Cosmo spring garden 2020

[Ridgerunner]

Fall garden. Down here it starts early October. From transplants I'll have broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. I'll buy those. From seed collard greens, mustard greens, chard. kale, beets, and lettuce.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Fall garden. Down here it starts early October. From transplants I'll have broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. I'll buy those. From seed collard greens, mustard greens, chard. kale, beets, and lettuce.

Sounds like what I'll have too! This will be the first year for me to have a fall garden.

 

[flowerbug]

Fall garden. Down here it starts early October. From transplants I'll have broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. I'll buy those. From seed collard greens, mustard greens, chard. kale, beets, and lettuce.

Sounds like what I'll have too! This will be the first year for me to have a fall garden.

i hope they work out well for the both of you! i certainly enjoy hearing about them when i'm in the depths of winter.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You never know about frost and freezing down here so it's a bit of a gamble. Last year it worked beautifully. We'll see about this year.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Yesterday was a busy day and I didnt get any time in the garden so I went as quick as I could today. Harvested fresh cucumbers and lots of cayenne peppers. The cayenne I will ferment to make hot sauce. Beans are growing so quickly! I think ill get a nice harvest! The big pink flower is a hibiscus and its gorgeous! My luffa trellis is holding strong! I transplanted some heat tolerant lettuce and I thought it was going to die but it pulled through. I sure missed eating fresh lettuce from the garden. The raspberries are doing amazing too. We got few berries this year and I look forward to lots more next year! You can see a bumblebee in the luffa flower. I can hear the buzzing of bees in the garden in the morning. Another good news, my dog caught a big fat mouse yesterday from the garden and the other dog caught a bunny this morning. I hope they will control the rodent and bunny population. I am tired today. I took up a director role at our church for a childrens club and yesterday was registrations. I am excited about working with the kids but I know it will mean more work for me. I hope you all are having a great week so far! We have the windows open and I can hear a chicken singing the egg laying song

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Harvested a lot of the winter squash today.there are 2 large pumpkins, 2 buttercup squash (green), 2 long island cheese pumpkin(short round ones with butternut squash color), 1 cinderella pumpkin (smallest bright orange), the large long green is an overgrown zucchini I let go for seeds and the rest are butternut squash. I still have more in the garden so this was the best year for winter squash. I washed them and they will be stored inside the house. If they start going bad I'll either can or freeze them. Most will be eaten in soups, roasted, curried or in desserts. The largest pumpkin will be carved. I also planted some peas today and will plant more over the next few weeks for continuous harvest. I've never grown peas for fall so I'm excited to see how that goes. I so need to transplant cabbage and broccoli starts. I'll harden them off and they will be planted under covers. I cut the leaves off all the kale plants and tossed it to the chickens. They were covered with cabbage loopers. We are getting much needed rain tonight. Better keep an eye on the weather report, we get lots of tornados around here.

 

[baymule]

That is a lovely harvest! Beautiful squash that will feed your family over the winter.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

CSG: how do I know when to harvest my butternuts? I have several hiding out there....

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

CSG: how do I know when to harvest my butternuts? I have several hiding out there....

I wait until the vine attached to the squash is dry and brown and the skin feels hard and hardly any indent is left behind when you poke your nail into the skin of the squash. You also want to make sure that the skin doesn't have much green on it.

 

[flowerbug]

if the weather is nice enough and the vine is still putting nourishment into the fruit then i want to leave them be as much as i can. once the vine looks like it is starting to die off then we pick them (leaving some of the stem on) and put them in the garage to cure. spaced out so they are not touching so they can dry and callous any marks from harvesting. after that we just eat the ones that look the worst first or give them away if we have that many. the longer we leave them out in the yard on the plant the more likely something might chew on them or step on them or ... so getting them harvested and in the garage at least gives us more to eat later.

when we get a lot of rains and fogs then i worry as it can be a fungus fest out there. i've harvested wheelbarrows full and processed them pretty quickly cutting around fungi. the insides are usually ok for a while anyways.