What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

i wished for a hose yesterday, when i was hauling water to give the transplants a drink. no rain forecast until this weekend and sunny/breezy but cool days until then, so i had to make sure they had a welcome to their new home drink.

the place i'm digging is not particularly dry soil and everything is a mess when i'm in there, but once the plants are moved they still need a drink to help settle in.

 

[canesisters]

We had our first frost Sunday evening. I had been out of town for a few days and had just gotten home that afternoon, so didn't bother with the garden. So now... any tomatoes still out there are chicken feed.
There are LOTS of dark, dry pods on the beans to collect still. I assume they're ok to finish drying in the dehydrator? Lots of still green ones too.

Is it wrong to simply loose interest in the summer garden at some point? Once I'm done canning all I want to can, I just let it go. It's a MESS out there!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

We had our first frost Sunday evening. I had been out of town for a few days and had just gotten home that afternoon, so didn't bother with the garden. So now... any tomatoes still out there are chicken feed.
There are LOTS of dark, dry pods on the beans to collect still. I assume they're ok to finish drying in the dehydrator? Lots of still green ones too.

Is it wrong to simply loose interest in the summer garden at some point? Once I'm done canning all I want to can, I just let it go. It's a MESS out there!!!

I've been known to do that. Sometimes I lose interest in certain parts in mid-summer if I'm not replanting it and the harvest there is done. There is a certain time in early summer when the garden generally looks great, not a weed out there and a lot of it mulched. That usually doesn't last long.

 

[ninnymary]

I always used to lose interest at the end of then summer and never gardened year round the way I can. Lately, I’m starting to plant a fall garden. It really isn’t all that much work for me and I need to take advantage of my mild winters.

So this fall I planted beets, snow peas and sugar snap peas, green onions, garlic, 12white cauliflowers and 6 green cauliflowers. Will be planted some Chinese greens also.

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

We had our first frost Sunday evening. I had been out of town for a few days and had just gotten home that afternoon, so didn't bother with the garden. So now... any tomatoes still out there are chicken feed.
There are LOTS of dark, dry pods on the beans to collect still. I assume they're ok to finish drying in the dehydrator? Lots of still green ones too.

Is it wrong to simply loose interest in the summer garden at some point? Once I'm done canning all I want to can, I just let it go. It's a MESS out there!!!

it's your garden/land/life/efforts, i'd say if you're happy with what you got from it there's no shame at all in calling it done and turning it under or letting the chickens in or Eva to have a snarfle at it all.

the dry beans that were forming seeds may be mushy and not worth it, but it depends upon how hard a frost you got. the seeds that were already mostly dry should be ok for picking and may not need much further drying. you'll know if when you shell them they're hard to the touch or not...

i'm usually not doing much with the beans after a frost unless i can find a few of the varieties i'm trying to get more seeds for further explorations in the coming years. otherwise, worm food it becomes.

 

[digitS']

I agree with @flowerbug but might take it a little further.

You are motivated by certain desires @canesisters . You are a "canning gardener." You got what you had intended/hoped for. Success! Why turn that into drudgery?

If the aftermath bothers you, Debbie, maybe you should schedule an end of season tilling.

Primary motivation for me is as a fresh food gardener. The supermarket produce aisle get plenty of our traffic through the winter. Sure, I could do it all with a BIG greenhouse, heated. I don't feel it's justified.

I am tired of being a little uncomfortable about this desire on my part. Fresh motivates me.

Steve

 

[digitS']

Moved sprinkler pipe out of the garden.

Brought home the leeks.

What did I just say about "fresh?" There was a handful of chard . I had chewed on a leaf the last time I was out; remember, my chard crop this year was limited to just a few plants because of seed germination problems. I decided to be inspired by @Zeedman 's interest in chard that had been through frosts. Like the kale at this time of year, the chard cooked up so tender. Inspired!

Leeks keep for awhile in the crisper drawer but we currently have an overwhelming number of onions. We had tried dicing and freezing them in Ziploc bags the last few years. Works! So DW diced and I stuffed snack bags and carried them out to the freezer.

The winter squash are looking good after curing for a few weeks outdoors and they have now joined the potatoes on basement shelves. Those potatoes went down there in July and we will have to be attentive to them - potato and leek soup!

Oh, and there was a handful of snow pea tendrils on the vines that replaced the potatoes in the garden. For some reason, they still looked okay - better than the few pods still on those vines. We will see with today's lunch. I'm so glad that I learned to harvest the tendrils several years ago. The vines don't grow as well in late summer as they do in the spring. Frost will just stop them. Still, they produce both pods and tendrils, well worth bringing in for stir-fries .

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

Oh, and there was a handful of snow pea tendrils on the vines that replaced the potatoes in the garden. For some reason, they still looked okay - better than the few pods still on those vines. We will see with today's lunch. I'm so glad that I learned to harvest the tendrils several years ago. The vines don't grow as well in late summer as they do in the spring. Frost will just stop them. Still, they produce both pods and tendrils, well worth bringing in for stir-fries .

Steve

I love pea shoots, they too are primarily a Fall delicacy. Some of the peas that I grow are soup peas, that I only grow for preservation... my grow outs are usually too small to produce enough to both share & eat. There are usually some peas which fall to the ground though, or which I discard immediately while picking because they were damaged by rain. Those seeds sprout in early Fall, long after everything else (other than onions & chard) has been killed by the frost. With some variation (depending upon variety) those shoots are exceptionally sweet & tender; they make a welcome snack as I am cleaning out the garden.

 

[ninnymary]

My beets got a pretty bad case of leaf miner so I took out most of them. I’d read that Bulls Blood didn’t get it but mine sure did.

In its place I planted a row of blended carrot mix, a couple Giant Red mustard and some Joi Choi. I need to discover what greens will grow easily here without pest problems. I can’t grow Swiss chard because of the leaf miner.

Mary

 

[digitS']

bad case of leaf miner

Yes beets but they would sometimes ruin a spinach planting.

I used to try to ignore leaf miners. Then, I learned that I could just take those leaves out. I'm sure that they could be so bad that removing leaves would wreck the plants but spinach doesn't grow well here for several reasons and the technique has worked okay for the other plants.

Steve