September Garden Update

By this time of year the garden usually looks rather sad. Most of the hot weather plants are starting to wind down and none of them are getting the attention they got in the spring when the excitement of planting and growing is at it's peak for me. I find it easy in August and September to let some things go in the garden because it is so hot. This is the first year we have actually gotten a few fall crops planted even though we have talked about it for years. 

Shortly after we started the seedlings, the temperatures inched up into triple digits and made it difficult to keep them going. The winter squashes are happy with all of the heat, but the carrots, broccoli, cabbage, beets and snap peas aren't at all happy. 

 

 

Only the pumpkins,                                                winter squash, 

                                                    beets 

Snap peas

and snap peas made it into the garden. It was cooler when I planted the snap peas and they were happy, started growing and even started blooming. Then we made it up to 105 degrees and they put the brakes on and started drooping. Maybe the fall temperatures will bring them back around. 

Mangel beets

The beets started growing as well, but the grasshoppers really liked the small seedlings, then along came the dog and dug up a few, then the kittens thought it would be fun to dig up a few more.

Pretty Girl

Our small row of sugar beets dwindled to only a few plants. If they continue to grow we can at least see how they do and see if we can grow a much larger patch next year.

Potatoes among the weeds

The potatoes we experimented with are few and far between, and the weeds are prolific, but maybe we will get enough to use as seed potatoes for spring. 




 

Melons

The melons won't be big enough to produce before fall. I should have started them much, much earlier. I just thought I would give a few a try while I was planting the winter squash. 

Cushaw

Buttercup

Acorn

Winter squashes

Besides a few squash vine borers which I think the assassin bugs took care of, the cushaw, acorn and buttercup winter squashes are going great guns. I am hopeful that we will get a good harvest to store and experiment with canning. 

Pumpkins

I'm not too sure about the pumpkins. They are much slower than the winter squashes to produce even though we put them in a much more fertile area than the others. Maybe that is the problem, I don't know.

We are still picking some okra,  

green beans, (even though the grasshoppers have really taken a liking to the vines)

peppers 

 











and tomatoes.

The yellow summer squashes have pretty much died down. 

 
The lima beans, once again, have beautiful vines but only 
a few flat pods with no beans. This is the third year I have planted lima beans - all in different locations with varying amounts of nitrogen, and three different varieties. So I have come to the conclusion that lima beans just don't produce here and will go on to other vegetables that I know produce well. 

 





We are still getting some purple hull peas, but they have been rather neglected too. 

It will be interesting to see how the sweet potatoes have done when we  dig them up. I think I will try digging up a few plants in a couple of weeks. The books say 100-140 days, and I figure the end of September will be about 120 days. Besides that, I am curious to see what's under all those vines.

The first average frost date here is October 31st, so we still have about 6 more weeks of growing season left. I think when the first frost comes I will experiment with my frost cloth again and see if I can keep some of the garden going, especially the winter squashes. We like them and the chickens and goats do too. We are ready for cooler weather. It was still 98 degrees today. 

It will be interesting to see how much more we can harvest this year. We have learned so much and gotten to eat some really good food. And one of the best parts is yet to come - winter. When we can go look on the shelf at all of the things we have put up, and eat some more really good food.

Until next time - Fern

Back to School

It's time for school to start in our neck of the woods which means I will be going back to work. This will be my 30th year teaching special education in a public school system. My experience covers a wide geography - from urban to remote bush Alaska - and many, many children. Working with these children has taught me much over the years and this profession has allowed us to live in some of the most challenging, adventurous places. I continue to be blessed with employment that I enjoy.

Because of my return to work, our blogging will decrease somewhat, but we will still be here. The usual adjustments are being made around the farm to accommodate more time away from home.

We are drying up one of our does to lessen the milk load. Velvet is producing less milk than One Stripe or Ivory so she was the likely candidate. It has been easy to switch to milking her every other day without any distention of her udder to worry about. Now I will switch to just checking on her to see if I need to take any more milk at all, or if she will just reabsorb what milk she has.

Time to tend to and process the garden will be squeezed in after work. The fall garden will hopefully be able to tend to itself for the most part. The weather is different this year with lows in the 60's in August. It almost feels like winter will come early, which is strange for this part of the world. We usually have temperatures around 100, with lows in the low 80's or upper 70's. If the frosts come early, I will do some more experimenting with the frost cloth I used in the spring for the late frosts. It may extend our harvest of winter squashes.

