It's time to Fall Back! So hard to believe that the year has gone by so quickly!
My Top 5 this week will be the experiments that I tried out...
SEEDS OR PLANTS
Most of the veggies that we had in the garden were from seed. However, I wanted to try out one thing that I have been able to grow well from seed in the past - pumpkins, specifically PIE pumpkins. There is a nice nursery in our area so I dropped by one afternoon and browsed some of the plants. I went away with some flowers and a couple of Pie Pumpkin plants. It took a while to get those in the garden, but I don't think that it would have mattered as they just didn't do that well. Granted it was a little on the later side when I finally got them in, but still. Pumpkins have always been the one thing that has done well. Even without trying. So I don't know what happened because the other plants seemed to be doing pretty well.
From the two plants I got 3 good sized pumpkins - but only one of them was orange when harvested. There was another orange one that was a little on the small side, so I might get enough to do a couple of pies with those. There are still two on the vine, but I don't think they will turn orange at this point. I have left them on the vine to see what happens. They are still VERY green, but nicely formed. That's the nice thing about pie pumpkins, the shapes are generally uniform.
So, what have I learned? I do MUCH better growing pumpkins from seed!
The other vegetable that I had to buy plants of would be the Shishito peppers. Those were at Freddy's of all places. Shishito peppers seems to be a newer variety. Anyway, I had already taken one trip through all of the veggie plants and didn't see them, but on my second trip through I found them!
As I mentioned last week, there were still quite a few peppers on them still and the plants were still quite hardy. I do believe that will be ending soon. They will go down because of frost or me pulling them up. I'll most likely be pulling them up!
FALL/WINTER CROPS
Something else that I have not done before - crops outside of the typical spring/summer season. Since I haven't been out to look at the plants all week - except to unfurl the row cover material on the low tunnel. At that time everything looked pretty good and I can only assume that the plants are still happy.
I think I'll have enough time to get the second cover over the back side of the frame before dinner tonight - which should have been done a few days ago, but oh well. As soon as I can get out of my work clothes I'm going to muck around in the yard.
COVER CROP
I've only planned and tried to do a cover crop one time. That was when we lived in our last house and I thought it couldn't hurt to try. Somehow it seemed to not really work. I'm not sure. So we will try again. I better see what I need to do to make that happen. It might be too late. I DO have the seeds that I plan to spread...RED CLOVER.
First...research!
HOOP HOUSE TOMATOES
Oh yeah! There were a total of 7 plants in the Hoop House and for a while I thought that we wouldn't have any tomatoes...I was so, so wrong -
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| The first day in the ground |
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| From about 3 weeks ago |
PRESERVING
Up until this year I didn't have any thoughts of trying to pickle or process any of the veggies that we grew. This year I decided to do the following...
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| Refrigerator Pickled Green Tomatoes! |
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| Tomato Sauce :) |
Sauerkraut
Being able to process some of the food that we grew was pretty fun! These worked out pretty well so I think next year I'll see about actually canning stuff. Like the whole get the big pan and sterilize everything like crazy and do that water bath thing. Sure, why no?! I don't have anything else to do in my day, why not add something that I have NEVER done!
Seriously though with the addition of the freezer that was FREE I think that next year we'll experiment with succession planting. Growing to preserve for the off season, oh yeah, I like that idea!
Overall, this gardening season has been successful and I learned a lot. I am giving myself a little time to learn more about growing food in the hopes that in the not so distant future I might be able to do this as a part-time job of sorts. My goal is to leave my regular 40-hour per week job within 5 years and pursue my dream of a part-time market gardener. I have to take to risk if I want to do something different with my life. So far, God hasn't shut the door on this dream...rather the door is being eased open with each passing season.
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