It’s Going to be a Busy Saturday
I went to my mom’s yesterday to spend a little time working in the garden. We share a garden at her house since she has great soil and a nice full sun area. This year we doubled the size of it from last year to grow more food. Every time I go, I come home with a carload of fruits and veggies that I have to can, freeze, dry or eat.
This is what I brought home yesterday, along with small bag of seckel pears that didn’t make it into the photo. Mr Chiots picked the pears, which weren’t as abundant as they were 3 years ago, but we still got a decent amount. The peppers were all getting red, which is what I’ve been waiting for to make a batch of fire roasted peppers.
Last night I made 4 loaves of zucchini bread, a batch of squash blossom sauce, and I put three trays of tomatoes in the oven to roast overnight. Since we have today off I’ll be spending my day making: ketchup with the roasted tomatoes, canning crushed tomatoes, fire roasting and canning the red peppers, pickling the Hungarian peppers, making up a batch of pesto, cooking up the green beans and broccoli for lunch and most like getting those pears in the oven to make pearsins. Whew, just thinking about all of that while I type this after midnight at the end of a long day makes me tired. But it’s the season and I know there are tons of you out there just like me spending long hours squirreling away garden goodies in the pantry for the long winter.
What have you been squirreling away lately?
Filed under Harvest Keepers Challenge, harvest | Comments (13)Cover Crops and Carrots
Last Thursday I decided it was time to till under the patch of crimson clover I had growing as a cover crop on the new front garden area. I want to plant some winter rye here for an overwintering cover crop. It should help improve the quality of the soil in this area.
The problem was I had a small patch of carrots still left in a small part of this garden area that weren’t quite up to size. I decided I’d rather harvest them small and replant the entire area with a beneficial crop. The carrots were on the smaller size, but I was still impressed with my harvest and with the carrots.
I’ll be planted the winter rye next week most likely, as you’re supposed to allow the previous cover crop to decompose for two weeks before planting something else.
Do you ever harvest things early to get something else planted?
Filed under harvest | Comments (4)Catching Up
Going on vacation is great, relaxing and fun – until you come home! Since Mr Chiots and are self-employed, there’s no one to do the work while we’re gone. Coming home from vacation means tackling all the stuff that piled up while you were gone. The garden doesn’t weed itself either while you’re gone, so that piles up as well. I’ve been busy busy busy since coming home last Wednesday working in the office so I have only had a little bit of time to spend outside in the garden. All of that time was spent watering and picking the things that ripened while I was gone. I haven’t had a chance to get through my photos from Monticello yet or write a blog post about it. All I have time for today is a quick shot of what I harvested last Thursday evening.
Hopefully I have time to get through some Monticello photos soon and you’ll get a lovely photo tour when I do. I promise it will be worth the wait.
What have you been up to recently? Anything exciting blooming or coming ripe in your garden?
Filed under harvest | Comments (4)The First Ripe Tomato of 2010
On Wednesday evening I picked my first ripe tomato of 2010. Well at least the first official ripe tomato, I had a few that ripened earlier but they had blossom end rot, so they don’t count. Oddly enough these little tomatoes came from a volunteer plant that is growing in with some of my potatoes. I saw the plant sprout early and was wondering what kinds of tomatoes it would produce. They’re small, but not cherries, in between a cherry and a regular tomato. They grew well in the cool spring and didn’t freeze out with the frosts we had early in the season. If I like the flavor I may save some seeds and try planting in outside earlier than the others next spring. Perhaps this could be the ‘Chiot’s Run’ tomato.
Are you harvesting any ripe tomatoes yet?
Harvesting Garlic
Last year I harvested my garlic on July 17. This year my garlic was ready to harvest early last week, but I didn’t have time to get out to do it. I ended up harvesting all the garlic last Friday evening.
As with onions, the heads of garlic I grow here at Chiot’s Run are always a little smaller than I’d like. But this year they were much larger due to the fact that I added a teaspoon of bone meal under each bulb at planting time.
I planted different varieties of garlic than I did last year, I haven’t tasted them yet so I don’t know how they’ll stack up to the varieties I grew last year.
I only have a few heads of garlic left from my harvest last year, so I’m happy that the pantry is once again filled with a nice basket of garlic. I use lots of garlic in my cooking, both because of the flavor and the health benefits.
Are you a garlic lover? Do you grow garlic in your garden?
Filed under Edible, garlic, harvest | Comments (30)
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