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Post by Pharmer Phil on Oct 14, 2010 4:51:33 GMT -6
 well at least for the gardens...  So for all of Us in "cooler" climates... What do you have still out in the garden producing?? How's everyones garden doing? any produce left out there? we have peppers, still doing good spinach...fresh crop lettuce...fresh crop (although we had one salad) broccoli..making lotsa side shoots... some celery left a few leeks and some beans to pull and finish drying
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Post by Penny on Oct 14, 2010 5:50:07 GMT -6
Nothing going in my gardens......we've had some heavy frosts, to the point where you had to use a scraper to clean the windows!!
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Post by Laura on Oct 14, 2010 17:00:36 GMT -6
well at least for the gardens... So for all of Us in "cooler" climates... What do you have still out in the garden producing?? How's everyones garden doing? any produce left out there? we have peppers, still doing good spinach...fresh crop lettuce...fresh crop (although we had one salad) broccoli..making lotsa side shoots... some celery left a few leeks and some beans to pull and finish drying We have parsnips out there too. We are going to whip up a batch of Leek/Parsnip soup for future meals. We had a meal of it a while ago & it was great! The spinach is coming out tomorrow. The lettuce is coming out as we eat it. We are having a BLT for supper tonight so gotta get the bacon goin.. |
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Post by Laura on Oct 16, 2010 19:21:32 GMT -6
Nothing going in my gardens......we've had some heavy frosts, to the point where you had to use a scraper to clean the windows!! The end is getting closer here every day. Yesterday we took out all the mater plants. This morning we pulled all the spinach..& it is all steamed & drying. Must have had a bushel basket phull of it. This fall crop did so much better then the early crop.. So we have a few leeks out & some parsnips..& all the pepper plants are still producing. They were crazy this year!!   We still have beans to get out..(dry ones) Have to process squashes.. Have maters we are looking for something to do with..  barbecue sauce maybe..hot sauce..sumpin.. Have Ketchup to be canned tomorrow morning. Have brussel sprouts to pick..lots of them. So it is going to take us a while yet.. All in all we had a productive year.. |
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Post by Wrennie on Oct 17, 2010 6:22:43 GMT -6
My parsley and sage are still waiting to be harvested. A few hot peppers left. A little late crop lettuce. Need to clean up the garden and get some garlic in for next year.
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Post by Pharmer Phil on Oct 20, 2010 7:37:48 GMT -6
My parsley and sage are still waiting to be harvested. A few hot peppers left. A little late crop lettuce. Need to clean up the garden and get some garlic in for next year. Wrennie, I cut some parsley, sage and rosemary last night while Laura harvested some celery leaves.. all that's left in the garden now is the lettuce, some broccoli, brussel sprouts and the peppers...they will be picked and the plants pulled over the next couple days... Oh, and did you get your garlic planted?? we did our's on Sunday |
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Post by spuds on Oct 20, 2010 8:36:41 GMT -6
The romas are just dropping off the vine now,60 lbs total this year so far.Plants are drying up but some still green and lively.Been freezing em,unsure what they will be,will process all at once when done.
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Post by Laura on Oct 20, 2010 17:13:37 GMT -6
My parsley and sage are still waiting to be harvested. A few hot peppers left. A little late crop lettuce. Need to clean up the garden and get some garlic in for next year. Wrennie, I cut some parsley, sage and rosemary last night while Laura harvested some celery leaves.. all that's left in the garden now is the lettuce, some broccoli, brussel sprouts and the peppers...they will be picked and the plants pulled over the next couple days... Oh, and did you get your garlic planted?? we did our's on Sunday Well we have no more pepper plants..we took about 1 & 1/2 hours & got em all picked & the plants are cut down..we got probably 25 lbs of peppers. We had some BIG bells hiding on us,,4 of them will make the 2 of us 4 meals give or take a bit..we could share the biggest ones & have 2 meals from it.. Now we have a few more things to get out & fix & we will have had a pretty darn good year!  |
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Post by Compost Pharmer on Oct 20, 2010 17:45:44 GMT -6
 My hot peppers are finally starting to produce. Picked 5 Bhutts 2-day. Have gotten over 300 Red Fresno peppers off of 2 plants so far. The plants are so loaded with peppers that the branches are starting to bend down and break. The stocks look like mini trees. They are at least 2 inches across. The Cubanella peppers are doing good as well. So far I have picked one that was 5 inches long. Oh yea, I almost forgot. My 2 Red Fresno's are close to 6 feet tall. I didn't realize they grow so tall. Gonna need a ladder soon, if they keep growing. I hope we don't get a freeze any time soon. My mater plants, that got hit by early blight are coming back. I have one plant that is starting to grow over the top of the cage. Compost is looking good as well. Got two bins that are ready to be screened and put on garden before tilling. That will have to wait until late next month. After I clean up the gardens.
