Vegetable Garden Winding Down and Thinking Ahead

I don't know whether this time of year makes me sad or happy. On the one hand, the vegetable garden is winding down. Tomorrow's task list includes taking out the tobacco sticks (long sticks with pointed ends that were using to harvest tobacco in olden times; I got a bunch of them from a neighbor who was cleaning out his barn and I use them as tomato stakes), removing the dead tomatoes and peppers, and trimming back the herbs. I found a few wayward carrots and those will need to be pulled too.  I also found my onions. I'd planted a bunch but thought they'd all died. Lo and behold, after cleaning out the beets a few weeks ago, I found a few shoots, and left them alone.  They're still rather small so I may leave them over the winter and see what happens.

Beans have fascinated me for a long time too, not just the green beans typical of the suburban garden but the plethora of heirloom beans that were once grown by Native Americans, European settlers and more throughout North America. Many of them are easy to find in the supermarket - kidney beans, white beans, navy beans, black beans - so I probably won't grow those. But what about the yin-yang bean with its amazing coloration that looks like the Chinese yin-yang sign? Jacob's Cattle bean, once a staple food? There are dozens of beans like this and I spent quite a while last night on the Vermont Bean Seed company website, thinking of what to plant.

I know that I will plant broccoli rabe next spring. I missed planting it this year and I enjoy it even if my family has yet to grow to love the bitter taste.  And...it goes well with beans....

Can you tell I'm getting a wee bit obsessed again?  Yet it's this interest, this delving into one topic and following all sorts of routes and side routes of information that has kept me interested in gardening all these years.

So tomorrow is clean up time in the vegetable garden. I will redraw my garden plan so that during the winter I can remember where all the bulbs went - I tend to lose them from fall planting to spring blooming. If time permits, we'll add another 200 daffodil bulbs to the orchard lawn, and move more truckloads of compost into the vegetable beds.  Typical Saturday!

Late Season Harvest

Nice blossom end rot!

The vegetable garden is just about finished. This year I won't get those wonderful late season peppers that led to my first forays into canning last year; the pickled peppers were so scrumptious we ate just about every single one by December. This year, my peppers are tiny knots of things, half of them rotten before they fall to the ground. I had to buy two giant peppers at the market to make stuffed peppers last week. And I actually planted twice as many plants this year!  The drought and heat really took their toll on everything. Even though the drought is ended now, and we've had some lovely mild falls day and cool nights, the garden doesn't have sufficient time to recover.

So I am gearing up now for the last of the fall harvest. The watermelons never attained the giant size the seed package predicted, but they are sweet, albeit watermelons with the most seeds ever. I have never seen so many seeds in one fruit! It's like the entire melon is one big seed!

The main harvest even this month will be the sweet potatoes. A neighbor who visited a few weeks ago and who grows potatoes commercially here took one look at my sweet potatoes and congratulated me. If the foliage is any indication, I should get a bumper crop. I can't wait! I have another week to go, and then I will tentatively dig up a row by hand and see how advanced they are. If the tubers are large enough, my neighbor has instructed me on the fine art of 'curing' sweet potatoes. She told me that her grandfather had a special shack out back that he kept warm with a wood fire. Sweet potatoes were placed on cloths on the ground or newspaper and cured in the hot, dry conditions.  Since I don't have the wherewithal to build a replica of her grandpa's shack, and she hasn't built one on her new farm either, I'm following her second-best set of instructions. Lay newspapers on the floor of the garden she and the garage and just place the sweet potatoes there for a week or two. Then layer them in boxes or baskets and store in the basement.  In the meantime, there are the last of the tomatoes to pick and one or two stray beets.

Now the big question remains: should I enter the five county fair?  It starts on September 24, and my friend Patty urges me to just try....enter some herbs, or flowers or what not.  I brought  out my mother's cake recipe called the Gunkehupft and I can guarantee that no one at the fair will make this buttery pound cake!  It takes an entire pound of butter (no, this recipe isn't for those watching their cholesterol) and it's a miracle if I can get the entire ring out of the Turk's head mold without cracking it but.....I may just have a chance.....or I may enter my patented killer double-double chocolate fudge chunk cookies. I mean, who doesn't like chocolate and fudge chunks? Or cookies?

Early Morning in Photos

I stepped outside to photograph the garden this morning and decided to take a walk through our woods. Some unexpected pleasures, including meeting another turtle friend and hearing the rapid chuckle of our creek running higher than normal thanks to the rains.  Enjoy the pictures - the flowers are all in the garden next to the driveway, then I will share photos of a walk through the woods on our farm and the creek.

The flower garden looks lively, and everything is gearing up for a second bloom thanks to the rain!

 

 

This butterfly sat as if posing for me.

I love our woods. A shaft of sunlight filtered through as I snapped this picture.

 

 

 

A new friend - Eastern painted box turtle (I think).

 

 

 

 

 

Clearwater Creek.  It looks narrow here because I am at a weird angle. The bank was too muddy to get closer.

April Showers

April showers bring May flowers...or so we hope. It rains more in Virginia than it did on Long Island. We've had a month of several days of strong rains, followed by warm sunshine. The plants thrive in this weather and I'm glad we aren't tapping the wellwater to irrigate them.

Last Thursday after some business in Farmville, John and I went to B&M nursery and garden center. Eagerly I combed through their plant selection, feeling right at home and flashing back to my days working at Martin Viette Nurseries. I found an excellent selection of houseplants and statuary and we already have our eye on several purchases. We then found roses at Rose's discount store in town, and I planted my rose garden this weekend. Two 'Sonia' grandifloras and one 'Bonica' shrub rose were added to the two 'Blaze' red climbers, the twig from the rose bush in Huntington, and the rosa rugosas. The Blaze bareroot roses don't look good; I am losing hope that they will survive. Sonia, Bonica, and the rugosas look fine though and the rugosas have a bit of leaf peeking out.

The dogwood cuttings we planted last fall finally bloomed today! John found the first red flower. Three of the four appear to be leafing out. I had such a strong urge to say, "I told you so!" Just last Saturday he wanted to dig them up; he was convinced they were dead. My intuition told me they just needed more time than the already estabished trees, and I was right. Maybe there's hope left for some of the other trees.

All of the orchard trees leafed out with the exception of one cherry. Some look more vigorous than others, but most appear to be setting down roots in the field.

Herbs plants purchased last week as well as herbs started from seed will go into the kitchen garden starting this weekend. I really want to build a raised bed under the kitchen windows, but not sure how it will look. We'll see.