The Garden Chronicles - Week 27
The weather is gorgeous. It's still dry, but temps are almost perfect. Two weeks ago it was chilly, but this past week it turned unseasonably warm, and it's supposed to stay that way until Thursday. The garden is loving it, and so am I.
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I thought the fall equinox was the 21st, but it was the 22nd this year. It was cloudy on the 22nd, so this is as close as I could get.
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The first picking of fall beans on Sep 22.
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This is what they look like cut up.
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The next picking on Sep 24.
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A mess of tomatoes on Sep 26.
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I only process a few at a time. Mostly because I hate doing it. Here's a couple bags of Rutgers for the freezer.
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More beans on Sep 27.
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More tomatoes for the freezer. These are Big Beefs.
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Cucumbers and tomatoes on the 27th.
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Baked butternut squash. Let's make a pie!
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I roasted this one longer than I should have. I was trying to get the excess moisture out, but I overdid it a bit. That's why it looks so flaky. It'll work just fine, though.
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Mashed smooth and measured out.
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Ingredients for the classic Libby's recipe, but with butternut squash instead of pumpkin.
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Voilà!
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The flavor of fall. 
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More beans on Sep 29.
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At long last, a nice batch of zucchini.
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The very last cucumber picking on Sep 29. The plant is done.
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Some peppers on Sep 30.
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Beans on Sep 30.
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Beans on Oct 3. I picked again 3 days later, but I can't find a picture for the 6th. I must have forgotten to take one. It was about the same amount.
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Some shots of the yard on Oct 7.
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The garden on Oct 10.
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The posts are finished all the way around. The wire isn't, though.
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Almost mid-October and still rockin'.
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Rutgers tomatoes and Touchon carrots.
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Beets and turnips.
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The other carrots.
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Here's what happens when you get tired of eating lettuce. It flowers and goes to seed.
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Beans.
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Beans.
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4 days since they were last picked.
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Looking back.
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Maestro peas.
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Friggin loaded.
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Kohlrabi. Starting to bulb out.
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Baby beets and some spinach.
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The squash plot. Still a few in there.
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I can't believe they're still trying to flower.
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Some vines grew up into the asparagus and set fruit.
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Looking back. Check out all those pea pods.
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Big Beef tomatoes.
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See the grasshopper? I think it's the first one I've noticed all summer. How weird is that?
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Zucchini.
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Zucchini. Aging plants never look pretty. At least not in my garden.
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Zucchini ready for picking.
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The nearly-drowned peppers.
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Remember the one that almost didn't come back? After being tiny all summer long, it's actually making peppers now.
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Here they are. I'm impressed.
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Here's some on the backups.
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The purple cayennes.
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More baby beets.
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Rosemary.
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Still working on the fence.
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The Miragreen peas are growing like monsters. Some of them are over 6 feet tall now.
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Miragreen pods.
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Dead cantaloupe vines on the trellis to the right.
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The side zucchini plot.
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These poor bastards. They're still sitting there because I keep forgetting to transplant them into the garden. There's not enough time for them to grow anyway. I might pot them inside and stick them in a window.
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- Trail cam shots -
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- Some shots of the fall woods -
The big oak on the way to the garden.
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The smaller redbud, with seed pods still hanging from it.
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An October rose. Cool.
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A few corn stalks from the garden put to good use. 
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A little seasonal decor. 
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I stored the butternuts in a cluttered corner of the garage.
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Getting dark earlier.
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I had to finish picking beans with a flashlight.
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Beans on Oct 10.
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Some Maestro peas and Touchon carrots on Oct 11. I popped a few peas out and set a quarter next to them for comparison.
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That little pile shelled out to about 2 1/2 cups.
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Dinner time... Broiled chicken seasoned with rosemary, along with some green beans, carrots, peas, and butternut squash. Everything but the chicken, butter, and salt came from the garden, even the rosemary on the chicken.
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That's all for now.
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See you next time.
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Oh, here's a video of the armadillo that's been digging up... I mean 'aerating' the yard.
Gotta love fall.
For me, what you've been providing is a vicarious gardening experience - what little I've done is an amateur show compared to yours. The funny thing is that I once took an aptitude test and it indicated that I should have been a farmer.
Your focus on the beans made me think of a little ditty we used to recite as little kids. "Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat the more you toot." Actually I like green beans.
Ha. That's about mature, dry beans. Green beans don't do that to you.
Well, when it comes to kids' ditties, beans is beans.
