Category Archive: Garden
Gardening, cooking, some cleaning
After finishing the flimsy for the table runner that I can’t show until October, I headed out to the garden.
The bowl on the left is HUGE. After cleaning and stemming, I stuffed 3 gallon bags full of parsley from the hoop house. The other bowl gave me 2 gallon bags of kale after stemming. There is more kale out there, but since I had already planted and watered 48 little lettuce plants, I was tired and moved into the kitchen for the cleaning phase.
After cleaning all the greens and feeding the sheep, I made the potato casseroles for Sabbath company. Then I prepared a salad with lettuce, red cabbage and celery. I will add the walnuts and let people dress their own. We will also have roasted cauliflower and broccoli. I’m debating if that is enough variety, but I don’t think anyone will starve. I have frozen corn I could cook as well.
We will end the meal with apple cobbler. Wish you could join us.Hoop house gardening plus digitized owls
Finally I ventured out into the much neglected hoop house to see if anything lived through the winter. I have been very discouraged because through our coldest times, I have found the door open. So I didn’t expect any live plants. Much to my surprise, the parsley and kale (left) seemed happy. The kale on the other side also survived.
The Swiss chard here is coming back and there are still a few onions. Today I eliminated all the weeds you see on this side. Since I didn’t get plants started, I’ll wait another week, then the store should have the organics in and I’ll just buy started plants this year.
Here is one of the digitized owls sewed out.
It’s a small quilt, but is coming along and giving me a chance to learn a new program. There is still another row of larger flowers to put below these bugs.
Small things take big time
Today was a good day to get small stuff done that I keep putting off. I had 10 things on my list and all but one is completed.
These are the sun chokes also known as Jerusalem artichokes that I have had on my list for a month to check. They are best dug after a good frost or two. I planted them in large pots as I was warned they could take over. It is difficult to get all the little pieces out. So today I dug through one of the pots and brought in a large bowl of them, scrubbed them well and then sliced them to add to our salad. They are a high protein, high potassium food with a taste somewhere between raw potatoes and water chestnuts.
Then I checked on the water chestnuts and they are too small. Next year, I’ll have to find a larger tub to plant them in. They are only the size of a dime and I’d like them bigger.
I put more salt out for the sheep and brought more hay down from the barn.
I reconciled our bank accounts and filed receipts.
I have my lists made that I want to get done in the coming year. A list for each: sewing, quilting, knitting, embroidery and there are things that aren’t on those lists because I just have too many things to be able to do in one year. So I just put the things on the list I think I can get done. They are under the heading 2017 Construction goals (at the top)
Then I weeded the front, which now looks rather bare and needs some nice summer color spots.
I watered the greenhouse and by the time one adds making a couple meals and sweeping the floors into the day, it – the day- is basically gone. So though it seems I didn’t get anything done, I was busy all day. So that must be what happens to other days when I come to the end and wonder where they went. They went to “small” things that need doing.
Wishing you a HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A wee visitor
A wee little visitor and his grandmother came to visit me today on his 11 month birthday. Mary and I had a marvelous visit as usual, but with Tristan we did not do any sewing or other crafts. We mostly entertained him for the afternoon – or maybe it was the other way around as he pulls himself up and walks around things now. I’m going to have to create a “safe zone” for him in the sewing area before we can work there again.
I finished freezing all the peppers we picked last week and these crisp, carrots were brought in out of the garden today. It was 20 degrees when we got up this morning and the weatherman is promising the next 10 days to be freezing – at least during the night. It is wonderful to have fresh food that will stay in the ground until you need it.
Peppers, Swiss chard and carrots
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November 29 and the peppers are done! They are no longer ripening properly, so I picked the peppers to finish ripening in the house and pulled the plants. It’s hard to believe that the weather has been this mild. By late October, they should have frozen. As soon as they ripen, the extras will go into the freezer to remind me of summer when I use them.
Here is a sink full of Swiss chard and a few carrots, I pulled on which to munch. The chard will also go into the freezer to be used in smoothies and other recipes. The carrots will be pulled throughout the winter as we need them. I would have been more than happy to share some of the produce, but it seems children don’t want food that they know comes out of the ground – they prefer food from the pretty racks in the store. And adults don’t want to pick their own food. It’s too much work. Interesting, isn’t it? So this year the sheep and chickens ate the extra pumpkins, cabbage, peppers, celery and other foods. They do enjoy them.
Tomorrow, the kale and parsley should be picked.
