching the weather. we've also started doing some selective harvesting. We pulled in the ripest half of the cantaloupe harvest. The rest need more time on the vine.

We also culled about a third of the tomatoes. There are still lots on the plants but this will be plenty if we get an unexpected frost.

 

I harvested a bed of potatoes during the week then amended the soil and graded it for garlic next year.

 

Jess got pressed into some stoop labour to get sixty cloves in before the rain last night.

Jenn has been helping me dig carrots.

The carrots are crazy-big this year.

Jenn also helped me pull down the pea trellis on the inside of our fence and till the soil a bit. On the outside, I cut a small new bed for next year to run some scarlet runner beans up the outside.

Hopefully, we'll get a long enough fall that I can get ahead on some of the processing before we have to pull the tender stuff. 

Beans, cantaloupes, potatoes, and cucumber

Things are starting to ripen in the yard so we've started to do some harvesting. The heat has meant the scarlet runner beans are starting to dry on the vine so I cut off everything that looked dry, shelled them, and have been letting them air dry for storage. Still lots of harvest on the plants, though.

I also culled about 25% of the tomatoes (the ones sitting on the ground) and brought them in. Hopefully this will free up some energy for the plants to open the rest on the vine.

The number and size of the remaining tomatoes are impressive.

We also harvested the first of the cantaloupes. It could have been a touch riper but it was definitely cantaloupe. There are 10 more on the vine and I think we have a good chance of getting 8 to maturity.

On the south fence, we planted about 70 feet of raspberries last year. They are filling in nicely. To plug the gaps, we interplanted potatoes this year. I pulled the plants the grew and managed to get three gallons of small spuds (it was dry this year).

I turned a bunch into parmesan-crusted potatoes for dinner on Saturday.

I was hoping to bake a zuchinni loaf this weekend to freeze for winter. We harvested one of the bigger plants but it turns out that it identifies more as a cucumber.

So we pivoted to carrot cake and then apple cake.

The weather looks good so we're letting the garden run a bit long this fall. I have a bunch of potatoes I'd like to dig this week so I can flip the bed to garlic for next year and plant. We'll also have to have a come to Jesus moment with the carrots, apples, and the tomatoes but the carrots and apples can wait until after there is a good frost.

Basil oil, melons, pumpkins, zucchini

It has been an exceptionally hot August and lots of watering has been required. But we're starting to see some of the harvest begin.

I had to crop the basil as it was starting to go to seed. I pulled off two ice cream pails of basil, blanched it, and blended it in to a litre of olive oil. Should be enough to add some summer flavour to winter meals.

The south side of the garage is really hit. The basil and other herbs are doing well as some of the vines.

We have maybe eight cantaloupes that look like they will mature. These are all about 15cm across. If the frost holds off to October, we might get more.

There are also a tonne of tomatoes that are just starting to ripen after a slow start in May.

The pumpkins are also beginning to mature. The bigger ones are volunteers from last fall's pumpkin carving. We might get four or five of these, depending on the weather. This one is bigger than a volleyball and still growing fast.

There are also half a dozen or more of these small pumpkins (sweeter, designed for roasting and pies).

The other vine on the south side of the garage is a crazy zucchini that can grow a meter or more in length.

The potatoes are starting to die back so we should be harvesting them in the next two weeks or so. The carrots are also going great guns. And the easy apples are starting to redden up--I've been making crisps.

Garlic, melons, more pesto

So we're in the middle of a very hot (+29 C consistently) and dry August (again) so much of my gardening time has been spent watering.

I pulled the garlic over the August long weekend as it was looking ready. It has been curing in the garage and is likely good to be cleaned up for storage. I threw down some lettuce and radish seeds in that bed, mostly as a green manure.

The rest of the yard is looking pretty green. The peas along the fence are nearly done and the basil is really kicking ass.

I've frozen over two gallons of raspberries for jamming when the weather cools off. I get about half a gallon every other day and we've been eating about half of the harvest. The new raspberry patch on the south fece is growing in well but suffering a bit in the heat. We should get a good harvest next year there.

The tomato show lots of growth but not many fruit yet. Lots of flowering in the heat so, if the frost stays away, we should still get a decent crop

The bees seem to have found the sunflowers and the scarlett runner beans.

The pumpkin patch out front is slowly starting to fill in (very cold and wet the spring and that set things back). We have six or seven pumpkins that might make it before frost. The one above has doubled in size since I took this picture a week ago. Keeping them wet enough is the challenge.

More exciting is a have a bunch of viable cantaloupes this year. They are a small, single-serving fruit and these are right now about the volume of two golf balls. But this is further than I have gotten with melons ever before! The heat on the south wall of the garage and the raised bed seem to make a big difference.

I also had to crop a third off of the basil. We don't have quite as much as last year (which was a stupid amount) but enough that making another batch of basil (alas no garlic scapes this time) to freeze as no problem.

It looks like the early apple tree is getting ready to ripen (a few red ones but still bit tart) so maybe sauce ad pies in the next few weeks.