Well now that the garden is officially done for the year, about two or three weekends ago I cleared out any of the leftovers in the garden, which was a sage plant, a row of green onions and a row of chives. I did a little bit of hand weeding and picked what was left of the herbs, and then I used my propane torch to burn out everything else. After everything was burned out and cooled down, I laid down a layer of grass clippings and shredded leaves. So next spring instead of raking up all the mulch on the ground, I’ll just till it into the soil and hopefully I’ll have less weeds to start the season, since the ground will be covered in mulch to begin with. But we’ll see, come spring 2010. Continue reading
Category: gardening
End of growing season – Killing Frost – 10-10-09
I thought that I would be able to get a couple more weeks out of the growing season, but Mother Nature had a different idea. I knew that it was going to be cold on Friday night (it was right around 37F.) But whatever didn’t get clipped by the weather on Friday night, got a second round on Saturday night (right around 29F.) So most of Saturday afternoon was spent picking everything that was left in the garden, ripe/un-ripe it didn’t matter. What I ended up was a whole box of vegetables, with half of it being green tomatoes. My hand was forced due to the weather, but it least I’ll be able to final try out some fried green tomatoes this week.
Garden – White Potato Harvest – 10-03-2009
Talk about a weak potato harvest, I barely have enough potatoes to make a single batch of mashed potatoes for dinner. But it seems like I’m not the only one that had a weak crop this year. I’ve talked to a couple of people and this doesn’t seem to be an isolated occurrence. From the people that I’ve talked with, they also had low yields (about 3 potatoes per plant and small potatoes at that.) I guess better luck next year!
Garden Pictures – End-September 2009
I haven’t posted any garden pics in a while, so here is a giant dump of pics from the past month.
On a side note during a random conversation with my next door neighbor who works on a organic CSA farm. We started to talk about my backyard garden and I was telling him about some of the disease issues that I was having with my tomatoes. And he was telling me that some of the seeds that Lowe’s was selling this year were infected with powdery mildew. And in an unrelated conversation my mom was also telling me about disease issues with tomato & cucumber plants this year. Continue reading
Mini harvest of the Garden – Mid-August 2009
I’m going to a dinner party on Friday, so I’m bring along some vegetables in include in the menu. This year, like every year I’ve got a ton of jalapeños & pickling cucumbers. Most of the tomatoes on the vine are still green, so it will probably be another couple of weeks before they are ripe. I did have one green pepper plant & both habanero plants die out of no where. So I was only able to harvest one habanero, maybe I’ll have better luck next year.
Garden – End of July 2009
Here are a couple of quick shots of the garden in the backyard. The yellow squash, cucumbers & wax beans seem to be doing well. But the tomatoes and peppers seem to be more slow going this year. I guess this is a lesson learned for me, for having started the garden so late in the year. Better luck next year.
Hops – Late July 2009
I think the hops are ready for harvest. The centennial almost seems to be developing some kind of a rust on the cones. Looks like I might have to do an emergency brew session on Saturday to take advantage of the centennial hops. And vacuum seal up the rest for a later date.
Rhubarb – Late July 2009
Well it took just under two months but the monster is back in action, and in desperate need of some thinning. His identical twins in the backyard seem to be doing just as well. So they should be excellent candidates for further transplanting later in the growing season.
A lifetimes worth of sisal twine
A couple of weeks back I ran out of sisal twine, while stringing up my tomato plants. So I’ve been keeping my eye’s peeled for a good price on sisal twine. Well I think that I struck the mother lode! Continue reading
Hops – Week 1 – July 2009
The centennial hops are in bloom, but not ready for harvest. They are still a bit moist, and just starting to get that hoppy smell. So I’ll check again in mid-July, to see how things are progressing in the drying process.
