End of Season - 2013

Well, the time has come! It's time to clean out the garden. I'll be honest, it's been so cold lately that I haven't been to the garden in awhile and was surprised to see that there was still some stuff growing. 

It went from this:

To this:

And we harvested this:

I'm not sure how good any of it will be, but we can try!

One problem I had was that I intentionally planted some beans that were supposed to dry on the vine...but I couldn't find them. I found dried green beans, but I'm not sure if those can be stored. I was supposed to have dried cranberry beans.  I never have much luck with green beans. 

Anyway, I've already started planning next year's garden! First step should deciding where it will be, but I've stepped over that and have started my list of what I want to grow! Then by March I'll have to figure out when to start each plant. 

Eventually, I'll figure out where I can build garden beds (i.e. where we get the most sunlight). 

For now...I'm trying to make use of all of the leaves that have fallen by building a 3-bin compost bin!

(Alright, Morgan's building it!)

Enchiladas

Courtesy of Morgan! This is what happens with a meat share when you try and get a little creative with ground beef. It was delicious!

Too Many Peppers?

Never! I love a good pepper and onion pizza!

I've still been meaning to grill a pizza, but we haven't gotten around to it yet.  Soon hopefully!

The Bounty!

This isn't all from my garden, but my brother, sister-in-law, and nephews stopped by over the weekend and had some vegetables to share. They brought loads of cucumbers, onions, and garlic, which is nice because we aren't growing those things.

Do you see that cucumber next to the giant zucchini? My brother handed me that thing and all I could do was turn around and try to unload our giant zucchini on him!! He wasn't having it though so we now have about 15 lbs of cucumbers and one 15-lb zucchini! I'm guessing. Next year I hope to add a produce scale to my gardening shed, but for now I'm just guessing. 

I also gave them peppers, which they didn't  have. Garden exchanges are a beautiful thing when they work out. I was thankful they didn't try to give us any tomatoes!

Next weekend we have a block party and I'm thinking we'll be making some type of cucumber side dish!

Preserving the Harvest

With about 10lbs of Roma tomatoes, and more coming every week, I figured it was time to start canning! It's not the most fun process to stand over a hot stove for 2 hours on a late August day with 3 burners going. I did some dicey things like carrying pots of scalding hot water around the kitchen and nearly burning myself. Also, theres always the fear that I'll  give someone botulism if I don't do it correctly, but in the end, when I take them out to cool and I start hearing the lids pop (indicating they've been sealed) it's a great feeling! And afterwards when I use them on pizzas it's an even better feeling! And when no one dies from consuming them, I'm ecstatic and declare the process a success!

This pretty much sums it up...

I love this bumper sticker! I can't think of a bigger waste of money, time, and resources than annuals. Especially ornamental annuals!

Which is why I recently planted a perennial herb garden that should come back every year! It was all about buying the right herbs for my climate (zone 5). Specifically, lavender, chives, oregano, and thyme. The rosemary I'll bring inside later in the year. It's a hardy herb, but not quite suited for our sub-zero winter temps. It'd only survive if we had an off mild winter. Also, even for the herbs I did plant, I made sure every one was suitable for zone 5. Some varieties of herbs might not be suitable for this zone. In fact, I bought lavender in particular based on the sales associates advice who said it should stay indoors. I thought it would accompany my rosemary indoors this winter, but upon closer look at the tag, it was ok for zone 5! So in the ground it went!

I'm not saying I'll never have an annual plant. I regularly tend to a whole garden of annuals (most vegetables are annuals). There are plenty of useful annuals, including herbs and vegetables, (actually only herbs and vegetables), but I can't stand when I see apartment complexes planting dozens and dozens of ornamental annual flowers only to watch them later die and never return. You'd be better off planting something useful, like mint! Which is also in my perennial herb garden. 

Plus, I'm always on the mission for perennial vegetables. For my area, I've only identified a few, like asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes. Also some fruit plants are perennial in our area, like apples, peaches, pears, and grapes, depending on the type. 

Here's a picture of my perennial herb garden (it's still small; I planted it late)

Happy gardening!

Determinate v. Indeterminate

Tomatoes come in 2 types-determinate and indeterminate. Determinate ripen all at once. Indeterminate ripen throughout the season. If you're ever confused....roma tomatoes are determinate! Whoa. And this isn't even the bulk of it. Most are still ripening. 

We were able to turn this....into this:

That's zucchini/tomato soup just like my mom makes! Except we used fresh tomatoes! It's basically just a puréed tomato base with potatoes, zucchinis, and onions in it. There should also be an egg cracked in it and some Parmesan but we were using what we had and we were out of Parmesan and eggs. Sad, but the soup was still great!