The Weekly Digs #182
I woke up one morning this week to 40ºF and it truly felt like fall. My green beans are at the flowering stage and I’m still holding out hope that we’ll get a good harvest before a freeze comes. The forecast for the next couple weeks looks to be frost free.
I also still have an immature crop of corn which I feel very doubtful will come to maturity. It was a last ditch effort to get some corn to preserve so no harm done if it doesn’t pan out. Experiments are part of the fun in gardening for me, even if they don’t work there is always something learned.
This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.
This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure can be found here.
Fall crops are starting to flow in and we are loving the change in vegetable availability. I’m so glad to have lettuce again! We are eating salads daily.
- Harvesting: Lettuce, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, basil, kale, arugula, mesclun mix, carrots, sweet peppers, jalapenos, cucumber (a couple were found in the kids garden!), and peanuts
The peanuts were a learning experience for sure. They grew fantastic. But because the harvest was so prolific, I inadvertently attracted every vole and mouse in a one mile radius of the peanuts so they could enjoy a meal on us (we caught 15 in one day!) Then once the rodents gave way the birds moved in to finish it off.
So I’m about halfway through pulling out peanut plants and I collected literally 10 whole peanuts. I guess I’m still buying peanut butter from the store this year.
In addition to the voles, mice, and birds, the insects are still hanging around causing trouble! Swarms of cucumber beetles were all over the squash and pumpkins. They didn’t seem to cause much damage but there were a lot of them.
I ended up harvesting the squash and pumpkins this week and then instead of the beetles disappearing with the squash plants they decided to stick around. Apparently, the green beans are good to eat too.
Consequently, I’ve been going out with the portable battery powered vacuum cleaner we have and have been sucking them up. It actually worked better than expected.
The good news is that the majority of the plants are still producing a good harvest despite the setbacks. The pumpkin harvest was excellent this year!
Marking Garden Rows
Cam and I have been working on staking out where the garden beds and rows are supposed to be. I had them marked with rebar, and we kept tripping on them and I felt like it was a huge hazard. (Sorry I don’t have a photo of this, by the time I remembered to take one it was dark)
So we took the rebar out earlier this summer. Instead we opted for some wood stakes because I felt like they would be a better permanent solution. Cam made me some and we started measuring out where everything should be.
At this point, the location of the garden bed and rows was lost with the rebar removal. So we decided to go off the orientation of the caterpillar tunnel as the reference point since it’s the most permanent fixture within the garden (aside from the fencing). Everything I planted for fall is so off where it is supposed to be! Whoops. It will get fixed with the next crop that goes in.
Preserving
One big project this week was harvesting jalapenos and preserving them. We harvested ¾ of a bushel. I did some fermented jalapenos. We really enjoyed them last year, the recipe comes from THIS BOOK. I will need to do several more batches.
Thank you all for the nice comments last week. I appreciate the prayers. I felt a lot better and more myself this week. 🙂
