October 21, 2016

Seriously - not a lot happened this week. Besides the sweet FREEZER that was a freebie from down the street nothing else has been notable. The week has been a little challenging and man, I'm tired today!

The Top 5 of the Week

THE GARDEN

Last weekend the weather forecast called for high winds and rain for most of Saturday. It was windy and it was rainy, but not nearly as much as the storm was supposedly going to be. Girls Breakfast Club finally happened and on our way to drop off our friend I mentioned to Mary that I would be spending some time in the garden pulling up stuff that need to be piled onto the compost. Once I put that out there Mary decided that she would come over despite what the weather report was.

All of my ground cherry plants, beans and outside tomatoes were pulled up and composted. I took the two sugar pumpkins that were orange and put them in the hoop house to cure out a little. Transplanted the second round of purple broccoli and then called it a day. It was nasty out and it was getting unpleasant.

THE PROJECT

Later in the afternoon I went ahead and processed the 5 pounds of roma tomatoes and made sauce - my first time making fresh sauce from my own tomatoes from my own garden! I can't believe that I didn't try doing this before. I froze a couple of cups in a freezer bag and then made pucks with the rest by putting them into a muffin tin. Evidently they were hard to remove from the pan...I think silicone will be the way to go next time

THE HARVEST

Sunday afternoon I picked another pound of hoop house tomatoes. I'm hoping that there will be a few more so I can make some more sauce for the freezer. These are some good looking tomatoes!

For the longest time I didn't think that the tomatoes would actually pollinate - so we set up an oscillating fan. I think that might have been the early problem...maybe not. Maybe I was just impatient. Either way, the fan was a good decision to see that the plants would be pollinated and to keep the temperature down a little. 

There are more tomatoes that appear to be ripening - especially the crazy Mortgage Lifters. We went from having 3 or 4 to already picking that many and a couple more that turned red. AND there are more on the two plants. We'll see if they ripen. If not - there may be fried green tomatoes on our menu in the near future. There is always something new to try.

THE FLOWERS

Way back when, I grew lots of flowers. It was something that I REALLY liked. A LOT. 

Dahlia Garden from around 1998

The garden at one time was a lot of flowers and some veggies. One year I had all of the dahlias and grew a lot of favorites - zinnias, bachelor buttons, cosmos, sunflowers and whatever else caught my eye while shopping for seeds. 

At one time I thought that I might make something out of flowers as a business. I still like the idea of that, but along with veggies and some sort of subscription thing...BUT that is another story for another time.

This year is the 2nd year for my new round of dahlias that I ordered at the Swan Island Dahlia show Labor Day 2014 for the following season. 

At that time I chose a collection that would be good for bouquets. The first season only 7 of the 10 tubers came up. After receiving the replacements this past spring we got them into the ground and two of them came up. I'm guessing that the one that didn't come up just doesn't want to be in my garden so I'll just let that one go.

The dahlias will be cut down and then the tubers dug up and stored for next season. This is one of my favorite things to do - get more from a little. The only problem that I see for next year is where we will put them next year. There will be quite a few to plant.

THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR 2017

I got the dates for the Mother Earth News fair for next year. Next year the fair will be the weekend of August 6 & 7 at the Linn County Event Center in Albany. 

It would be nice to take in more than a couple of presentations for the day. So we'll have to hope and pray for a cooler day. This year the temperature was hovering around 100 degrees and man it was hot. We'll see - the fair will be in the Willamette Valley and I'm not so sure that it will be much cooler in August than June. Meh, what do I know? I just love looking at all things farming.

That's all for now!