The last hurrah of summer and the winter garden begins

Changes are happening in the garden again. The first tray of winter garden seedlings was planted out into this bed (with some overflow into two other beds) yesterday morning. We're looking at many kinds of lettuce, some Georgia Collards, Red Russian Kale, and arugula here. The mixed mustards and the cabbages are in other beds. We're watering overhead, by hand, until they are established and then we'll use the t-tape that you can see installed.
So it was beyond time to remove the last of the summer crops. Here are the two beds of mixed winter squash. They still had blooms and growing squashes on them, but, truly, we don't need any more at this point, and we will need the bed space before long.
So, after yanking them out, we were left with this pile of vegetation! After it dries out, we'll run it through our shredding machine and have mulch for the new beds.
And this! The harvest from those remaining plants: a few more squash and some volunteer cherry tomatoes! They had to come from last year's plantings because we didn't even plant cherries this year. I thought I would save the green ones and see if they will ripen. The green heirloom tomatoes we harvested are gradually ripening, at a pace that we can use them.
Now the squash beds (on the right side of the photo are empty. It looks like the beds in the background are, too, but they have all been planted with cover crop and it is beginning to come up. The beds are full of little green things. One (or two?) beds are planted in fava beans.
Here are a few more of the winter squash that were harvested a week or so ago: Burgess Buttercup (dark green), Butternut, and the giant Guatemalan Blues, with a hint of one small Japanese Red Kuri peeking through!
And here is the next tray of newbies! Another round of lettuce, kale, and cabbage just poking their heads up. When they are big enough, these will go where the just-removed squash plants were.

I confess that I am still a gardener when the thought occurs to me to go and do something in the garden. I think with the number of beds we have I will need to become the kind of gardener who thinks of doing something in the garden every day!

Prodded to blog!

It has been two months since I have created a blog entry. I got a nudge today from Penny who came in and announced that she had taken some photos because there were things we have not blogged about! When last I reported in, we were in the thick of canning tomatoes. We are finally finished with tomatoes, although we do have a rack of green ones under the house that are slowly ripening. That gives us a few each week and keeps us from having to buy in the store. We are still harvesting winter squash, particularly butternut, and there are even four or five new Guatemalan blues. Send your favorite squash recipe! All potatoes are harvested and stored.

We have done two succession plantings for winter garden beds. We have two trays of green things (lettuce, arugula, kale, collards, cabbage, mustards), one planted on October 8 and these will soon be ready to be planted out into a bed. The second (same crops) was just planted this Monday, October 31. Directly in a bed we have planted four rows of spinach (two on October 19 and two on October 29) and two rows of beets (one on October 19 and one on October 29). So far not much is happening in those beds. Just three tiny beet sprouts. We tried some compost from an old composter of ours and it contains lots of bits of egg shells. Maybe there is something about it they don't like. Or....who knows.

This first photo is taken of our lower yard garden beds which are in the process of moving up to join the rest of the garden. As I type, Penny is hauling loads of dirt from the one big bed to a newly constructed one. (Let's see, which job would I rather be doing.....blogging or digging?) These beds were built over what we think is the septic field, and we concluded that was an error. Besides which, they get absolutely no sun in the winter so are useless for many months of the year. Soon we will have all our garden condensed on the sunny south side.

Here is the new bed that is receiving all that dirt Penny is digging and pushing.

The tanks are beginning to be set up for the winter rain harvest from the roof. One hot day Penny actually cleaned all these tanks out, which involved tipping them over and rinsing out with a bleach solution. We do have rain forecast for the next few days, but we probably won't actually start collecting until after a few heavy rains. We had a new roof put on this year and we want some of the asphalt sloughing from that to be done before we put it in the tanks.

We also have planted four large and two small beds in a variety of cover crops for the winter. Two have only fava beans, and I am hopeful they will yield a lovely spring crop to eat. I love favas! The others have a mix called "soil builder" which we have planted many times; there is some other plant that we added into that but I cannot remember its name at the moment.

First tomato canning

Well, what does one do with all of these? We eat a lot of them and we have been generously giving them away. And, today we ventured into canning for the first time on our own. Last year we co-purchased a steam canner with friends. We used it early in the summer to make the blueberry jam. This morning we tackled these two boxes of tomatoes (plus about half a box more than this). When we ran out of time, we still had a half a box left, and we have not harvested for two days!
Here's the equipment ready to go. Lot's of things involving hot or boiling water: big pot of boiling water to blanch the tomatoes in to loosen the skins, bowl of ice water to dunk them in after that, small pot to keep the lids hot, large pot for cooking tomatoes (for crushed tomatoes) and the canner. Plus two cutting boards and lots of containers for compost and as much left-over juice as we could capture (tomato juice!).
Penny is removing one of the tomatoes from the boiling water, getting ready to skin it. (The kitchen is heating up; outdoor temperature in the 90's.)
Two hours of work - six quarts of tomatoes to store - three crushed, three whole raw-packed. A pretty good accomplishment actually! I think on some raw winter day we will really appreciate ourselves for having done this.

