October Veggie Garden

It is October 21  and the veggie garden is mostly put to bed for the winter.  

















I skipped taking a photo of all the frost killed plants because most things looked so DEAD.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, okra, squash, and peppers all wilted or turned black; gone for the year.  Many of the tomatoes were already dried up from various blights and I can't say I was sad to see the end of the peppers.  A couple of days were spent clearing out vines and dead plants so the garden looked pretty bare.



All the plants are gone.




















Broccoli and brussel sprouts are pretty frost tolerant so they are still growing.  Often they last well into December.  We have picked a bit of broccoli already and it looks like a few more heads may have a chance to mature since warm weather is predicted for this week.  Kale and collards are much better after a touch of frost so they are still in the garden and we will pick them to eat fresh until the weather turns really cold.  What ever remains of them will go into the freezer.

Collards and kale.

We erected a temporary fence around the kale and collards from livestock panels to give them a bit of additional protection.  Deer pressure this time of year is generally greater than other times of year even with our electric fence still connected.  Also they need protection from smaller mauraders:



Chickens can now free range in the garden.




















Our small flock of mixed-breed chickens can now free range in the garden and scratch around in all the mulch looking for bugs and seeds.  I love to wander down to the garden and just watch them.  Even though the growing season is technically over, it is fun to see such industrious activity in the garden this time of year.

September Veggie Garden

It is almost impossible to believe that it is October already.  I'm not sure what happened to September but I'm fairly certain that it has come and gone.  The garden is looking a bit tired now but frost will be coming our way soon anyway.

Garden at the end of  September.

Contrast this with the fresh spring view of April.

Early spring garden view.

September was a busy month in the garden and by the end of the month most of the leftover summer veggies such as beans and tomatoes have become chicken food.  We did can and freeze the last of the tomato crop and I think we managed to put by 70-some quarts of tomatoes and 60-some pints of salsa.

A few scraggly tomatoes that have succumbed to diseases.

We began harvesting the sweet potatoes that Eve gave us and they did amazingly well.  I dug the first hill and it had 40 pounds of potatoes in it.  I stopped there for a while.

Twenty-six  pounds of the forty-pound hill.

Although the summer garden is done, the fall garden is doing well.  We always plant greens and broccoli which always do well in the cooler weather.

Turnip greens.

Kale.

Broccoli ready to harvest.

Brussel sprouts....so far all Brussels and no sprouts.

We also have a few Italian fig trees that are doing very well this year and have provided us with quite a few figs.

Green and ripe figs.

Figs.

October will signal the end of most of the garden plants so we'll be able to send in the clean-up crew.

August Veggie Garden

It is hard to believe that August has come and gone.  Life gets so busy this time of year it seems.  There is hay to buy and stash in the barn and it seems that August is our busiest garden month, at least for harvesting and preserving.  As I think I mentioned before we tend to stick to the basics and this month tomatoes, peppers, beans and cucumbers were abundant.  Don was very diligent about succession planting this year so we have had a continuing supply of beans and cucumbers.  Despite the very dry weather this month we have probably had our best garden ever and attribute it to all the goat manure and mulch that we have been adding for a few years now.  One of the most prolific vegetables in our garden this year is peppers.  Some years our peppers sit in the cool clay soil and mock us until late in the season. We love sweet peppers, both the bell type and the long Italian type and prefer to let them ripen a bit so they develop more flavor.  We're freezing peppers, drying peppers and putting peppers in salsa.  They will make a great addition to our winter meals this year (and probably into subsequent years as well).

Wonderful yellow-striped heirloom tomato.

Old cucumber vines on the way out.  Never fear there are new ones starting to bear.

Second planting of white half runner pole beans.

Our okra was slow to come on but it is starting to bear now.

One of the tomato blights is starting to take its toll but later plantings are still doing well.

A day's harvest that needs to be put by.

Peppers loaded in the dehydrator.

A sampling of the fruits (and veggies) of our labor.

