Garden Notes: August 2023

 Rainfall 

• 2nd: 0.02" 
• 3rd: 2.72"
• 7th: 0.35"
• 9th: 0.2"
• 10th: 1.07"
• 11th: 0.04"
• 12th: 0.44"
• 24th: 0.28"
• 27th: 0.23"
• 28th: 0.43"
• 29th: 0.45:
• 30th: 0.14"
• Total: 6.37 inches

Temperature

• range of nighttime lows: 62 to 75°F (17 to 24°C)
• range of daytime highs: 76 to 95°F (25 to 35°C)

Weather Notes

The weather service keeps trying to forecast us into scorching temperatures, but Mother Nature simply isn't cooperating. Of course, we live amongst trees and vegetation, so our temps will be considerably lower than in towns and cities, where concrete, asphalt, and blacktop absorb and retain heat. Even so, we still have humidity to deal with, so it feels hot as usual! What is unusual, is our continued overnight lows in the 60s. I don't ever recall nights like these; our summer lows are usually in the mid-70s. Getting down into the 60s really helps cool the house down and keep it more comfortable during the day.

Planted

• kale
• turnips
• carrots
• parsnips
• collard greens
• lettuce

Picking and Preserving

August is my busiest month. I spend the morning picking and the afternoon preserving.

Harvest bucket in early August

Harvest bucket in late August

It's the month for figs and pears, so these keep me busy.

We seem to have had an extra long run for the figs, which usually only last a week or two. They kept producing for more than three weeks this year. 

Fresh figs with kefir and granola

When the harvest is in full flush, I can pints of figs. When it trickles down to smaller numbers, I quarter and dehydrate them. Sadly, another of our fig trees is dying. That's the third one in as many years.

Amazingly, we have very little bird damage to our figs this year. I suspect it's because they're feasting on elderberries instead.

While I'm not getting a lot of elderberries, I did get enough to make another half-gallon of elderberry infused vinegar. 

We eat pears fresh and the rest go to make pear sauce. 

Dan's not keen on canned pear pieces, but we both like pear sauce, which I think is easier to do than chunks anyway. Most of the sauce is canned, but I'm going to dehydrate some too.

Fresh pear pie

I guess because of the rain and cooler temperatures, my cucumbers continue to look good.

These are my landrace cucumbers, second year. As it gets hotter they slow down a bit, but I've replenished our dill pickle supply and we continue to eat them in salads almost daily. 

Peppers are doing well.

As is the okra.

I had volunteer cherry tomatoes come up in the okra bed. They sort of lean on the okra plants, making them easier to pick. Both seem to be getting enough sun and are producing well.

Okra and tomato plants growing together.

I try not to plant too much okra, because one year I had so much I still had okra in the freezer when the new harvest came in. Frozen okra oven-fries nicely and makes a tasty vegetable, but we'd eaten so much of it over winter that the first fresh harvest wasn't as appealing as it usually is. I love the anticipation of those first seasonal tastes. 

Even so, I'm freezing some of the extra.

Ready for the freezer. I'll add more as I have extra.

The nice thing about okra, is that it can be frozen without blanching. I may try to can some with cherry tomatoes as an experiment too.

Speaking of cherry tomatoes, we have those in abundance. I only have half-a-dozen slicing tomato plants, but the cherry toms absolutely thrive. I've already shown you some of the pizza sauce I made, and I've been popping extras in the freezer for next year's batch. Also, I've started a couple of jars cherry tomatoes preserved in olive oil. I found the recipe in Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning and I tried a couple of pints last year, and we really liked it. 

This year I'm going to preserve a couple of quarts. The recipe calls for cherry tomatoes, small onions, and fresh herbs (I used rosemary, thyme, and oregano). Everything is sprinkled with salt and a couple tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice, then covered with extra virgin olive oil. I vacuum seal the jar as well. 

These make a wonderful condiment or salad topper, complete with tomato and herb flavored oil and vinegar salad dressing right out of the jar!

My watermelons have been incredibly slow to do anything.

Baby watermelon

I hope we get some before first frost!

And here's a treat.

Asparagus!

I always thought asparagus was a spring thing, but I've been regularly cutting small handfuls this month. They make a great snack, addition to salad, or scrambled eggs. 

Speaking of salads, I usually show you one.

This is my version of taco salad, with chips instead of a taco bowl. Avocado makes it special, as does the sauce, which is ricotta cheese mixed with salsa. We've been eating these once a week.

Varmint

Earlier this month I had a problem with something eating the leaves off my sweet potato plants. Dan put out his live animal trap and trail camera one night, and caught this!

Raccoon in live animal trap.

That's pretty much it for my August garden. How about yours?

Garden Notes: August 2023 © Aug 2023

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: October 2022

I love October. In September, we hope for relief from the blazing summer heat, but in October, there is a noticeable drop in temperature. It's the month when we start watching for an early frost, and it's the month when the leaves begin to change color. (For my October fall color photos, click here.) It's the month when all our homestead critters are frisky and full of antics. Kitchen and garden projects have slowed down so there's time to enjoy the changes. Most of my cooking is done in the house now, rather than my back porch summer kitchen. October is when we light our first woodstove fire of the season and the first of the canned summer goodness is opened and consumed. The only downside to October, is that it's typically a dry month for us.

