September 30, 2023

 Summer if over, and I haven't blogged much about gardening this year.

We had a prolific year. I had more cucumbers than I needed. We ate them as salad every day. I use equal parts of mayo and sour cream and sprinkle in a little sugar and a little more garlic powder. I have a lot of pickles left over from last year, so I only made as many as I though we would need besides those, and we pulled up most of the vines. Our tomatoes, too, did really well. I made 60 pints of tomato soup and 50 quarts of juice. I canned and froze two lugs of peaches. We also put away 101 quarts of corn in three sessions. I am out of jars. Usually, I put tomatoes in the freezer and when I want juice I take out an ice cream bucket of frozen tomatoes and make some. The freezer this year is full of chickens, beef and deer. We need to be having some company to help us eat it. Both of us eat less than we used to. 

In the flower garden realm, I am feeling a real lack of interest in doing any more weeding or cleaning up, so I haven't. I'm also very disappointed in the petunias I planted in my big flower garden. I don't know whether it's the soil or the shade. I think pinks do better. 

Next year I want to budget enough to go hog-wild on bedding plants and crowd them in, since they don't seem to spread, just hang on. 

I'm glad Jim likes to do the gardening. I don't do very much picking, but as the tomatoes and beans come on, I usually help. 

Our peppers are all in the freezer, and so is the okra. Jim forgot about planting beans until the summer was half over, so when he planted them, they took forever to get going and we picked a few now and then and then ignored them. A week ago, those bean plants were burgeoning with beans. We picked them and it was such a tiring job, that we pulled up 2/3 of them, intending to pick the ones left to eat. We haven't. I put 7 quarts in the freezer. 

September 26, 2020

 I'm calling it end of the season.  I gave up the beginning of the month since I was tired of processing garden sass.  All we have left is peppers, carrots, potatoes, carrots and squash.  We've eaten our two good spaghetti squash. I've started cooking, pureeing and freezing butternut squash. 

This is the first time we had a carrot bloom.  Jim pulled up, rather dug up, the culprit and we ate it for lunch.  This carrot is actually two entwined.  We don't thin our carrots, we just let them take their chance and we get some pretty strange configurations.  The really big carrots are very woody, and aren't as nice when cooked. 

Our okra thrived this hot dry year.  They were watered and grew taller than we've ever had okra grow before. Even Jim can't reach the top to harvest.  We have more than enough so we are letting them grow, they still are blooming, way up there 9ft. 9in. from the ground.  

November 1, 2017

"Harvest is ended, and summer is gone," quoth Anne of the Island, I think.  

Only it is a lot nearer winter than we want to think, having had our first snow October 31st.  The Old Wives say that we will have 31 snowstorms this winter, or is it 31 inches? I think I'll go look it up.

Well, I found a bunch of tales I never heard of, but this one comes close:

• As many days old as is the moon on the first snow, there will be that many snowfalls by crop planting time.

Jim dug the sweet potatoes at the end of October and we got some huge ones.

We also got some funny looking ones.  We went looking on Google for some answers to this phenomenon, but we didn't get any.  We did find out that this happens to other people. This particular shape grows directly at the base of the plant and then as other roots go down, traditional looking sweet potatoes form.  We planted six plants and got more sweet potatoes that regular potatoes in the two rows that were about 4 times the length of the sweet potato row. 

It tasted just like a sweet potato.  I scrubbed it well, and baked it with the peel on.  It peeled easily after it was cooked. 

That weekend, which was the last nice day we've had, being sunny with no wind, albeit cold. I cleaned up the rest of the flower garden that I was going to.  I got rid of the morning glories and swept leaves off the patio and the porch.  We put away the deck chair cushions, and the rest of it will have to wait until spring.

The last thing I hope to do is cover the base of the roses when the ground freezes. 

November 5, 2016

Gardening is over.  We had a killing frost, I'm guessing the 3rd week of October.  So the garden is finished and cleaned upish.  I just made all the tomatoes in the freezer into 48 pints of soup and about 12 quarts of juice.  I wish I had more juice.  I was tired of dealing with the peppers and tomatoes that I gave most of the rest away.  They were much appreciated.  I may wish I had them eventually, but I can only do so much!  I am baking butternut squash every few days, running it through the food mill and putting it in the freezer in 2 cup batches.  That is enough for pies, pumpkin bars and eating.
I cleaned up most of the flowers on the deck.  I plan to start completely over, and then I kept all the geraniums.  (roll eyes)
I had a tip I wanted to post so that it would remind me early in the season. I forgot what it was so I think I'll make something up.  

November 24, 2015

We had a nice gentle all day rain November 17th, and it was followed by a little snow.  

We had an inch of very wet snow on the 11th so this year's growing season is officially over.

I still have some dead plants in the garden.  I never really know what to take out and what to leave. 

October 16,2014

 Summer is over, all the produce is harvested, and the garden is mowed.  We had a little frost so that the garden stuff died but flowers by the house are still blooming.  We have more potatoes than we will ever use, about ten 5-gallon buckets worth.  We got about 12 butternut squash and two of those aren't ripe.  I wonder if they will.  That isn't nearly enough since I've discovered pumpkin bars and most of my family love them.  The tomatoes didn't do very well, but I have several gallons in the freezer, not nearly enough to drink juice all winter but enough for cooking.   The grapes came from a friend and I put them in the freezer to make juice and jam later.  We aren't ready to start thinking about next year's garden yet.

 Corn in the flower garden.

Yellow Summer Apples

Red Later Summer Apples,

 too bad we don't remember what they are..

Grapes

End of Season 2013

I found these photos on a post that was never published.  It was some of the last harvest we had, and it all went into the freezer to be made into the juice and jam and soup stock previously mentioned. 

November 8, 2013

The growing season is over for this year. We had frost in October.  We didn't get the flower gardens cleaned up like I hoped.  There is always next year!!  I am hoping my strength and energy are such that next year I can tackle it early, before the weeds get a good hold, and keep it up a little at a time.  If I do just 15 minutes a day five days a week, I can keep up. I just have to keep at it.
I bought some late pansies, but they didn't do much, I have them inside.  If I keep a little water in a jug in the basement next to my plants, they boys keep them watered.

Goals for next year:
Keep the flower gardens clean a little at a time.
Take down the fence and arch, and make that area into grass.
Finish the landscaping north of the shop and plant with pansies.
Kill the grass in the flagpole spot and start over.
Find a new place for the pink sprawling mini rose. (need help with this one)
Get rid of the mint.
Dig a trench to insert the long box of green annual viney stuff I like under the deck steps.
Clean the patio, and keep it clean.
Pour a teakettle of boiling water on weeds once a day.  (driveway, sidewalk, steps and patio)

October 5, 2012

It is supposed to freeze hard tonight, so we can consider the growing season over.  We will probably have a lot of nice days, in October, but we are moving all the deck plants to the basement, and picking what is left of the garden.  

While Mom was here in September, she made a couple of batches of tomato soup, and a couple of zucchini relish.

 Bonita, while she is here, has chopped peppers for the freezer, and cooked and served the few tomatoes, squash and green beans that were left.  

The temperatures are supposed to fall to the mid 20's.  Parts of western Nebraska are getting snow.