July Veggie Garden (or why this is blog is titled the Intermittent Farm Report)

Well I know it is August but that is the main reason I'm just now getting around to the July garden report.  The garden is in!  So far this has been a great gardening year although a few adjustments were needed.  We mulched plants heavily in June after the weather turned hot and dry.  Bare clay soil was like cured concrete while soil under the mulch was cool and moist.  July came with heavy rains following the Derecho of late June. We had a few peppers drown in a low spot in the garden after heavy rains so we pulled back the mulch on some areas of the garden to help the soil breathe.  Most plants continued to fare well under the mulch and the corn thrived with the constant moisture.  We are now into canning and freezing season and have put up corn, tomatos and beans. Don is threatening to make our surplus cucumbers into pickles but neither of us are big pickle eaters.  The beets we planted in the spring are mostly still growing into giant woody roots because neither of us are big beet eaters either.  Someday we'll learn to plant things we actually eat.

Second planting of Early Sunglow corn.

Nothing better than fresh-picked corn!

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Italian pepper - Giant Marconi.

 






















The personal size tomato Fourth of July ripening nicely.






















Sweet potato vines running wild!



Pole beans - white half runners.

Nothin' better that a bit of fried okra.  Have to wait a bit longer.

Basil growing nicely.

The long view.

Contrast this with the garden in early May.

June Veggie Garden

I had planned to do another veggie garden update for June a bit earlier but the week-long power outage put an end to those plans.  But I thought I'd go ahead and do it anyway even though it is now mid July.

 The green onions are starting to form bulbs and mature.

 The cucumbers are starting to climb. A second planting of Early Sunglow corn is coming up in the background.  It got mulched too.

 My "no-hoe" experimental corn patch that I mulched is growing nicely despite the lack of rain.  Mulch is great!  Don doesn't have to hoe now so he is just posing for the camera.

 A few tomatoes that we started in the greenhouse and set out with blooms already going are starting to ripen.  I think this is a Park's Whopper.  We have  some heirlooms too.

Peppers apparently love the hot weather we had and are setting fruit like crazy.  This is the earliest we have ever had peppers.  This is a Giant Marconi, a sweet Italian type.

By the end of June we had harvested all our early lettuce and have new lettuce growing under some shade.

 Pole beans (white half runner) are starting to climb.

 My sweet potatoes are sending out their long vining tentacles and will soon cover the garden.  I'm trying to keep the mulch ahead of them to control weeds.

 Some old gates work well for tomatoes and the rest of the tomatoes are starting to grow.

My bush beans got off to a slow start but are growing well now.



















Thing will really take off during July so stay tuned!

May Veggie Garden

Well I realize it is mid June but I wanted to share the progress of our May veggie garden.  Because our garden is next to the creek and has clay soil, we plant early spring vegetables in raised beds. These dry out early in the spring so we can plant early crops.  The main garden takes a while to dry out enough to plant if the weather has been wet in April but it holds moisture well during the summer.

 By early May most of our spring veggies planted in raised beds were well on their way.  We always have a variety of lettuce ready to eat by late April and Don usually has cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from our small greenhouse ready  too for some yummy spring salads. Broccoli, peas, onions and beets were up and growing well early in the month.

Lettuce - both heading and leaf ready to pick.

Young broccoli.

By late May the Broccoli was harvested and the peas were ready for picking.  We had also been enjoying frequent harvests of asparagus.

Broccoli ready for harvest.

Sugar snap peas.

By the end of the month, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers and corn were starting to take hold.  We generally grow too many of several varieties of tomatoes including both heirloom and hybrid.  All those young starts in the greenhouse have to go somewhere and it is usually in our garden.  As a result, we usually end up eating canned tomatoes from years past.  I think we've made it up to 2008 vintage tomatoes this year.  We also have bell, Italian and mildly hot peppers.  We usually dry and freeze peppers for winter and this is the year to replenish our supply.  The tomatoes and peppers were started in the green house and transplanted.  The sweet potatoes were a gift from a friend.  I planted our corn late in a wet patch of heavily mulched soil so it got off to a slow start.  Although I consider Don the main gardener, I always manage to have my experimental patch, mostly involving some labor saving theme.  This year is is no-hoe corn in a bed of goat-poop mulch.

Young tomatoes. 

Young pepper.

Corn planted in heavy mulch.

Overview of May garden.