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Sunday, November 8, 2015

Harvesting from the Fall Garden 2015

This may be the last vegetable gardening post I make before we get our first frost in 2015.  Our first freeze this year was on November 21, 2015.  We got down to 32 degrees according to my thermometer.  My last mow of this season was on November 14th.

My husband lets the girls out each afternoon for a stroll and bug hunt.  We are careful to put them back up each evening to prevent bobcat, possum, and raccoon attacks. 


Vegetable Gardening
The beans are ready for harvesting now.

We pull up the entire bean plant when most of the beans are ripe.  We can then easily pull all of them off.  We put the plants  in the compost bin.

 Read to wash, string, and snap.
 

The beans after washing.  Notice all the bean "waste" on the counter top.

Next job is to blanch the beans.  First, boil the beans 3 minutes.  Remove them immediately and put them in an ice bath.  Them remove them quickly and dry on towels.

Bagging up the beans for freezing.  Make sure you suck all the air out of the bags.  We have used a Food Saver to bag all our produce but we have had continous problems with it.  This is the last time we used it.  We will NOT buy another.  My husband is glad to tell it goodbye.  We'll use ziplock freezer bags from now on.  You can suck all the air out with a straw.

 The finished product - ready for the freezer.  Make sure you label and date the bags.


 On to some other vegetables.  The tomato plants look ratty but they are covered in green tomatoes.  We'll pick them all the night before the first frost and make salsa.  See last years post.

http://rainbowmagicsparklebutterfly.blogspot.com/2014/11/november-11-12th-2014-first-freeze-in.html


We also have had a lot of jalapeno peppers this year.

I bagged and froze these jalapeno peppers in gallon size bags several days ago.  Peppers (both bell and jalapeno) do NOT need to be blanched.  Just core, and cut up and bag them.
We'll probably get one more harvest from our jalapeno plants this year.


 We had lots of bell peppers this year.  They are gigantic.  Again, to freeze them, blanching is not necessary. 

They grew huge after all the rain we received.

 This was our first cucumber harvest from the fall garden.

More cucumbers and bell peppers and tomatoes picked today, 11/8/15.

 The butternut squash, a winter squash, is growing well.  Winter squash are squash with thick skins that won't go bad quickly.  Pumpkins are also winter squash.

We will also pick them the night before the first frost.

I added this photo that I took on 11/21/15.  We had our first freeze on 11/21/15 so we did a last minute harvest of tomatoes.

Winter squash and persimmons.

We picked all the persimmons, butternut squash and ripe tomatoes today.  We also pulled the rest of the cucumbers and pulled up the cucumber plants.  The apples came from the store.

The broccoli plants are growing tall but are not putting on heads this year like they should.  How irritating.  Hopefully, they will start doing that - like now please!

I believe this is the last year for my poor asian persimmon tree to live.  It is broke down and looking sad, but will still give us an abundant "last' crop of fruit this year.

 The other side of the tree.   I will pull the persimmons off the night before the first freeze. 

 Around the Yard:
So far this fall, beginning in mid-October through the first week of November, we have received around 15" of rain.   Rain equates with mushrooms popping up.
I believe these are Entoloma strictius, which are poisonous!



The start of a fairy ring (mushrooms growing in a circle).

A finally, to close this post, something kind of interesting.  We found a mummified American bull frog in the yard.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Progress in the 2015 Fall Vegetable Garden - Early October

We had a cool front come through North Texas yesterday, October 2nd.  The low this morning is 54 degrees with a projected high of 81.  I love it.  The fruits of my husband's labors in the garden are starting to show now. 

These are pictures of the vegetable garden in the late afternoon yesterday.  All of the plants, with the exception of the peppers and tomatoes (which were planted in the spring and "over-summered", were planted with seeds in late August. 



Winter squash

We thought the seeds were acorn squash but now believe we have butternut squash.

Pickling cucumbers starting to grow up the trellis.


Another patch of cucumbers.

Broccoli coming up from seed.

 Bush beans (blue lake) are coming up.

 View of bell and jalapeno peppers.

The tomatoes are ragged looking (on the left) but they are covered in blossoms.  We are hoping for a fall crop - we have seen some bees, hopefully they are doing their job.  The asparagus in the center raised bed needs another haircut.

 We have lots of jalapeno peppers.  Time to make poppers again.

 The bell pepper plants are lush now.

 Giant cinnamon basil which came up volunteer this year - trailing rosemary on the right.

We have a drip irrigation system which works well, we typically we run it once per day or once every other day depending on the weather for about 15 minutes.  My husband tops the watering off sometimes.  He likes to hand water during dusk.

 

On to the flowering plants around the house - we don't have many in bloom now, but I'll share for the sake of remembering.  This is a perennial blue salvia and attracts hummingbirds.   It dies back each winter and then comes back to bloom most of the summer and into fall.

The marigolds in the vegetable garden are huge this year - this was one tiny plant in a 6 pack.

After all the rain in May, we then had a very dry summer.  We just had the shrubs in the front yard trimmed and are replacing some of the plantings - the 3 red yuccas here were just put in.  We had mulch spread too.  So far we have had 12 cubic yards spread in the front garden beds and it still isn't finished.  We still have to get the mulch put in the back yard beds too.


A large agave we put in.

The red yuccas we planted are blooming now.

Spider Lilies (also known as Naked Ladies because they don't have leaves) are coming up and blooming now.


We found a huge paper wasp nest. 

The Flame Acanthus is blooming now and it attracts hummingbirds.  This particular bush came up volunteer in the garden so I let it stay.  It is a perennial, I just cut it back each winter.

Well, that's all for now.  Enjoy the cool fall weather!