Serious farm cleanup just in time for the first fall frost

Our first real frost was forecasted for last night, so we decided that it was time to pull out our tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, gourds, and winter squash.  From my drive-bys of the neighborhood, it looks like most people around us took care of this task a few weeks ago, but we've still been enjoying a pretty big harvest from these plants, and also, I'm a kind of lazy farmer.  The tomatoes were quickly devolving into a very sad state, though, becoming so smelly that I was avoiding the garden, and I realized that it would only get worse if we subjected the already overripe fruits and dying plants to a few frosts.  I also wanted to make sure that we didn't waste the ripe eggplants and peppers that were still on the plants, and I really wanted to cut down the catnip that took over the herb bed.  We worked all afternoon, and managed to cross off everything on our farm to-do list.

While I waited for Mike to get home from work, I tackled the herb bed.  The catnip has been totally out of control for most of the summer, and none of my three (or four, but I don't think Ricky Bobby really counts - he's more of a neighborhood cat.  You're welcome, neighborhood?) cats will touch it.  Not Itch, who usually can't get enough nip, and not Pam and Staci, who certainly look like they could use a little loosening up.  Even though I've been pushing it on everyone I know with cats, it grows back even more quickly than the chard, and it quickly became a menace to my other herbs.  The catnip completely smothered the parsley, very nearly wiped out the chamomile, and turned my chives into flattened, pale green weaklings.  To give you an even better understanding of how dominant the catnip was, I found two surprises while I was tearing it out.  The first was a very startled mouse, which Lily unsuccessfully tried to hunt after sneaking into the garden.  The second was a pumpkin.  Yes, my catnip was so enormous that it camoflauged a pretty good sized pumpkin!  So my mystery compost squash plants included both gourds and a pumpkin plant - and I had absolutely no idea until I took out the catnip.

So next year, definitely no catnip. 

Pile of catnip

Poor chives!

Surprise pumpkin

Lily hunting the mouse (she did not catch it)

By the time Mike got home, I had torn out most of the annual herbs and had given the mints a serious trim, and had escorted Lily out of the garden four times.  She can slip under anything, and really loves eating rotten tomatoes.  She's kind of a gross dog.  I had also cut off the growing tips of the brussels sprouts plants so that they focus on growing their sprouts, which according to my garden book I probably should have done a month ago.  Oh well, I'm not even sure that I like brussels sprouts, so I'm not too concerned.

Mike quickly got to work ripping out the tomato plants.  He figured that was the grossest job of the day, so he wanted to get it over with.  Originally, we had planned to try to salvage the ripe fruits and toss everything else, but then we quickly moved over to tossing everything.  Most of the tomatoes were overripe, and once you've spent a good amount of time handling rotten tomatoes, you don't really want to eat tomatoes anyway.  We estimate our wasted tomato to eaten tomato ratio to be at least 4:1, so not great.  But once again, I'm very happy that we have chickens, because they're enjoying the tomatoes that we couldn't get to.  By the time Mike was finished with tomato cleanup we had about three wheelbarrows full of rotten tomatoes for the girls, and they are enjoying the feast quite a bit.

Do you think it was time to rip these guys out?

Mike at work

Wasted tomatoes

Girls enjoying a rotten tomato feast

Next, we picked all of the ripe sweet and poblano peppers and eggplants, and ripped out those plants.  We got an entire giant mixing bowl's worth of peppers, and I think we're going to roast and then freeze them to use this winter in chili.  We also got a lot of eggplants, but I haven't yet decided my plans for them.  Lastly, we picked the onions, mostly because they clearly died a while ago and they aren't going to get any bigger.  My onion crop is extremely pathetic, and none of them are larger than a shallot.  At least they taste good, but I need to do more onion studying before next year.  They were supposed to be easy!  I'm not even including a picture of them - they are very pathetic.

We had a few lingering pumpkins that I was hoping to get more mature out in the squash field, but with a frost coming I didn't want to risk that they would get damaged.  We found a bonus rouge vif d'etampes pumpkin and two surprise white pumpkins that we hadn't noticed before, so it was a better haul than I had expected.  We haven't harvested the giant pumpkins yet, because we don't have a plan for how to move them or where to store them.   So we covered them with fleece blankets last night and are trying to think of a plan this week.

Gourd harvest

Lumina white pumpkin

Hidden rouge vif d'etampes pumpkin

Uncle David's Dakota Plant - it never gave up!  And it also never got bigger.

Wrapped giant pumpkin 1

Wrapped giant pumpkin 2 - note the seasonally appropriate blanket

The dogs were exhausted from all of the farm work; Lily from sneaking into the garden to eat tomatoes and compost, and Bullet from "hunting" all afternoon (in four hours of hunting, he caught a grasshopper, which did not appear to be something that he found very tasty).  They passed out when we got inside, and since Lily frequently sleeps upside down with her mouth open, Mike noticed that she had some very lovely compost residue all over her teeth.  Lucky Lily got a scaling from Mike (although he isn't in the picture, Bullet nervously tried to assist).  She slept through the whole thing.  Then, since Bullet felt left out but had very nice looking teeth, Mike gave him a thorough belly cuddle.  All was very good at the farm last night.