One thing we have learned is that if we want to preserve more tomatoes in various ways, it would be good to grow plum tomatoes. We always grow heirlooms because they are so good for slicing and eating - and so pretty - but they are very watery and so the canned products are pretty watery, too. Of course, when we use them later, we can cook them down more. But next year we will experiment with a crop of paste tomatoes.

Now, off to harvest more tomatoes!

The harvest continues

On Monday morning, August 29, we harvested all the mature winter squash: 12 Butternut, 6 buttercup, 5 Japanese Red Kuri, and two more Guatemalan Blue torpedos! We were going to stop watering the plants, let them die off, and pull them. But we found at least six more Butternut forming! They're not done yet!

On Monday evening we harvested 23 pounds of potatoes! Red Cloud, All Blue, Corolla, and Onaway varieties, some quite large. These all came from the three potato grow bags we ordered from Gardener's Supply in Vermont. We still have an entire raised bed of potatoes yet to harvest! What will we do with all these?

And we continue to harvest an entire basket of tomatoes about every other day. We have made some sauce and frozen it, and we have frozen some diced tomatoes. We have eaten lots and made tomato juice. We have given them away. We have made salsa. We have to start canning because our freezer is already getting full. (We also have frozen 16 bags of fresh peaches - organics that we purchased from Outer Aisle Foods.)

We've harvested, I think, four or five watermelons and two honeydews - more to come!

The abundance is just amazing. Now it's time to get some fall seeds started in the greenhouse (actually, we could have started much earlier than this but we just haven't made the time for it - and all the beds are still producing anyway so there is no where to put anything!).

Think I'll make some oven fries today....of all different colors!

August Bounty!

Here are some photos of recent harvests! The first potatoes (today), the first watermelon (about a week ago), the first winter squash - a 14-pound Guatemalan Blue! - and a few days worth of tomatoes.

The first ripe tomato!

On Wednesday, August 3, 2011, I found the first ripe tomato - totally hidden at the bottom of a plant in the most prolific bed of tomatoes. I was sitting on the ground waiting for time to turn off the t-tape watering for the morning. It was only from that vantage point that I could see it!

We have three or four good-sized watermelons and some smaller ones on the way. I have to learn about when we can harvest those.

The potatoes are still flowering somewhat, but the vines are beginning to soften and collapse. We still haven't explored the soil to see what might be forming under there.

The winter squash crop is abundant; it does not seem like the plants are forming any new ones. We may be able to cut back on some watering there. We are close to exhausting all the stored water and then everything will be well-watered.

I had some opportunity in the past week to think about water. Our well pump was performing weirdly. That always raises the concerns of whether the pump is going and needs to be replaced or whether the well itself has gone dry. Fortunately, it seemed to be an issue with debris in the pressure tank and we seem to still have a good supply of water. It reminded me of how dependent this whole growing food project is on water. We live in an arid climate for many months of the year. Irrigation of our gardens is what makes them possible. No water, no gardens. There are so many things we take for granted, any one of which could change our entire lives. Humbling or scary, depending on which part of me is looking!

For now I'm just grateful for the water, the gardens, and for all the other beings who are responsible for producing the food that we eat in abundance.

And two weeks makes a difference, too!

The largest bed of tomato plants. You would think that with all this foliage there would be tons of tomatoes. I think I've seen two or three in the whole bed. On the other side of the house is a bed that looks almost exactly like this one and it is filled with green tomatoes. I think the difference is the soil. The other bed has probably the best soil in our whole garden. This bed still has relatively new and raw soil. Of course, it might be the varieties, too - which are early and which late. We weren't all that careful labeling everything, so we are no longer sure which plants are which. Next year we will be better about that.
Do you remember the photo of the Guatemalan Blue winter squash from two week ago? Here is is now! It must be two feet long, and about ten inches wide.
A butternut squash on the way. I think maybe there are eight or more of these already. We are going to have a bumper crop of winter squash this year.
A young Japanese Red Kuri winter squash. It turns a red-orange when it is mature. I love these young yellow globes.
The squash plants are taking over! They spill into everything. Every few days we have to reroute tendrils from the rosemary bushes or the tomato plants.
One of the potato beds (actually it is three separate planting bags). We have not been brave enough yet to stick our hand in the soil and see if we come out with a potato. Friends have said they do that - just fish around until they feel one that is the right size and take it inside, cook it, and eat it. We are anticipating a bumper crop, and so we are seeking ways to store the potatoes once we harvest them. Some have said just to store them in the ground where they are, but that puts a whole bed out of commission for another planting. Any ideas?
The melon plants have not quite taken over yet, but they are branching out. We still have some of the lovely red poppies in our lower yard.
And it was a lovely day yesterday for drying sheets and towels! They smell so good after a day of hanging in the air. We had the most incredibly wonderful week of cool weather. It is totally out of character for mid-July, and we loved every minute of it. Temperatures are slowly on the rise this week.

Thank you for reading along!