Better days are coming
Better days are coming – they have to be, don’t they? I had a fellow over with a truck today which was a big help as he moved 30 bales of hay from the big barn to the little one. That would have been many trips with a wheelbarrow that only holds one bale. Now the hay is near where we use it. I’m hoping the fence will be up by the end of the year which will solve much of this issue.
Then I asked him to help me with this banana tree. See how it has popped out of the container and growing into the soil. These trees are very hardy and grow fast. Fortunately they are shallow rooted. If I take it outside, it will freeze back to the roots and grow in the spring. I just wanted to see what would happen if I could keep it inside, but it is banging its head on the top of the hoop house.
And look at all the offspring. This is how bananas reproduce. After a tree has bananas, it dies and the little ones grow up to produce more bananas.
But, no, this was not the biggest issue – I started quilting my turtle quilt, then after doing about 1/4th, decided I didn’t like how it was going. So the borders are all done and the quilt is off the frame as I will be taking all of the quilting (except the borders) out and re-quilting this quilt. Better days are coming – aren’t they?
Garden started to bed
We started putting the garden to bed for the winter. We don’t put all of it to bed as there is still food to eat throughout the winter. But as we clean a bed, we put ground cloth down to save ourselves some spring time work. First we picked this large bowl of peppers (with more ripening) and a few salad greens.
We found not only greens, but surprisingly one small head of cauliflower, some onions and carrots.
This single bed is now waiting for spring time. It looks so clean and nice. Since we don’t have heat in here, it will wait until March to get some new growth. The raspberries were also cut back and will be replanted this spring.
Seed inventory – ready for January catalogues
Today I spent some time doing my seed inventory. Some I have left over, some were from an end of the year sale and some I saved from my own plantings. It seems January 1, the seed catalogs start finding their way into my physical mailbox as well as my computer mailbox. And their offerings are so pretty that I tend to forget that I have any seeds at all and then ….you know the rest of the story. So this year, I’ll be ready. I don’t need many seeds – only perhaps some paste tomatoes and some foods I haven’t grown before. I still need to decide how much of each to plant as this year we will be planting for two families. I need to find out what they want to plant – this is new for them. The other thing for which I want to be ready this year is to replant the spring crops in the late summer again – things like broccoli and cauliflower. It seems we use a lot of them so it would be nice to have extra in the freezer.
This was the largest pumpkin we harvested this year and was too large for the oven without cutting it into several pieces. It baked for 4 hours and tomorrow the plan is I will put it in the food processor, freeze some and make some pies. However, when I have to spend 1.5 hours walking to get my steps done, and go to the gym to maintain the ability to do what I want to do, and then a birthday lunch, I’m not going to guarantee anything else except a rest will get done. These dark, rainy days – which I know we need – do not increase my energy level.
Growing sweet potatoes education
Growing sweet potatoes this past summer is providing me with an education in how “not to”. First of all, I have never seen them grown and wasn’t sure what to expect. When I would dig a bit like with regular potatoes, I did not find anything.
I read that if the sweet potatoes are allowed to get below a certain ground temperature, they get hard spots that don’t cook soft. So today, I dug them. I really should have waited as they are still so small. (lesson learned) This is how they look underground and the roots manage to grow very deep. Next year, I will buy some starts of sweet potatoes that have a shorter maturity date because I did enjoy growing them. They took a good month to do anything and then they went crazy.
Here is a photo of my helper. He is about 3″ across. I wonder if he is the same one that was in the garden last winter or if he has many cousins living there with him. Look how much he looks like the ground and I might have missed him had he not moved.
Just a tad early for Thanksgiving, but look how beautiful it is.
Costco shopping and garden work
After gym this morning, we decided on a shopping trip to Costco to gaze at the toys and other Christmas things. I think my grandsons have grown past that stage and will probably want games or money. 2 of them will be 13 this month. However, we found some clothes and foods and managed to fill our grocery cart. Checking out, the card did not work. So we stepped to the side and called the issuing company. The card was on a “fraud alert” which was resolved and we were able to bring all those items home with us.
I had plenty of help spreading the straw, actually they went to work after I laid the straw down. Some of the straw was quite wet and a tad more difficult to lay in place, but my helpers made sure it was well spread.
Now all this garden is ready for winter, except the strawberry patch and I’m not sure how to mulch that without killing the plants. As you can see in the distance, even the pond, which has been dry since mid June, is now filling up. Maybe, it’s filling because we had 10.04″ of rain in October. Usually the pond is full about the first of October, so it had some making up to do.
Just a reminder that this is the weekend we lose an hour of sleep. For us it won’t matter much, since the forecast is for rain. But maybe, I’ll get some sewing or knitting time in. What about you, have you started more winter activities?
Happy Sabbath to you.
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