A model patient

Silly Bullet

I was glad that we were able to take care of the cleanup and harvesting, because the temperature dropped to 29.4 last night, and I went outside this morning to see a frosted lawn.  The weather is supposed to heat up again for the weekend, but I'm savoring the fall feel of the morning.

Frosted pumpkin leaf

Garden post-frost

As the farming season winds down

First, I have now forgiven bad dogs Bullet and Lily.  We found all of the missing chickens hiding under the coop, and Mike has put up electric netting around the sides of the coop.  Bullet and Lily have both been zapped, and are now steering clear of the coop.  I did have to scoop a barred rock out of the giant pumpkin plant earlier today as she had flown out of the yard, so we still have to deal with the issue of chicken stupidity.  Maybe adding some type of roof to the yard?  I'm not sure.  Bad dogs, predators, and stupid chickens are not a good combination.

Repentant bad dogs

Anyway, before the chicken incident I was set to provide an update on how the farm is doing now that we're nearing the end of the season.  We went to a wedding last weekend out of town, and my parents had dog sitting duty.  Before handing the dogs over, I did a big garden harvest to pawn off as many veggies as possible on my mother.  The chard is still going strong - I am definitely going to continue to grow chard over spinach in the future - the fact that it is still so abundant and hasn't bolted is a huge plus.  Next year I may grow less, but still, chard was a good choice.

Our tomatoes are still producing heavily, too.  It's been fun this year to grow the heirloom mix, but I think next year I'll be a bit more picky about the types of tomatoes that I plant.  I'd like more sauce-type tomatoes, and maybe fewer confusing novelty tomatoes (I just never know when to pick the green striped heirlooms that don't ever change color).

Our eggplants have been a nice surprise.  Most of my gardening books talk about how difficult it is to grow eggplant in northern climates, but my eggplants have been pretty productive and low-maintenance.  I haven't had a tremendous harvest of eggplants, but more than I can use myself.  Growing so many different types was fun, and I love the mix of purples, whites and greens in my eggplants.  For this picking, I had a white eggplant and a dark purple eggplant, both of which went to my mom.

I haven't talked much about leeks since my post admitting my errors in planting them, but I'm happy to say that they've grown up well.  The white parts are still a bit short, so next year I'll have to plant them deeper.  I have to say that I don't really notice much of a flavor difference between leeks and onions, but I think the leeks are pretty so I think I'll grow them again next year.  They were also easier to grow than the onions, which are supposed to be incredibly easy, yet mine mostly just died.

We're getting a nice crop of fall carrots, and the last group that I picked was just gorgeous.  The deep purple carrots are beautiful, and I'm very impressed that most of my carrots ended up growing so straight given the number of clumps of sod in my beds.  These were hardworking carrots, for sure.  The stubby carrots in the bottom photo are supposed to look like that, they're an heirloom variety.  I have to admit that my carrots don't really seem to taste any better than regular carrots, but at least they're prettier.

Chard

Harvest for mom

Lovely carrots

My mom used the veggies to make a hearty soup, so I was glad that they were enjoyed.  I am still completely overwhelmed by the bounty that the garden has yielded, and so I haven't been using the vegetables nearly as much as I'd hoped that I would. 

The giant pumpkin continues to get bigger and bigger, although it hasn't turned color to a deeper orange yet.  I hope this means that it's going to continue to grow, but for all I know, it's just going to be a pale pumpkin.  I really ought to have included something in the below picture for scale - so you can get a better idea of the size, the giant pumpkin is about as long as Lily - so, big.  I'm not sure how we're going to move and weigh it yet, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. 

We've had our first light frost, and several of the plants in the garden, most notably the cucumbers, have folded.  Mike and I harvested most of the remaining squash a few days ago just in case, and we now have the squashes curing in the barn.  The Rouge Vif D'Etampes pumpkins are really lovely.  The last two that we picked aren't as deeply red as the first, but they are nearly perfectly shaped, and I'm quite proud.  My two dinky spaghetti squashes never got much bigger, but we had a good harvest of sweet dumplings, and two very big candy roaster squashes.  My white pumpkin is still on the vine, as I'm hoping it will get a bit bigger and whiter in the next week.  We've left the giant pumpkin on the vine too, to see if it will grow more, and we watch the forecast each night.  I'm not sure when the first real hard frost will come, but based on the chill in the air, it feels like it will be soon.

The girls haven't laid their first egg yet and cobwebs are gathering in the nest boxes.  They are now thoroughly accustomed to me bringing them treats, and they all storm the gate of the fence when I walk up to the yard.  If I show up empty handed, I have a lot of angry chickens to confront.  Below, they attack an overripe tomato.  In the last week, they've expanded their pallets to include mashed potatoes and hummus, both of which are quite funny to watch them eat. 