Lol. I suppose so. I heard it a bit differently, though. Something like... Beans, beans, good for the heart. Beans, beans, make you... well, you get the idea.
LOL Maybe the kids I hung around with were more genteel.
Heh. Maybe.
Anyway, I'm very impressed that you not only grow your veggies, but you freeze them (do you can anything?) and also do a great job of preparing a meal out of them. I just realized that you don't grow potatoes - why? In the movie The Martian, the man marooned on Mars survived on a garden of potatoes.
I don't can anything, but I might experiment in the future.
I've tried growing potatoes here several times and never had much luck. I think the soil is too heavy with clay. I probably need to add extra stuff to keep the soil where I plant them loose and drained. Lots of organic matter like straw, and some sand and gypsum, too.
You may recall that I tried growing a little sample this year, but the heavy spring rains killed it.
If I don't can I wouldn't have room in the deep freeze to store everything. Canning doesn't really take that long, I did seven quarts of bread and butter pickles and seven quarts of Dill pickles in 3 hours, even though I had earlier said I wouldn't be canning pickles this year, just ended up with so many l couldn't just throw them out. Froze 20 quarts of green and wax beans as well as canning 14 quarts of pickled green beans and 14 quarts of pickled wax beans, two of each with a jalapeno pepper. Have about 20 quarts of roma and cherry tomatoes frozen and hope to make and can salsa made from them later, also froze sweet corn.
Needless to say the deep freeze is full and we still need to process and freeze venison shortly since it is already bow season here.
Fall color is almost peak here.
Sounds like you grew a bit more than I did.
I may give canning a try one of these days. I want a better way to store beans. Freezing changes their taste a little.
I think I'm about done growing tomatoes for storage. Next year I might only have a few for fresh eating. I've gotten to where I hate processing them.
Do you have lots of brightly colored maples up there? I'm in a mostly oak and hickory forest. Some reds here and there, but not like other places. Fall can be pretty dull some years, depending on the weather.
I couldn't do the salsa because there is a shortage of canning lids, seems everyone put in gardens this year and had time to tend them and can the results.
We have a large variety of trees here, split up almost equal percentage wise, mostly deciduous with a few pines. Reds, oranges, and yellows, the oak browns haven't happened yet, I need to go down near the river to see if the hickories have started.
Ok, now you're making me crave some butternut squash soup.
Quite the harvest you have there, Dig. Well done.
Thanks. It would have been better if I'd had beans, peppers, and zucchini all summer long like normal. Better late than never, though.
How's the weather back east? Getting chilly yet?
Cooling down, and pretty dry until yesterday, when Hurricane Delta's remnants came through. We had a late spring, and it feels like we'll have an early autumn.
I wasn't hungry until I scrolled through the photos. Now I'm starving.
A great photo series of flora and fauna. I remember the armadillos from Lampe, interesting critters except when they turned your yard into a series of excavation sites.
What really bugs me about them is that they're supposed to be carriers of leprosy. Or so I read somewhere.
I don't really mind them in the grass, but I hate when they get in the flower beds.
It's so late in the year, though. I'm not going to worry much about it.
A very good garden and series on the growing season. I am still getting some tomatoes and they were good with lunch, and a few tomatoes plants in the greenhouse. I have a large pile of brush in the middle of garden to grind up and thinking about next yea's garden.
Hope you will be able to do a series like this next year, I really liked it.
I've been thinking about blogging the garden again. I'm kind of enjoying it. I sure hope I have a good spring, though. It was a real pain this year when certain things wouldn't grow because of the weather, and other things were growing super slow.
I really wish there was a way to upload more than one image at a time, though.
For some reason I thought of the Grinch. In stead of, noise noise noise...it is beans beans beans..
Haha
A bumper crop for sure. Along with the tomatoes.
The purple peppers look like they are turning red.
I noticed the shift in daylight too. It seemed to happen quicker or more all the sudden this year. Instead of being light until around 8, it is now around 7. I don't like it getting dark early.
You can definitely tell it is fall by the trees.
Glad to see our little friend still. I guess he doesn't mind colder weather...
Yeah, I guess they go from purple to red instead of from green to red like regular peppers.
Too bad I don't have even the slightest desire to eat any of them. They're pretty, but way too hot for me.
The sun is weaker too, because of the angle. Less energy for plants, which kinda sucks for late season gardens. I won't have to worry about it for too much longer, though. A killing frost can't be far off now, and once it happens I'm done for the year and ready to laze around and pig out on holiday food.
I can eat them. Jalapeños are my favorite though.
You need to hook up with an animal farm.
Haha