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 20, 2010 18:24:59 GMT -6
Indian summer is a long one this year, which helps to make up for me not having much garden time this year. I just picked @ 14 smallish tomatos that were turning color. We also have some small bell peppers that are turning red. The fall carrots took at least 4 weeks to come up, and so they will probably not do anything for me.
I cannot complain: it is not roasting hot and it is not freezing: that makes it an unusually nice October!
I have bought a dehydrator during the end of season sales. That means that I can put up the dribbles of vegetables as they come in: My family has no interest in 4 string beans and 12 bell peppers that are only 2 inches long each and 14 tomatos are too many for us to use fresh, but, I can cut them up and put everything in the dehydrator and call it "Soup mix".
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Post by Songbird on Oct 20, 2010 22:35:07 GMT -6
Great idea, kansasterri!
See my new thread called Still Harvesting!
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Post by Pharmer Phil on Oct 21, 2010 7:40:49 GMT -6
 That's a very good idea K. Terri, a dehydrated soup mix is a great thing to do with the end of the season stuff only down side to this excellent indian summer weather is...the garden and yard...is keeping me too busy...and I'll be hanging storm windows and battening down this old house...in the Cold
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Post by Christy on Oct 21, 2010 13:37:21 GMT -6
My gardens been done, still needs cleaned up. I still got the peter peppers in my window doing good.
next year im getting lots of hay for mulch so im not strugling so much with weeds or it drying out.
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Post by Compost Pharmer on Oct 21, 2010 17:54:57 GMT -6
Yes Christy, you will be surprised at how much of a difference the mulch will make. I use grass clippings and in some places it is 12 inches thick. By the end of the growing season, there is not much left and gets tilled in the garden. I also put newspaper under the clippings. It help to slow down the weeds.
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Post by Laura on Oct 23, 2010 19:29:15 GMT -6
Today we re-made some green tomato relish..this time it is chunkier then the last batch I made..& we added some hot limon pepper to it..
We also have a pot of tomato sauce cooking down. We had all season to make tomato sauce..thick..& we canned up 1 jar of it..so we will make some more with the maters we have cooking.
We have brussel sprouts out yet & broccoli. The late season broccoli did much better then the early stuff.
We have herbs to take care of too..
We have lots of dried celery too. Smells & tastes great.
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Post by Wrennie on Oct 24, 2010 8:48:46 GMT -6
I haven't gotten to the garlic planting yet. Just pulled the maters and peppers yesterday. I may work the soil where I want the garlic today and get 'em in.
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 24, 2010 8:54:28 GMT -6
I bought a white bird bath from the dollar store for $3. It is now sitting under my kitchen window with a banana pepper plant in it.
I think that the little geraniums I bought at clearance will look very nice surrounding it, as they are in small pots, but what will I do with my citrus tree?
I start citrus by putting the seeds in a zip lock baggie with damp potting soil and after a few months they grow: mine is about a foot tall now and I think it will look a little strange next to the banana pepper. I got the idea from a website called Wintersown and it does seem to work!
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Post by Christy on Oct 25, 2010 6:26:08 GMT -6
Trerri you mean wintersown.org? thats a great learning site. are you gonna wintersow this year? thers also a topic wintersown in gardenweb. im still cleaning up the garden. heck yea CP im so getting hay! Rj bailed some this summer so he's getting me some off the guy.  before i use to work part time in the eve. so id have all day to weed n play in the garden wile the kids were in school. now i have no time. n seems i like to learn the hard way  dont phoreget to save seeds!! |
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Post by farmerswife on Oct 27, 2010 12:01:50 GMT -6
A very bad gardening year here, we had frost every single month this summer..honestly.
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 27, 2010 12:09:08 GMT -6
The weather prediction has warmed up to 35 this Thurseday, but since we live in a frost pocket that might not matter. We might frost anyways. And, there will be a frost warning next week also.
No matter how you slice it, the seasons are changing and the gardening season is winding down!
I picked all of the peppers today, to dehydrate for soups this winter. I ALSO picked 28 pounds of large green tomatos: some will ripen on my counter but most will be dehydrated. I used to worry about eating green tomatos, until I heard of "Fried Green Tomatos" which is a popular dish in the south, and so I think that I worry too much. At any rate, either today or tomorrow I will have the dehydrator full and running.
I almost ripped out my least-likly tomato plants, but now I am glad that I didn't. This Indian Summer has been longer than I dared to hope for, and those puny tomato plants are giving me fruit that is half-way red. A late vegetable is as welcome as a very early one, and those orange tomatos will ripen on the counter.