We've also identified the mystery squash growing out of the compost. It's actually an extremely productive gourd plant!  Our neighbor grew gourds in our back yard last year, so some of the old gourds must have ended up on the compost pile.  They're very pretty, and the plant has produced a ton of them, so we'll have some nice seasonal decorations.  Even though I was hoping that the plant would be another winter squash, I'll happily take bonus gourds.

Gourd 9-16-2011

New potatoes make the potato bug picking worth it

We had a surprise full family visit yesterday, culminating in a garden-centric feast.  Mamie, Taperman, my mom and I all went out into the garden in the afternoon, and I explained to the group that I am getting worried about my potato plants.  Some of the plants have yellowing, curling leaves at the bottom, and I'm not sure if it's from the heat, the potato bugs, or a terrible potato virus/blight/disaster of some sort.  Since I don't know anything about growing potatoes, I've been reduced to googling the problem, which as I'm sure you can guess, never results in reassuring information.  Mamie decided that the only way to be sure that the potatoes are okay is to reach in and grab one.  As was revealed to my family last night, I get oddly nervous about the first harvest of any vegetable from the garden, so I hadn't pulled any new potatoes (or onions) yet.  Mamie doesn't share my fears, though, so she reached under the plants and pulled out a gorgeous baby yukon gold potato!  Once she realized that pulling potatoes is very similar to clamming, there was no stopping her, and we quickly had over a pound of new potatoes.  Mostly yukon golds, but there were a few red potatoes, and several of the "mystery/who knows" unlabeled varieties.

Potato and beet harvest 7-24-2011

Yukon gold potato 7-24-2011

While Mamie and I harvested beets, green beans, and herbs for dinner, Taperman took some great shots of the plants. 

Green apple eggplant 7-24-2011

Broccoli 7-24-2011

Green beans 7-24-2011

Gretel eggplant 7-24-2011

Heirloom tomatoes 7-24-2011

Heirloom tomatoes 7-24-2011

Mamie and me with our harvest

Zucchini 7-24-2011

Sugar snap peas 7-24-2011

Our first onion!  It smelled great - seriously

Swallow eggplant 7-24-2011

The sugar snap peas, green beans, zucchini, herb bed, swiss chard, and lettuce are all producing like crazy, and we've been trying to come up with as many different ways to cook them all as we can.

Last night, we made a frittata with squash blossoms, and served it with roasted new potatoes, beets, and green beans.  It was all fantastic, but I do have to say that I think squash blossoms may be a bit overrated.  It was quite a lot of work to get the bugs out of them, and they didn't have a noticeable taste in the frittata.  Maybe I overpowered the flavor with the herbs that I added, so I'm willing to give them another shot, but I have to say that I wasn't blown away.  The finished dish was lovely, though.

Squash blossom frittata with fresh herbs 7-24-2011

Roasted new potatoes, beets, and green beans 7-24-2011

The girls haven't been suffering, either.  The heat was not kind to the broccoli and cauliflower, so I ripped out one of the broccoli plants that had bloomed, and gave it to the girls, who were extremely appreciative. 

Chickens approaching broccoli 7-24-2011

Aracauna 7-24-2011

The barn cats are also still here!  I have to go out and replenish their food now, but yesterday we saw both Pam and Persephone, so that was encouraging. 

Green all over

Despite the lack of rain that we've had lately, the farm is doing incredibly well.  In the past two weeks, we've begun to harvest baby carrots, lots of beets, broccoli, swiss chard, and have had the first hints of snap peas.  I've been out watering nealry every morning to try to prevent the garden from totally drying out, but it's been so hot and dry that the soil always feels bone dry in the evening.  The plants don't seem to be wilting, though, so I'm trying not to worry too much.

The bok choy ended up bolting, for real, very quickly, and I gave up on trying to eat it.  The chickens have been the very happy recipients of the bolted bok choy and mustard greens, both of which are foods that they go totally nuts for.  My dad's favorite chicken now dashes out to meet me when I come to the fence so that she can have first pick of the greens.  She gets so excited that she hops around on top of the veggies, then tears off as many leaves as she can carry and dashes away, all before the other girls have made their way over.

Last Thursday was Fern's birthday, and we made her a heavily garden-fueled dinner, with a salad that included our own lettuce, carrots, scallions, green pepper, and herbs.  We also roasted some of our baby beets in olive oil, and sauteed the greens with garlic.  A few weeks ago, beet greens were tasting almost beet-ey, but now they taste just like spinach.

Herb bed July 15 - that huge green mound at the front right is the catnip, which is staging a serious takover of its end of the bed



Onions and scallions July 15

Zucchini flowers July 15

Potato beds July 15

Close up of the sugar snap peas

Sugar snap peas latching on to their new chicken wire trellis July 15

Swiss chard July 15

Peach tomatoes July 15

Tomato beds July 15

Zucchini and green beans

I think that the squash plants may begin to flower soon, which means that this week I'm going to be doing some reading on squash fertilization.  Apparently, squash plants are quite promiscuous and will cross-pollinate with any other squash family crop, so the conscientious farmer will hand fertilize her plants to prevent cross-pollination.  It seems like the process is fairly straightforward, and I'll report back later on how it goes.