our maine home – zone 5b
Yesterday, from the hoophouse.
I’m happy with this year’s overwintered greens. Clockwise from lower left: Bloomsdale spinach, escarole, arugula, baby kale. And plenty of self-seeded claytonia.
We’ve been eating homegrown greens for a few weeks now. It’s amazing that they survive the cold winter nights (under row cover).
I planted these in mid-September. This year, the electric fence did its job and kept out voles.
The weather warmed up and it wasn’t raining, yet. So Sam and I spur-of-the-moment decided to dig up the rest of the potatoes. It was an adventure. Exciting to find these big tubers glowing in the partly frozen ground under mounds of hay mulch. The varieties are Katahdin (white), Adirondack Blue and Adirondack Red. Maybe next season, less colors and more white. There’s something unnerving about finding red and blue colors in your food.
These are now drying on a table inside under cardboard. Then they will go into cold storage in the pantry.
And then for good measure, we dug up a patch of very dirty leeks. I did not want to do this, but Sam forged ahead. I didn’t think there would be anything salvageable, but after a few slimy layers were scraped off, there was another bunch of perfectly good leeks for the fridge.
It’s cold. After a warm November that lulled me into laziness. I didn’t get everything done in the garden. So some things froze that aren’t supposed to. Granted, I don’t really have the infrastructure needed to keep greens in the main garden. That would probably be cold frames. The row cover is not adequate. That’s the way it goes.
The dried heads of various flowers are interesting this time of year. A variety of browns and all different textures. I don’t cut them back until spring so they can provide cover or whatever for creatures that might depend on them.
And I spotted these sweet little cups when cutting back fronds in the asparagus bed. They are growing on bits of straw. The largest is maybe 1/4 inch wide.
Sam helped me harvest at the community garden today. He dug the leeks and I dug beets. Then I processed them back at home. A messy muddy task.
What was I thinking! This is a huge quantity of leeks. And there are more in the home garden. I will have to look for more leek recipes.
The beets seem more reasonable in volume. A good selection of medium ones and another of baby beets. A few greens were harvested, but most were not edible.
And this always seems to happen. No matter how painstakingly I try to harvest all the onions and shallots, some slip by. I found this glowing plateful today.
Much of raising food seems to involve dealing with innumerable small things. Beans – maximum potential in a small package, need to be shelled (done) and dried (in progress). Nuts – harvested these hazelnuts weeks ago but haven’t cracked them open yet. Ground cherries – each one has to be dehusked individually. This bowl is the last harvest, probably almost ready to toss in the compost. And finally, just for the visual pleasure, a spray of blossoms on the angel wing begonia.
I pulled all the squash vines from the garden in anticipation of frost this week. The lack of vines revealed 12 (twelve!) greenish pumpkins. Winter Luxury variety, supposed to be good eating. And a few small buttercup squash.
So these join the rest of my winter squash to try to cure / ripen them. I’ve put them all in the hoophouse for now.
My to-do list is really long and I’m not making very fast progress. There is so much to do in the fall. It’s better to slow down some and enjoy these small steps in a positive direction.
From our baby tree orchard, a pretty nice sized apple. It’s a little tough and not very sweet, but it doesn’t have bugs or other issues. Happy with it!
This project took all afternoon. There was an overabundance of broccoli in the garden. It was impossible to keep up with unless we wanted to eat broccoli every day, twice a day. Some of it was flowering, some of it was way past its prime. I decided to harvest all I could find and go through it, removing the bad and preserving the good.
Result: five pounds of broccoli, chopped, blanched and frozen. Probably equally that amount tossed onto the compost. I’m glad that’s done.
