What have you done today in the Garden?

Trimmed hedges pics before, during and after.Showing a easy process.
I just roll out the 15’ tarp . Battery op hedger does the work .Then roll tarp up and attach to garden tractor and take to the pasture to dump out the trimmings. Then mulch the clippings with the garden with the mulcher blades.

 

I'm up to date apart from more weeding required of the grass in the rockery.

 

Today will be a low garden day. Harvesting some swiss chard and carrots for the neighbour, and for our supper. Major thunderstorms and rain overnight, with a temperature drop to 7 C , so everyone is slowing down. I think that begs for an inside day to clean up from making tomato and pizza sauce all day yesterday. About 20 lbs of tomatoes processed yesterday. I'm guessing there are about 30 more to come as they ripen. I'm really appreciating reducing them as opposed to just canning them.

I picked a pail of green beans before the rain yesterday, and they will also be for dinner tonight. Gardens are winding down, and I am no longer watering the greenhouse. I need the tomatoes to ripen, as well as the cucumbers to finish. The gold nugget buttercup squash will go on screens where the cucumbers are next week, so that they have three weeks to cure out of the frost. Gardens must be all out and wrapped up by the end of next week to allow for other life needs that will take my time. Whirl wind garden year this year.

 

Went to visit my friend Marion and sowed some Californian poppy, musk mallow and pot marigold seeds for her and showed her how to sow them. Trimmed back a butterfly bush for her as well, trying to keep up with controlling brambles for her, i'll be able to dig them up now that the soil has been rained on.

 

Your gardening is sounding very good, Mel. All those good veggies. You have a good load of toms. You will have a little work making that concentrate, but then you will have something for use later.

I am enjoying your accounts of progress. Thanks.

 

Too hot to get out in the yard.

 

Harvested some tomatoes. Most of the dwarf tomato varieties have nice big green ones. These are Livingston Dwarf Stone (red) and Livingston Dwarf Champion (pink ). Both are century old varieties. I grow them from saved seeds.



Sauce tomatoes, cherry (Sungold and Reisentraube) too, and some modern bush hybrids. Also a few onions and peppers.



Im cooking down the sauce tomatoes now.

I feel likeI finally got it right with tomatoes. Grow dwarf types, so the tying up isnt such an ongoing chore. Grow them in high raised beds, more accessible to me. Use drip irrigation, so I don't have to water by hand. Install a hose timer so I don't worry about leaving it running. Install cardboard mulch to prevent weeds, reduce blight to a minimum, and keep the water use down.



I forget if I grew this four o'clock from seed or if it was a volunteer descended from others I grew from seeds. I think the latter. It's grown in this location for many years. Compared to the new ones I grew from seeds this year, the bloom started later but it is much bushier and covered with flowers.





Mirabils is perfect for my climate. I never water it. It survives the winters and comes back the next year. I have some that I covered with thick plastic mulch, covered with wood chips, and they came up through that.

 

Great harvest pics, and the Mirabilis! Mine is yellow as well.
Your toms did well mate, didn’t they.

 

What kind of shrooms Odif?

 

Thank you Soerd. Life is good...and it was very tasty

 

I really love those purple flowers Daniel. Very pretty.

Fig jam...that sounds good! So do the fig bars.

The inside of your figs were pink/red? The brown is from cooking??

 

Thank you for telling me about the concentrate Sjoerd. I told my middle daughter what I was up to today and she thought it was a brilliant idea. It is a lot of work, but you are absolutely right that it is worth it. Far more practical and useful. And very tasty. We had some fresh concentrate on homemade pizza a few nights ago, and hubby loved it

 

@Daniel W - Congratulations! All of the preperation and hard work paid off - Well done!! The tomatoes are beautiful. Rufus is looking pretty sharp.

 

Thank you @Melody Mc. . The food crops nourish the body. The flowers nourish the soul.

These figs were pink-ish or light tan inside. They do darken from cooking. Plus, the photo is darker than it should be,

The weirdest thing. Using rehydrated figs, the topping of the fig bars is chewy and has a strong fig flavor, like in fig newtons. These fresh figs make a watery purée, so
I added a tablespoon of clear gel starch before cooking. The tase was sweet but bland, so i added a tablespoon of molasses. Still bland, so I added a teaspoon of rum extract. i cooked until thick, spread on the crust and added the chopped walnut / oat / brown sugar topping.

They came out with the filling having a consistency like filling in pecan pie. The flavor was like pecan pie too. How strange.

 

There were enough Asian pears to can a batch. There might be enough to can a second batch if they keep a few more days on the tree.