What have you done today in the Garden?

Today was mostly weeding out one flower garden and planting a few Crocus & Tulip bulbs.

Sjoerd, I did use the nitrogen pellets sparingly.

I know this has no bearing on the topic, but I realized I have a picture of the Aphids that ruined my Brussel sprouts.



( photo / image / picture from Growingpains's Garden )

I didn't realize they were Aphids until I saw movement.

 

Those terrible beasts! At one time or another they are the bane of every gardener.

 

My first meeting with them after years of gardening. I hope my last.

 

Well, The greenbeans are almost done... I had one last new patch that hadn't been picked and I called my mom to see if she knew if my sister had canned any beans this year ( which I had thought not) and she thought not, too...so, we decided to can 2 bushels for her. Today we canned them and my dad and a friend finished picking the patch. She took home 2 bushels and I kept 3 for my last farmers market on Saturday. Whew! That was a lot of beans. SEVEN bushels from one patch and that was only the first picking... but, we pulled the plants as we picked. I just don't see us getting enough nice weather to develop the small beans enough to get them big enough to use. I wish I had kept better count of how many bushels we picked this year... but it was lot.

We picked 10 pints of raspberries, a bushel of san marzano tomatoes and a few other things, but that was most of the day today... We are almost done.

 

That's a lot of beans.

 

Bloimey C-- you must be bean-bonkers!
I love beans and would have done the same for family. ..and for myself, if I had had that many.

Way to go, gal!

 

Yanked out 2 old large toms that just kept hanging on.
Planted seeds, green beans, radishes, Pac-Choy, broccoli. Does not seem like a lot of work, but I looked like something the cat drug in when I was done and boy that shower felt good!

 

We did a bit of hoeing yesterday and harvesting.
Here are the paprika's that we harvested, with a hand to give you an idea of their size.


We also harvested other things for the stir-fry as well: a nice, long leek, a young courgette and a little bundle if Chinese garlic grass and parsley.


The veggie stir-fry with sausage meat was delicious.

 

All looks wonderful. Do you dry the paprika or use them like any pepper?

 

No, I don't dry them. I clean them, chop them into little rectangles or parallelograms and freeze them in to be used throughout the year.
I really find the flavour of these and the round ones very tasty.

I also select some of the seeds for the coming season.

 

Those are beautiful peppers! Nice haul! We stopped getting peppers and other edibles from the garden about two weeks ago, as we already had our first hard frost up here in the frigid north.

But that said, my husband and I built two cold frames, which this weekend I'm going to fill with compost and see if lettuces and radishes can survive in them. I've never tried growing in cold frames before but I'm excited to try. Anything to extend the almost less than 100 day growing season up here!


New cold frames ( photo / image / picture from AbundantBlooms's Garden )

 

Been saying goodbye to my annuals. Time for the Fall Tidys! Been a super busy landscaper girl lately. Leaves are coming down, temps are chilling off at night,
Hello Autumn!

 

I went out to a local bulb vendor in the countryside and bought a number of spring-blooming bulbs. The area where I shall plant these is primarily in the blueberry patch, so that had to be cleaned-up this afternoon and made ready for planting tomorrow.

I moved around three plants in the flower garden. That was a big deal and it wasn't easy fitting them all in where I wanted....but it is all dusted and done. Now to wait until next year to see how it will look.

When I was cleaning one of the flower plots, I saw that my little willow was already producing katjes (little pussy-willow buds).


The plants before moving:


The plants after moving:


That doesn't look like much now, but hopefully next summer it will look good.

 

That is a large garden, Sjoerd. It looks like it is well established with nice large plants. I moved many of my plants this year as some grew taller than expected and was hiding the shorter ones. I'm hope I finally have my flower gardens arranged where they look nice. I won't really know until next year but that's part of the fun of gardening.

 

Too right, 2of. We'll see next year. Boy, when I look at that second pic of the moved plants, I think to myself how terribly messy it looks. hahaha. Well, to be fair to myself--I still have to properly clean that plot; however, there is still green stuff growing at the moment. Today I am going there to plant some bulbs.

Further I began a program where-by I will move one of the bee hives a few cms a day over to the left (north) until there is room for the "new colony" to be placed in-between the existing colonies on the stand. this will take a while to do, but I shall not physically move the new, little colony until winter has actually set in.
I do not want to move them when they are still flying out to forage, as they would return to the old place where there would be no hive. Is this clear?