What have you done today in the Garden?

Daniel, an absolutely gorgeous harvest, beautiful to see and varied. I would love to be able to grow peaches. And then, a perfect ending with that delicious- looking tomato pie. Mate, you have it all.

 

It rained all day today.

 

Not much just going to pick more blackberries and blueberries.

 

The first of the second raspberry harvest. George will get 2 and my granddaughter can have the other 3. We ended up getting 3 inches of rain yesterday. I'm going to go see how my tomatoes and beans did. Those are my vanilla beans behind the dish. I'll make vanilla sometime this week.

 

Cat grass is going to seed. I have larger tomatoes getting ripe. My first tomatillo! And I have a volunteer kale. And then there's the zucchini, it wasn't quite ready before the rain. It loved the 3+ inches.

 

I finished pulling out thistle and (what we've always called) morning glory. But here it's called choke weed. I pushed back the arborvitae droppings and the mulch I put down last year. I then layered more cardboard on top of last year's slightly decomposed cardboard. Then on top of that, I put burlap coffee bags. There's a coffee roaster a few miles from me and they have free bags. And the plus is Valentine Coffee makes a great chai latte. And I hear their coffee is one of the best in town. I don't drink coffee; but I love chai lattes.
Cut back the blackberries so they don't root in the yard. And picked a handful of raspberries. I'll pick up the blackberry branches and thistle later after I go get a yard waste bag. Then I can have my granddaughter hold it open while I put it in, it's getting too hot to do much else. My raspberries are above the retaining wall and blackberries are below.

 

Choke weed is called bindweed over here. Some of the neighbours have it in their gardens and hard to get rid of, but luckily we don't have it.

 

Nothing today it's raining

 

We call the bindweed, winde. There are at least six types and they are all a big headache. It is one of the three main weeds that give me trouble. My heart goes out to anyone who has this in their garden.

 

I've heard that the seeds can stay dormant for years, when this cardboard and burlap compost down I'll probably be doing it again. All those white spots you see in the picture by the pile of blackberry branches are the flowers of those. My other nemesis is called creeping Charlie. I never heard of it until I moved here. Its a member of the mint family.....need I say more? I tried pulling it up one year and it was down to dirt in that area when I finished. That same year I put up my granddaughter's little pool. It's probably about a 4x6 rectangle. Plus I put a tarp under it. At the end of the summer when I took it down I had a nice patch of dirt. So I seeded both areas with grass. Yeah, I foolishly thought the grass might have a chance. That creeping Charlie has even choked out what little clover was back there!

 

Just finished cutting the vanilla beans to make vanilla extract. I'm thinking about buying some more and make bourbon vanilla as well. I've never bought that so I don't know what it tastes like. I have always used vodka, which is why it took so long to start it. I'm not a drinker so I had to remember to buy the alcohol. Has any one used bourbon vanilla? And the beans that I order are always Madagascar.

 

Good posting, Willow. Growing and processing vanilla beans sounds interesting.

 

No, I don't grow them. I order them and then make the vanilla extract. I think they grow way south. I didn't do much in the garden, so I thought I'd make the vanilla extract. The tomatoes aren't quite ready, maybe tomorrow or the next day. And I only got a couple beans. We aren't having the heat that we usually have usually have so everything's coming on slowly. It'll probably all come on at once....after I start back to work.

 

I have to pace myself. We still had days into 105 F range. I'm not sure about Celsius but I suspect that is a lower number

Today I installed the drip irrigation for the last bed of bush beans. No photo, it's just tubing.

Harvested the first batch of sauce tomatoes.
the hybrid I tried, Supremo, is very productive for me, very big, meaty sauce tomatoes. The heirloom Romas are good, not quite as early, not as big or productive but I still love them and will save seeds from those again.



I cooked about 1/3 of those into tomato sauce.





After that cooled, I pureed it in the food processor, dispensed one cup at a time into quart size freezer bags, and froze.

The second third or so will be salsa. I didn't feel like canning yesterday or today, so tomorrow.

The blackberries went into a pie. I never made a blackberry pie before. Yum yum yum yum yum yum LOL.





The dancing man is keeping jays away from the blackberries. If I can pick enough tomorrow, there might be another pie!



This verbascum turned out interesting. I don't know if I will grow it again next year, but bees like it. So maybe.



The Gravensteins are probably ready to pick. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. I know I let a lot of the figs overripen because I didn't feel like getting into the heat.

 

Wow Daniel you got a lot of tomatoes! My big ones are just starting to ripen. I've picked 2. But we haven't had the heat we usually get in August (which is kinda lucky because our AC went out about a month ago). We only had one or two days were it was really hot with just fans . Otherwise it hasn't been bad, but not good for ripening tomatoes. I might freeze what I have. I told my granddaughter I'd make spaghetti sauce and freeze it.
Those flowers remind me of foxglove. I remember walking to the bus stop In the morning, when I was in junior high, and I'd pass a hillside of them. They'd be leaning one way and by the time I was walking home after school they'd be leaning the other way. They just follow the sun.