Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I have not tried cherry tomatoes, but "they say" just cut them and dry them.

Pretty tasty for a volunteer in the greenhouse.

This guy (and hundreds of his friends) are loitering in my yard. I've never seen them before. Anyone know what they are?

Huh, that's definitely what they are. I've never seen them here before.

Now I have to go count rings to see what kind of winter we're going to have.

We call them wooly bears. I pet them. I think that I enjoy it more than they do. I don't even know what insect they are, when mature.

First frost hit earlier this week. Picked a second watermelon because they're not going to grow any more with cool overcast weather, but it wasn't quite ripe, so only got a couple spoonfuls out of it.

It's been warm here so my garden is still producing a bit. I pick about this much twice a week ...




We have some volunteers in the zucchini bed even though we pulled it up over a month ago. I can't decide if I want to dig them up and try growing them in pots in the sunroom or just build a cover and see if I can keep them going outside.

Wasn't watching the weather forecast closely, so storm came in and demolished the greenhouse before I could reinforce it. Aluminum frame, fatigued by last year's storms, snapped and then some strong gusts rolled it over. Strapping it down for the winter, like I did last year, wouldn't have kept the frame from snapping. If that storm hadn't done it, last night's storm would have. So... spring project will be a traditional 2x4 wood frame using salvaged panels.

Plucked all the tomatoes that showed color and all the bell peppers.

Here you see the half of my "harvest" of the apple tree I planted in my small towngarden 3 years ago



yield: 400% + pleasure + good apples

I have about 5 days until we get another frosty spell. With some sunny spells, the tomatoes are still alive and I've collected another dozen "just turned color" to let them ripen on the kitchen counter. The watermelon vine is nearly dead, so I'm picking one or two melons per day now and hoping for the best: today's selection, a bit larger than a very large cantaloupe, is a ripe one!

Weather shifted to clear sunny skies, which means cool temps except midday. Gonna stay this way for about a week while folks in the flyover states are suffering real cold spells. Perfect opportunity for me to do some winter gardening cleanup. Yanked a few pounds of potatoes out of the ground for consumption and dug up trailing blackberry by the roots... they'll probably come back one more time, but then that should be the end of them.

I plan on spending an hour or so per day during this week of good gardening weather to just get things in shape for spring. Catching up on the weeding chores, such as those blackberries is the goal. Need to pull down the pea trellis and tear apart the remains of the greenhouse, too. I'd like to rearrange the strawberry beds, but this probably isn't the time to do so.

The new seed catalogs are here! The new seed catalogs are here!

So what new things are people going to try this year?

George the original one wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:22 pm

Garlic... I must remember to order garlic because I forgot last year!

And... something came up in November and I completely forgot again. There is now a reminder on the calendar for NEXT year (sigh).

Through the magic powers of Google Earth, I bring this view of our garden evolution:

Cool.

Testing old seeds for germination showed that they're all still viable and I won't bother augmenting with more seeds.

We've had such warm weather (was run out of the garden by a honeybee a few days ago!), I've considered starting my plantings earlier than usual, but the NOAA longrange climate forecast for the Pacific Northwet suggest Feb-Mar will be cooler than average, so I'll be patient and stick to my standard schedule.

Still have to wait some more months before I can plant anything...

Had a frost for the first time in nearly a month. So warm that there are even volunteer potato shoots poking an inch above ground already! Fortunately had worked the ground yesterday anticipating the frost and exposing grass roots so they die.

Raided the garden today for the remaining carrots. Indulging in about 3 portions of carrot-raisin salad as I write.

When it comes to wireworms (click beetle larvae), they definitely have a preference for potatoes over carrots. The carrots have relatively minor damage (maybe 5 holes at most) whereas the potatoes are covered with holes.

We participated in the bird census this weekend and it was fun! It's still open today if anyone wants to do it.
The Great Backyard Bird Count

I'm planning my garden. I always focus (too much) on production. I'm going to start evaluating my garden's success on more than just food production. We've added plants to attract more birds and bees but not in any systematic way. I'm going to start tracking bees, birds, and butterflies and modify our garden to increase those populations.

A cool tool for determining which plants will attract more birds (just enter zip, no email needed) .. https://www.audubon.org/native-plants

I'm also considering other ways to define 'success' in this area. One measure is number of weeks of production, indoors and out. The longer I can stretch out the season, the better. It will mean less waste, less time harvesting, less need for putting food up, less food needed to supplement over a longer time period, etc. To that end, I'm getting outside this week to start prepping beds since we're going to have a stretch of unusually warm weather. I'm going to try to get the soil in a couple of beds warmed up enough to start planting right away.