 

The winter squashes and pumpkins are growing well. I got about two thirds of the corn stalks moved to mulch behind the winter squash when I ran into a pile of fire ants. So the rest of the mulch will have to wait for them to move on after I disturbed them.

 

Today I got the sugar beets planted since the ground finally dried out enough to work. 




 

I tucked the snap peas in between the two volunteer tomatoes and the volunteer
 
  jalapeno on this partial piece of stock panel. It all fit just right. I think I will plant the carrots around the tomatoes after I can till in a few more weeds. The potatoes haven't come up yet. We will just have to wait and see how that goes. 

Like many folks this summer, we haven't had many tomatoes and I haven't been able to try my hand at making tomato sauce as I had hoped. But there will be another time and another garden, if all goes well with the world. We still have some peppers, okra, purple hull peas, squash and cucumbers to pick and process, not to mention the milk and eggs from the goats and chickens, so there will be more than enough to do.

So for the last day of summer vacation, I got some things planted in the garden, canned 9 pints of purple hull peas, made a quart of fresh salsa and cooked up 3 or 4 pints of green beans for a casserole to take to church tomorrow for lunch.

And for everyone that is following Frank's radio communications posts, we will soon be explaining the new radio he installed in the car today. It is the same radio we use for a VHF/UHF base station. This will help standardize what we are using and give me more power in the vehicle to reach home when I need to. We feel effective means of communication are more important than ever.

Until next time - Fern

Starting the Fall Garden

Now that we completed the unscheduled plumbing repair, it is time to start planting our fall crops. This is the area where we grew potatoes in the spring.

 

We dug them up and tilled this space again to use for some of our fall crops. We are trying to reclaim some of this area. It has been left to the weeds for a few years and they are very happy there. It has been tilled several times this year and we plan to use a heavy mulch around the fall crops in an effort smother out more weeds.

These corn stalks will be part of the mulch back against the fence area. It will add some good organic material as well as help with weed control. Or at least that is what we hope, we will see how it goes.

Some of the seedlings we planted last week are ready to go in the garden. It doesn't take long for winter squashes, melons and greens to be ready to plant.
 












The broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, snap peas, spinach and kale will be ready to plant in a few days. Today I thinned out the seedlings. It is good to know that the 3 year old seeds I planted are still viable. 

Now that I have rolled up more pots, it's time to start more seeds.

We are growing Detroit Dark Red beets for us, but I am also trying some Sugar Beets for goat feed. They are a mangel beet that has been used for stock feed in the past. They are also good for beet sugar which we will try to make if we have a harvest. We are planting collards, turnips and parsnips, too. This is part of our effort to grow at least some of the feed for our animals. We are very interested to see how these will grow and store over the winter.

And then we are trying carrots again.We are encouraged by our spring carrot crop even though they were rather gnarled up. We tilled this end of the garden deeper (thus, finding the grey water line), so we hope our root crops do better this time.

For now, the winter squashes are planted.

 











The Buttercup, Cushaw and Acorn are all tucked back in this corner. Since they vine out and tend to cover a lot of ground, this corner will be filled before long.

The melons are tucked in between the new overgrown strawberry bed and the potato patch.





We are planting potatoes that we grew in the spring. Since a spring potato crop is ready to harvest in June here, the potatoes don't keep all winter very well. We have wanted to try a fall crop of potatoes for a number of years. Here it is. We hope it produces well.

This is another area that has grown an abundance of weeds for the last few years.

It is very fertile since we 'stored' a load of  barnyard there a while back. We are going to try the pumpkin patch here with heavy mulch and cross our fingers.

The mixed baby greens (on the right) were planted in the herb bed between the green tea, lemon balm and oregano. It will be nice to eat a few of these, but I plan to dry most of them for the goats.

This area in front of the winter squashes will be for the beets, carrots, parsnips and turnips. Then there is the cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, collards and spinach to be tucked in somewhere. Oh, and don't forget the snap peas. They will be finding a home here as well. Yes, we do an intensive garden, using as much space for production as possible. So, it's always an obstacle course to get to what we are trying to harvest.

We will keep you updated on our progress with the fall garden as we learn to grow more food - for us and our animals.

Until next time - Fern