Rainfall 

• 12th: 0.05"
• 26th: 0.125"
• 31st: 1.375"
• Total: 1.55 inches

Temperature

• nighttime range: 31-63°F (-0.5-17°C)
• daytime range: 58-80°F (14-27°C)

First Frost

We had scattered frost on the morning of the 18th, and a blanketing frost on the 19th. So the summer garden is officially done. 

Marigolds sporting our first frost.

Planting & Growing

The fall garden is planted, but it's been dry, so it's not growing well. I've been watering some of my seedlings, but chickens got into the garden and scratched up quite a few beds. Anything that survived all that may have a chance! How long it lasts will depend on how cold or mild it is this winter.

Harvesting

Early October yields (before the frost) were meal size pickings.

Sauteed okra, onions, and cherry tomatoes

Orange Glo watermelon

No waste with watermelon. Chickens and goats love the rind.

Kale, collards, and daikon leaves

Greens steamed in butter with some grated carrot

Oregano, rosemary, and thyme (in my olive oil kept feta cheese).

Asian persimmons on the tree

The variety is Ichi-Ki-Kei-Jiro. I chose it because it said to be heat and drought tolerant (which it has been!) It's a fuyu type, which are ready to eat when they turn orange (unlike the kind that are astringent until after frost). This is the first real harvest we've gotten from it. It's about time too, since I planted it in 2015!

Scooping out the gel and removing the seeds.

Persimmon ready for ???

Persimmon pancakes

Freezing the extra in muffin pans.

When frost became imminent, we harvested everything that might suffer damage.

Last of the peppers. These are Giant Marconi.

Last of the green slicing tomatoes

Hugelkultur sweet potato squash

The last of the cushaws.

The mature squash have a home in the pantry. They are like pumpkins in terms of preparation and flavor. The green ones taste like summer squash, and can be prepared the same way.

A tender green cushaw seasoned and sauteed in butter.

But green winter squash don't keep well. The littlest ones still have tender seeds, so they were sliced, blanched, and frozen. The larger green squash, like this one,

Immature (green) cushaw

have large, but immature seeds that are tough.The skin is still tender, so the seeds were scooped out and the rest of the squash was cubed and canned.

Canned "green" winter squash. Eat like summer squash.

I planted three types of sweet potatoes. These are the Georgia Jets.

Taste testing the sweet potatoes required a sweet potato pie.

Overwintering

I'm trying something new this year. I found a YouTube video on how to overwinter pepper plants (https://youtu.be/x09X87UCZTI). I'm giving it a try.

Pepper plant pruned, potted, and ready to come in.

I only had two pepper plants this year, both purchased as 4-inch potted plants. This particular plant looked quite poorly most of the summer, and I kept thinking it was going to die. But the healthier looking plant died instead, and this one really perked up after a good rain and cooler temperatures. It was producing well until first frost threatened. So, it became my overwintering experiment. It would be great to get an early start on our peppers!

Challenges

The problems this time of year aren't so much bugs or disease, but lack of rain and critters. That includes birds (including naughty chickens), chipmunks, skunks, or groundhogs. In fact, we found a young groundhog had set up it's winter home in one of the garden beds! Dan found the hole, and I came face to face with the groundhog chowing down on a chicory plant. We didn't want it demolishing the garden and we hate to waste anything, so the groundhog became . . . 

Garden Groundhog Soup

Now you know why I was looking for a recipe for groundhog. My small harvest amounts were perfect for making this soup. I added peeled tomatoes, onion, green beans, yam berries, cowpeas, kale, tatume summer squash, and previously canned bone broth. Our favorite winter lunch is soup, so here are four lunches, ready to heat and eat.

Okay, I think that's it. At the beginning of the month, I didn't expect this to be a very long post. But first frost changed that! 

How about you? Is your garden just ending, or just starting?

Garden Notes: October 2022 © October 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: September 2022

Another month has flown by!

Rainfall

• 4th: 1"
• 5th: *1.3+"
• 7th: 0.05"
• 10th: 1.65"
• 11th: 2" 
• 30th: 0.35" (Ian)
• Total: 6.35+ inches

* The plus (+) is because it started raining on the 4th, but the next morning I found the rain gauge down on the ground. The 1.3 inches happened after that, but I have no idea how much we got overnight.

Temperature

• nighttime range: 47-74°F (8-23°C)
• daytime range: 67-91°F (19-33°C)

Planting

• winter wheat
• Daikons
• Carrots
• Cosmic Purple
• Purple Dragon
• Turnips
• Purple Top
• Tokinashi
• Kale
• Siberian
• Tronchuda
• Lettuce, Jericho
• Collards
• Beets, Ruby Queen
• Broccoli, Waltham 29
• Chinese cabbage
• Salsify
• Garlic
• Multiplier onions
• Parsnips, Harris Model
• Cabbage, Nero Di Toscana
• Mizuna
• Mustard, Japanese Giant Red

I think that's the most ambitious fall garden I've ever planted, but it seems prudent in these times to do so. It's in later than the regional planting guides suggest because I was tied up in the kitchen for all of August. But the soil is still warm for germination, and we hopefully have time before first frost. 