While I was working I broke what tomato stems were convenient, to speed up the ripening of the fruit that was left, assuming the frost does not kill everything. 2 years in a row I cut off tomato plants and brought them into the garage before frost, and the first year the tomatos ripened, one at a time, well into december.That is really good for Iowa! But, the second year was a very dry one and the green fruit shriveled instead of ripening. And it is messy. So I decided to not do that again.
Instead I have broken the stems and if the frost holds off I will haave more half-ripe fruit for my counter soon.
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 27, 2010 12:10:39 GMT -6
A very bad gardening year here, we had frost every single month this summer..honestly. Do you livein wyoming then, or the Dakotas? |
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Post by Rita on Oct 27, 2010 12:18:00 GMT -6
I do believe she is Nova Scotia Sp? Canada .. If memory serves me correct .. I could be horribly wrong tho  I do know she is an hour ahead of me |
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Post by farmerswife on Oct 27, 2010 12:55:52 GMT -6
Close Rita...Northern New Brunswick.
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Post by Rita on Oct 27, 2010 12:57:22 GMT -6
I knew it was on this side of the world |
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Post by spuds on Oct 27, 2010 17:05:06 GMT -6
I picked all of the peppers today, to dehydrate for soups this winter. I ALSO picked 28 pounds of large green tomatos: some will ripen on my counter but most will be dehydrated. I used to worry about eating green tomatos, until I heard of "Fried Green Tomatos" which is a popular dish in the south, and so I think that I worry too much. At any rate, either today or tomorrow I will have the dehydrator full and running. I almost ripped out my least-likly tomato plants, but now I am glad that I didn't. This Indian Summer has been longer than I dared to hope for, and those puny tomato plants are giving me fruit that is half-way red. A late vegetable is as welcome as a very early one, and those orange tomatos will ripen on the counter. While I was working I broke what tomato stems were convenient, to speed up the ripening of the fruit that was left, assuming the frost does not kill everything. 2 years in a row I cut off tomato plants and brought them into the garage before frost, and the first year the tomatos ripened, one at a time, well into december.That is really good for Iowa! But, the second year was a very dry one and the green fruit shriveled instead of ripening. And it is messy. So I decided to not do that again. Instead I have broken the stems and if the frost holds off I will haave more half-ripe fruit for my counter soon. I sliced up a bunch last night,put on single layer on cookie tray to flash freeze in freezer and just took em off and into a gallon ziplock bag,ready for my fried green maters! |
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Post by Penny on Oct 28, 2010 5:30:14 GMT -6
Like i said before, nothing growing here, and if there was, the snow we had last week would have killed everything then.
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 29, 2010 7:49:40 GMT -6
Trerri you mean wintersown.org? thats a great learning site. are you gonna wintersow this year? thers also a topic wintersown in gardenweb. Yes, I do mean www.wintersown.org! I do not know what I will do next year, though, I haven't thought that far ahead. I was not going to save any seeds, but there was this half-red Big Bertha pepper that was just PERFECT....... There were not many seeds in it but those seeds are now in an envelope on my shelf, waiting for next year!  |
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Post by kansasterri on Oct 29, 2010 8:01:55 GMT -6
The frost held off for a day but it DID come! It was 27 degrees last night. Gardening season is now over.
I only got half of the larger tomatos picked: about 28 pounds by the bathroom scale. Half of them were perfect and are now ripening on the counter but half had at least minor imperfections and so I am running them through the dehydrator. There are now too many 'maters for my dehydrated soup mix and so I will store some separately for spagetti sauce.
Freezing is a popular method of storing, and those 'maters are simply frozen. I have decided to pick those larger frozen tomatos once it warms up a bit and try to preserve them, I just have not quite decided how, yet. Most of the green ones I picked earlier were red inside, so the tomato sauce should look.....wierd..... I must think about that color problem, kids can be picky. Perhaps a small can of tomato sauce to make the color deeper instead of red and green spotted!
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Post by spuds on Oct 29, 2010 8:46:27 GMT -6
Nice haul Terri on the maters!
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Post by Pharmer Phil on Oct 30, 2010 5:45:25 GMT -6
I was not going to save any seeds, but there was this half-red Big Bertha pepper that was just PERFECT....... There were not many seeds in it but those seeds are now in an envelope on my shelf, waiting for next year! Terri, we are always NEVER going to save seeds...yet, we have plates, plastic cups and envelopes of seeds we haven't got "put away" yet... that meaning...we haven't ADDED THEM to the 16 gallon tupperware container |
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well at least for the gardens... 
That's a very good idea K. Terri, a dehydrated soup mix is a great thing to do with the end of the season stuff 
