The Weekly Digs #179
In the garden
We are still in the midst of pulling out spent plants and replanting for fall. Based on how hot it’s been this year, I’m making an assumption that it will also be a warm fall.
- This week I transplanted chinese cabbages and arugula
- I direct sowed mesclun mix and rutabaga
- Started pulling out tomato plants. I still have quite a bit of cabbage to transplant but not enough space. Once the tomatoes are out I should have enough room for everything.
One year, it was a cooler summer and we had a hard frost on October 11th. It was 3 weeks prior to our average last frost and wiped out all the summer crops and even a few of the fall ones. Little did I know, the early frost set the tone for the frigid winter we had that year.
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We weren’t able to keep many crops through winter and had to rely entirely on what storage veggies and what we had preserved.
As long as we hold out until November on the frost, we should be harvesting a significant amount of vegetables before winter and through it.
Preserving
- 14 half pints tomato ketchup
- 7 quarts diced tomatoes
- 9 quarts halved peaches
Over the last few weeks, it’s cooled down enough that I’ve been working in the garden during the day, and then around 4 or 5pm start preserving. I usually finish up around bedtime. I’m pretty tired of it at this point of the year, but that is normal.
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The tomatoes are a time consuming preservation item, I’m glad we are finishing them up.
Not a preservation thing, but we have been enjoying the fresh food from the garden too. This week we blended tomatoes to make a quick homemade spaghetti sauce, used up some extra tomatoes that didn’t fit in the canner to make vegetable beef soup, and Kian made a delicious dairy-free peach ice cream. Cam made some Caprese bites today for lunch.
The summer crops are on their way out and it is bittersweet.
Other projects
We bought a generator maybe six months or so ago and have been waiting for our friend who is an expert to install it.
His schedule is still booked so far out, we decided to do some work to get it set up and then we talked with a neighbor who is an electrician and he is going to hook up the electrical.
After a little blip in the power the other day, where it went off for about a minute, I told Cameron that was our warning that we needed to get it hooked up asap.
So Cam rented a trencher and dug the trench for the electrical that will go to the transfer switch. He still has a little bit of digging to do and then will lay down the pipes to thread the electrical through.
Our neighbor, the electrician, will do the rest. I’m hoping we get this done in the next couple of weeks. I really want to make sure we are set up before winter.
