Taste the rainbow

What happened to September?

The season has changed.  Chris and I pulled up the roma tomato plants this morning bringing home both the green and red fruits.  Interestingly the Heatwave tomatoes, which we chose for there ability to flower and produce when the weather is too hot for the other tomatoes, are still growing strong.  We had quite a few plants of various heirlooms this year give up after only 1 or 2 ripened fruits (black krim, mr stripey, cherokee green) and our brandywines are large and uniformly unripe, the plants still vigorous even in the cooling weather.  Green tomato pickles are in our future I suspect.

Some of our peppers are alternately scorched or scabby - and others are perfect.  The chilis are still going strong.  Yellow squash is still trying to produce, despite the powdery mildew covering the leaves.

Rhiannon and I picked 4 ripe Long Island Cheese squash this weekend, the vines were wilted and ghostly looking.  Indica's Flat White pumpkin is still vigorous in its attempt to take over the hill it was planted on.  She has picked 2 pumpkins so far - there may be more in the sea of green leaves covering 1/3 of our Ppatch garden.

With the 2 green Long Island Cheese we found I took a page from The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and made green pumpkin pie filling.  The squash was peeled, seeded and sliced thin and tossed with a mixture of sugar and spiced usually reserved for apple pie.  This was then frozen for later as Rhiannon & I are only on The Banks of Plum Creek and still have another book to go before getting to the chapter about said pie.  We will bake it then.

The rabbits are ready to be processed, but Chris and I have decided to wait another couple weeks to let them get a little larger before butchering.  Luna should kindle any day now with her new litter.

The hens are all laying now.  The new Amerucana's eggs are extra large, a couple have had double yolks.  The Welsumer, with its dark brown shells, are also extra large.  But I realized we have no white egg layers.  Rhiannon's silver Campine was found dead of unknown causes the other day.  She was saddened, but stoic, admitting that the chicks she purchased are somewhere in the ambiguous area between pets and livestock in her mind.

There are 20 quarts of Chicken stock along with 12 pints of apple butter in the cupboard.  Our 7 cu ft freezer is 1/2 full with whole tomatoes awaiting the colder days of November to be canned.

Two of the four $5 apple trees in the Ppatch survived the summer - we don't know yet about the 2 rhubarb plants Mom brought us from MN.  Both fruit trees I got for my birthday survived, although we will move one in the spring to a better spot.

Today at the P patch

yellow squash, green beans, bell peppers, country gentleman sweet corn, carrots from saved seed and Cheddar cauliflower

Basil and tomato

5 kinds of chilies, pimento and Italian stuffing pepper

Beginning of harvest

There is a gallon ziploc bag in our freezer.  Every day or so a few more roma tomatoes are placed in it to wait until the weather cools.  There are peppers sliced and also in the freezer - hopefully chili and sweet are properly separated (was that a sweet banana or a hot banana?)  The known chili peppers are hanging from a clothesline hung in the office, drying.  Bush beans are easily blanched and frozen by the handful.  

I need to look up a crocked sauerkraut recipe.  We now have 2 beautiful heads of green cabbage with more on the way.

But what I am happiest about is we have harvested more summer squash (yes zucchini) than ever before.  So far, a dozen, mostly picked small. 

It's what's for dinner

Green onions (regrowing in the kitchen window), Swiss Chard, Garlic Scapes & Eggs from the backyard.

Window harvest

You gonna eat that part 4

This past Sunday while I was working the girls went with friends to Miller Farms Harvest Festival near Fort Collins.  We were told they would be coming back with vegetables they would get to pick themselves.  

We were thinking a plastic grocery sack.

They brought home FIFTEEN plastic grocery sacks. 

Our dining room table seats 6 if you need a reference.

Some went to the food bank, some went with me to work, but most of it has found a home in our fridge or freezer.  I may even be able to save some of the potatoes for seed (how cool is that?)

Thanx Miss Mary!

You gonna eat that part 3

For those of you who shop at Costco - this is one of their bags I bought in Minnesota.  I am not sure how much volume but the bag is 20x12x14 inches - and I had three of them.  I didn't even have to pick them - just cart them away (I did, however clean up the windfalls for the hens)

That many apples made:
30 pints of applesauce
1 gallon dried apples
2 gallons apple juice

And I still have one to go.

A single melon

By carefully avoiding the out of sight - out of mind garden beds in the back parking area we were able to harvest a single Prescott Fond Blanc melon this weekend.  It was small and ugly, as I knew it would be, and smelled WONDERFUL.  I chilled it overnight and cut into it to send with the girls to lunch today.  The rind was thick and the flesh a beautiful pale orange.  The texture was firm but delicate and melted in my mouth.

There was no flavor whatsoever.

One of my Master Gardener friends had told me this when she saw my plants and she did not overstate the fact at all.  I can get a better tasting melon at Costco in December.

I suspect it will still be in the girls' lunches when they get home - despite the slight sprinkling of sugar I put on it to try to draw out something.

Oh well.  The hens should enjoy the vines.

New Produce etc.

 Well, not garden pics exactly.  Hubby picked this squash on Tuesday - our table is 42" wide.

We ate it last night in succotash.  This is my favorite summer squash now - thin skinned with a delicate flavor, yet it did not get mushy when sauteed.




I canned spiced honey peach jam on Wednesday.  There is one more picking left on the neighbor's tree - if I can get to it.









FIRST TOMATOES PICKED THURSDAY

well, other than cherries of course.  These are Oregon Spring. The plant was given to us by the manager of the Ppatches back in May.  It is highly acidic, and not very tomatoey, and should have been ripe before the 4th of July.

It was still WAAAAY better than the offerings down at King Soopers.

4

Friday garden pics

Pinot Noir Peppers, yellow cherry tomatoes, purple beans, one red and one yellow carrot + onions.  The yellow squash is from a fellow Ppatch gardener.

 

But these 2 trombetta Italian squashes were grown by me.  Amazing.

You gonna eat that? part 2

Peaches!  They are barely larger than apricots, but the owner told me to take all I wanted.  The hens enjoyed the windfalls and I made peach pie, muffins, dried some and canned a few quarts.  I picked again yesterday that I plan to can tomorrow.  I traded eggs, canned yellow tomatoes from last year and one of the pies.

Bonus - I met 2 more people in the neighborhood, the owner of the tree and the widow who lives on the corner.  I had been walking by her yard with our radio flyer wagon full of this new bounty and offered her some.   This led to to a conversation.   Luckily Hubby rolled up to remind me of work or I would have been late

Potato Harvest

It isn't much of a harvest, somewhere between a quart and a half gallon of yukon golds and Purple Adirondack potatoes.  It was our own inattention that gave us this meager reward.  Although the back parking area is unused and gets the right amount of sun, it is a hassle to drag the hose to it and as a consequence is often forgotten.  The plants have all died back and we are left with a volunteer tomatillo and what I think is a cucumber.  After I dug these out - the plants had only set just under the top layer of straw - I watered thoroughly, happy to see black dirt and straw teeming with red wrigglers.  I will build the 3rd raised bed before fall and set it up in the upper yard before filling it with this lovely soil.  Then move these two beds up there in the same way.

It isn't much of a harvest, but it is better than last year. 

You gonna eat that? Part 1

 7:30 am in Englewood.  Owner of tree did not wish to be bothered with the fruit of her tree.  We cleaned up the windfalls for the hens.  They are now ripening slowly in our basement.