patterns and spindles

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Freeze

Freeze. yeah. from freeze to over 25C in one day... does make for end of summer squash, beans, cuce and so on season. frozen for good
 more cold tolerant plants like these do bounce back at times
 this solid chunk of ice was over covered cucumbers. thre were not so many chances there
 these tolerate these kind of extreme temperatures
 frozen solid
 tomatoes after the cover came off. tarp method.
 damages on top

 and some support issues after that
but mostly it could be much worse. like squashes which will go to compost pile or maybe I'll just leave them as a cover where they are o ad to mulch and compost right there in the rows. So summer in our case was over in form of good freeze. Whoever had it in a field have squashes, cucumbers, melons just like mine frozen. I picked several young cucumbers I've missed frozen solid. I wonder how may I use those, I left them in freezer, will be an experiment, never used frozen cucumbers before

Weather

we got some snow. was not as bad, but... the forecast sounded quite concerning so between these things

 traded so pickles, mine did not make it, so I have only larger cucumbers, say 40+cm long kind
the cover went up. will see if that saved a good amount f harvest.  I have probably coupe hundred pounds under there if not more, removed some borage to plant more alpines... and boy I got me volunteers in there I have to transplant immediately otherwise I will not see me that bed at all, I did not expect that plant to get huge like a good size bush, boy they were 5 times bigger than my new currant plant in the same bed, so not joking...., I found white alpine variety.

 and that beard is chard for seeds. I'm getting volunteers out of that bed :) they seem to take over in there.
 potatoes were covered earlier, learning from neighbors how they did it, very different from how I did it and my granny and so on back home
 Autumn inter-planting. I put some new currant booshes in the garden, cold weather crop and I finally got me rhubarb plant too.
 squashes and melons


 broccoli last year was a lot sweater, Something need to be changed, I need to research that part. maybe I'll plant it in shadier area and see how that goes.




 Some salad like plants get second greens. I love mesuna, new plant for me, sure thing a keeper. I like how it did. and like it's companion. side companion

 celery. I'm looking forward to some seeds from the organic plant that has adapted to my dirt nicely. and neighbors say that in new gardens no one was able to grow celery here, too alkaline
 So. cauliflowers... they did not do anything all summer except of making huge leaves, so... I gave up by September... fed the plant to chickens, they were happy... and here we go less than a week. Who knew... Go figure these heirlooms. Orange and green I did not see unless those broccoli like plants supposed to be them. I wonder about those gree cauliflower seeds now...
 Ok that volunteer was looking like potato and bloomed with tomato flowers. if that survived cold and gets me a tomato I'm keeping this guy :). such a fighter plant
 and I got me some new grapes hoping to grate trellis. I did see something like it at one other house.
 And canning.
 No shortage of tomatoes... those I need to work on
 can not take credit for these peppers I got these for seeds for next year, the rest is mine
 my seed tomatoes

 more harvest
 my seed cucumbers. not sure if Armenian is ready or just looks like it... larger than a zucchini

 another volunteer produced these decorative mini pumpkins
 and got some of these. I planted a young tree. so maybe in 5-6 years I get me something like these I traded :), maybe some day. they are beautiful, aren't they.