Been awhile

The garden is basically done. I still have brussels sprouts out there that I'm hoping might mature enough to eat in spite of the cold weather. Most of the leaves are raked into the garden and all the flowers have been killed by the snow and freezing weather. I did get a few days of 60 degree weather to plant my garlic, daffodils, and tulips right after our first snow. Of course we haven't see snow since then either. Probably good though since we still have needed to get chores done. I could still stand to mulch around the place and my friend and I need to clean out the chicken coop before it gets too cold. We both want the poop to mellow in the beds over the winter.

That's about it. I'm slowly starting to think gardening and picking out seeds again, but after the crazy tomato canning I'm ready for the break.:) Funny how late winter excitment can turn to the late summer exhaustion. Sure has been nice having our own canned tomatoes and salsa though.

Freeze

Let's see...I haven't been very good about keeping this up. I'm trying to remember when our actual first frost date was. I'm thinking about the 25th of Sept. for frost and then we froze solid about the 5th of Oct. Woke up to and inch and a half of snow on the 9th and it has stayed either below or very close to freezing all weekend. Garden is all done. I missed getting my garlic, daffodils, and tulips in though. I'll have to see if we get a bit of a warm up I'll get the flowers in at least. I might even be able to work the garlic in if I do the south facing bed. We'll see.

I had a bumper crop of tomatoes. My squash didn't do so hot, my peppers finally started producing well about a week before they froze, my broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach bolted, my beans froze, my peas did well, as did my potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, and onion. Things grew but just didn't do as well as they maybe should have. My brussels sprouts were just really getting going when the snow hit. They still might be okay, but I haven't had the gumption to go check. I'm ready for winter as far as the garden goes. I'll be ready for the snow to go away I'm sure come Feb. but for now I'm ready to put the garden to bed for a few months.

Spiders in the garden...

Harvest

I haven't really been able to update this since I've been super busy trying to get the harvest in and preserved. I have salsa, stewed tomatoes, ketchup, apple butter, apple sauce, and will soon start in on the plum recipes. Still have tomatoes to finish too. Then hopefully the brussels sprouts will come on soon. Then I can go to freezing them. The saurkraut failed, but we'll get it one of these days.

I have some cool orb spiders in the garden now. I'll post photos later. I feel bad because I keep knocking one of them out of her web. So far she keeps coming back but I don't know how long that will go on if I continue to disturb her. Even if I don't mean to.

Soon to be harvest...

Soon the harvest will be going full swing. I'm starting to see color in the rows of tomatoes and I spotted the first pepper! Green cabbages are in. Although I may not actually get to use one of them since Bear decided to use it as a ball the other night. He was entertained for quite awhile. He also got a kick out of the 1/2 bushel of potatoes that I had dug out of the compost pile. So much fun. Makes me glad I have the garden.

August Rain

We got crazy rain on Friday. For Missoula it was the wettest day on record. Over 2 inches in a 24 hour period. I couldn't believe it. And in August! I'm sure it made my garden happy. It is coming along quite happily. I need to harvest some more green cabbage. Someday the red/purple cabbage will be ready. My cauliflower is just about ready too. Now if I can get my tomatoes to ripen I can pick those and start my canning for real. Of course it would help if my peppers would get a move on so I can make salsa. So far I've only had a few flowers on the peppers, but no fruit.

I have lots of volunteer plants in the garden. Tomatoes everywhere, and some squash of unknown variety. I thought I only planted zucchini and one pumpkin. The one squash that is coming up in the middle of my tomatoes is some sort of round squash. It might be a pumpkin, but it might be an acorn squash of some sort from seeds that went into the compost pile. I think that may be where all of my volunteer tomatoes are coming from as well. I seem to have several yellow pear tomatoes like I had planted last year. I never planted any this year, but a couple of my plants seem to be producing little pear shaped fruits. Its kinda fun to see what is coming up and producing on it's own.

I have beans that are getting ready. We've eaten 3 zucchinis already. 2 green and 1 yellow. Bear loves fresh sauted zucchini. He isn't such a big fan of the broccoli I cooked up with it, but he ate an entire zucchini by himself. Makes it very worth having a garden.

Mmmm...what else? I should dig potatoes and get them stored in the root cellar. My peas are yellowing and are seeming to slow production. I'll just have to pull them soon. Strawberries are done. I didn't get lots this year, but they only got planted this spring. It is almost time to plant my garlic for next year and I think I might try some fall onions for next spring. Not sure how that will work. I'm thinking about maybe a few more beets for this fall too. That's a big fat maybe right now since I'm the only one that eats those.

Notes

Just a few notes here... I'm getting more cabbages but I'm starting to really have to fight the slugs for them. I've gotten some broccoli although with our hot weather it pretty much just bolted straight to flowers/seeds. My peas are wrapping up it seems and the beans are just getting going. I ended up direct sowing some beans since frost got my seedlings I had going. I seem to have a plethora of earwigs and squash bugs. This is in addition to the slugs. I'm not too keen on using anything on them though. I was using beer traps for the slugs. Those seem to work, but you do have to be diligent about resetting them. I have not been. That's one thing, I'm sure I would get more out of the garden if I worked out there more, but I just can't seem to get out there. After working all day in town I want to see my kid once I'm home. The garden really doesn't seem to be all that much worse for the wear though. Plenty of bugs and weeds but my veggies seem to be hardy enough to fend for themselves. Good thing too.

I should get my broccoli in the freezer at some point this weekend. We don't seem to have the worms that get into broccoli. Yay! At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about. I haven't decided if I really want to add more stuff for this fall. I'm going to have a heck of a time keeping up with my harvest as it is. I need to pick up some canning jars and lids so I can put my tomatoes up.

I think that's all for now.