How long a fall garden lasts will depend on what kind of winter we have. Winter here can go either way: mild or cold. Last winter was cold, so most of my fall garden died off. If we have a mild winter, I'll be able to harvest greens and root crops all winter long. 

Picking and Eating

We got our first picking of green beans earlier in the month.

Cornfield pole beans

Late, I know, but the plan was to plant them when the corn was about six inches tall. Then the corn didn't germinate well. After two unsuccessful plantings of corn, I finally planted a few pole bean seeds under the porch trellis. We won't get a lot, but fresh steamed green beans with a little butter and salt is a real treat.

Also harvesting by the handful . . .

Late summer okra, tomatoes, and peppers, both bell and sweet banana type.

Herbs: rosemary, thyme, and oregano

September salad: cherry tomatoes, daikon leaves, turnip thinnings,
hard boiled egg, and farmers cheese with my ricotta/kefir dressing.

Of fruit, 

Late figs, which is unusual for September. They were slow to ripen but sweet.

Fall picking of red raspberries (with more on the canes).

This is the first time I got an autumn crop of red raspberries. I added them to the spring raspberries in the freezer for jelly, but only after juicing some and trying the juice in popsicles.

Raspberry-banana popsicle. A really good flavor combination.

Sadly, I missed most of the muscadines.

Foraged, wild muscadines

I knew when they first started ripening, and then we had that heavy deluge. The next time I checked on them most of them had been knocked off the vines and there was nothing left but hundreds of empty skins all over the ground. Disappointing, because production isn't consistent from year to year. The few I got were put into the freezer for a mixed fruit jelly in the future.

First Japanese persimmon

We have about two dozen persimmons on the persimmon tree. A first! This was the first to ripen. It was mild and sweet. I'm not sure what to do with all of them. Anyone have some recipes?

The first of the winter squash are ready to harvest.

Sweet potato squash. The dimpled one is odd, isn't it? I'm not
sure how well it will keep, so it's a candidate for preserving.

Dan's first cushaw.

This year Dan decided to do some gardening. He's usually busy with projects, but the projects are getting smaller as we get things accomplished, so he picked a spot and planted sunflowers, corn, and cushaw winter squash. I've already mentioned that the corn was a fail, but the sunflowers and cushaw did well, and that's the first one. To celebrate his success, it became a "pumpkin" pie!

I don't usually top pie with whipped cream, but since
this was a special pie it deserved a special topping!

It was really good. And actually, few folks would have known it wasn't actual pumpkin by the texture and taste.

That cushaw yielded 8 pints of puree, of which one pint was used to make the pie. The remaining six pints were dehydrated to make powder.

Preserving

Most of the winter squash will go into the pantry for feeding us, chickens, and goats. Sometimes, I freeze pints of puree. Occasionally, I can chunks. This year I'm learning about making fruit and vegetable powders (like tomatoes and pear sauce), so I wanted to try winter squash powder. I made it the same way I made the dried pear sauce: cooked it, pureed it, spread it onto parchment paper, dried until crisp in my dehydrator, and then powdered it in my blender. 

Powdered mixture of cushaw and sweet potato squash.

Drying time was much quicker than for the pear sauce, because winter squash don't contain the sugar pears do. I think the powder will be lovely for making pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, etc. Next, I want to add pumpkin pie spices to the puree before dehydrating and make pumpkin spice powder. Sounds like that would make good Christmas gifts, doesn't it?

[To rehydrate for puree, 2 cups hot water and 1/2 cup powder. Start with some of the water and stir in powder. Let sit for about 10 minutes and stir again. May adjust by adding either more hot water or more squash powder.]

Extra cherry tomatoes (those we don't eat) have been going into the freezer. Then Nancy, from Little Homestead in Boise, made a comment on my "Experiments in Ketchup Making" post and mentioned preserving cherry tomatoes in olive oil. I thought that was a great idea! Something new to try! I remembered that Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning has a chapter on preserving in oil, where I found a recipe on page 98.

Cherry tomatoes, multiplier onions, rosemary, thyme, and oregano.

It calls for cherry tomatoes, small onions or shallots, and fresh herbs. These are layered in scalded pint jars leaving 1.5 inches headspace. Course salt is sprinkled over the tomatoes, and a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice is added (I used my pear vinegar). Then the jar is filled with extra virgin olive oil and stored in a cool place (50-59°F / 10-15°C).

Cherry tomatoes preserved in olive oil.

It's ready to eat in two or three months and keeps for up to a year. 

I made two pints to see how it turns out. This promises to be great addition to our winter green salads. The bonus is that the olive oil is flavored too, and so good for cooking or salad dressing.

Parting Shot

Buckwheat cover crop in the lower garden for soil building.

I think that covers it for September. Are you still with me? Good, because now it's your turn. What's happening in your September garden?

Garden Notes: September 2022 © Sept. 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com