What have you done today in the Garden?

Daniël—That was some graft! That shifting of soil and beds is something we have to do each year as well. Fortunately we divided our space into four quadrants and a greenhouse. That makes it simpler for my brain. We have the same rotation pattern each year. The greenhouse soil always goes into the last-used potato bed. The weight of all that soil can get old, right. Haha.

It looks like we are both winterising now. It is a job, alright.

Nice late harvests. The apples look especially good.

My rationale for leaving the nodules either in the ground or in the compost is not for later bean crops to use them, for bean plants fixate their own nitrogen from the air. I do not know how much they pick-up from soil. My goal for those little nodules are leafy vegetable plants that follow the beans.

it is good to hear how you do things — it gives me something to think about. I was wondering, do you plant crops that you can regularly harvest throughout the winter?

Very nice harvest, Willow. It looks delicious.

Marlin has the good advice, Daniel.

 

Cut the front grass and put the cuttings on the ground where the plum trees are. Hoping that it will kill the weeds if it's thick enough.
Deadheaded the cosmos and roses.

 

I canned applesauce and pears, and froze apple pie filling. I made some juice from apple peelings and added some stick cinnamon. I'll make some cinnamon apple jelly tomorrow and some apple fritters then I think I'm done with apples and pears.

 

It's something I think about, but I have not done that. I do get scallions very early, not not through the winter.

I took a needed break for the past couple of days. Maybe will today as well.

 

Breaks…everyday is a good day for a break.

As for those winter crops— I do them some years but not every year.

yummy, Willow.

 

I picked more drying beans and shelled the last batch, that were dry. I worry about it getting so close to the first frost date (mid 0ctober here). I actually turned on the heat!
I have so many tomatoes, I'm thinking about just bringing them in to ripen. I also read somewhere that if it's getting close to frost you can hang bean plants upside down and they can dry that way. Has anyone done either of those?
I did get my applesauce, apple jelly and pears canned. Tomorrow morning I'll make the apple fritters, that I didn't get to the other day. Then I'm done with the apples. I'll probably cut back the black and raspberry plants this afternoon or tomorrow. I'll pull up the zucchini as well. It didn't do very well in the place I put it this year.

 

I did that the other day. But mine was a little different; I canned that day and did very little in the actual garden. But breaks are nice!

 

Hello Willow. I have hung the tom plants upside down to ripen in the greenhouse. It worked for me. I think that Cayuga has done this as well.

 

I bet you will love having those during the winter!

I have one more potential canning to do. I was thinking either pears, or maje apple butter.

I noticed the winter "green manure" cover crop mustard is germinating.



Must be the 80 degree F (27 C) days we had. Today was 89 F (31.7 C). It's kind of scary if I think about it, so I try not to.

Before it heated up, I enlisted some help to haul soil to the second raised bed for next year's tomato crop - one bed for sauce tomatoes, one for slicers. Thanks @marlingardener for advice on that. The buckets actually ride in a wagon, so they aren't carried the whole way. The wagon doesn't quite fit between the raised beds (who designed that arrangement? Oh, it was me! Oops!) so the buckets help with the final ten feet of carrying.

Just for fun, here's the "Tasmanian Alpine Yellow Gum" Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus subcrenulata) that I planted four years ago. At the time, it was in a four-inch pot and was six inches tall.



That fence post is 6 feet tall, so I think the tree is about 25 feet tall. The leaf shape shows maturation, so maybe it will bloom next year. This is not the "Blue gum" variety that is like a gasoline bomb in fires, so isn't as fragrant. Sort of a faint, musty-eucalyptus scent. The bark is starting to peel, like a birch or sycamore. It's not like the images I see for mature specimens, so far.



These are supposed to have a pretty, multicolor bark appearance at maturity. These are considered more cold tolerant than other Eucalyptus. It's a very fast grower, so far.

 

Daniel, I talked to one of my best friends last night and she told me how hot it is there. I told her she got our weather from last week. It was in the 80s, here. But yesterday I actually turned on the heat. So if it follows, the cool down is coming. My usual day for heat is holding off until October 1st. (And my granddaughter complains the last week of September). Do you have any Madrona trees? I always liked them. When I was young the peeling bark fascinated me.

All my canning stuff ready for the jelly cupboard in the basement. And apple fritters, minus the glaze.

I'll be cutting the raspberries back today and maybe the blackberries as well. I'm hoping my neighbor take me to Home Depot so I can get wood (I really miss my Pathfinder). I'm raising one, if not both of my raised beds so its easier next year. It/they will be 16 or 18 inches instead of 8. She said she would, but getting a time when both of us are free is crazy!

 

You sound like me with the jean quilt and corduroy backing. Who would do something that ridiculous.... Oh that was my brain child!! Now I "get to" fix it!

 

Cleared a border of cosmos and snapdragons, but had to leave the gladioli for it to die down a lot more. Going to plant some wallflowers and polyanthus. The tulip bulbs are there from last year.

 

Thanks Sjoerd, I think I'll try that but in my basement. I don't have a greenhouse. I have a grow light in the basement.

 

Some late harvests.





The pawpaws (Asimina triloba) have a texture similar to avocados, with a flavor that seems kind of mango-like. They are a native American (Southeast US to midwest) fruit that doesn't travel well so has never really caught on. They are a fun novelty but not reliable in this area.

The chestnuts are good, prepared in the air fryer for snacking.

That leaves a few more crops to harvest. I haven't tried to make chili sauce yet, there are more apples to pick, and the persimmons are still very hard and inedible.

 

A busy afternoon.

I took all the pots off this patio, ready to scrape out the moss/soil between the flags with a knife
Then vacced it all up plus a lot of leaves.






Then removed the top layer of compost from each pot and added fresh. Cleaned the pots and pot movers. Drained the fountain, cleaned and refilled it.
Then brushed fresh fine sand into the cracks between the flags. Replaced the pots on their put movers. Gave all the pots some water. Did the same with the pots on the other patio and those next to the fence along the drive.





Mowed the lawn.





Removed the tree at the end of the rockery in the first picture. Never does much and the leaves start going black very early in the summer.

I need to get into the rockery on the next dry day, "when I feel like it," to dig out the grass.