Start of fall clean up

Sunflowers at my mom's house

I'm really glad it's time to start cleaning up the garden:  I'm so tired of gardening and canning and freezing and 'giving away'.  I went down to my 3 plots at the community garden and spent a couple of hours pulling dead plants, raking off straw, pulling weeds, etc. I still have a very short row of edamame beans to pick, some hot peppers ripening, and some brussel sprouts growing, but everything else has been pulled and disposed of. I was going to leave the straw on the beds to break down, but it was so full of squash bugs I raked it off and disposed of that also. It was nice to have so much of it finished.
Next I can start on my SWC's and raised bed gardens here. I still have green pole beans, butternut squash, and some tomatoes ripening.
Most everything else is done.

Things to do:
Try again to get rid of the trumpet vined in my tripod garden.
Dump all the SWC's in the compost pile.
Clean off at least one raised bed and prepare for planting fall garlic.
Plant fall garlic.
Pull tomatoes and dispose of them in the trash. Much too diseased to compost.
Cut those darn mulberry trees that are now 5 feet tall on the edge of the driveway.
Weedwack the mint, grasses, weeds, and daylilies around the turn-around area.
Clean all the water hyacinth out of the ponds.
Put the water lilies into the back ponds.
Catch the fish in the front ponds and move them to the back.
Take down the heron/egret wire over the big pond for the winter.
Dump the flower pots and separate out the elephant ear corms to store. Ditto on dahlias.
Bring in the amaryllis plants.
Rake and chop leaves.
Sift compost and store for spring.

I suppose there are more tasks, but that's plenty to think about and start on. Sometimes I think fall cleanup is more work than spring planting.
Do I consume my garden, or does my garden consume me? This year it was definitely the second option winning out.

World's Ugliest Tomatoes?

 Seriously - I have some big tomato problems this year. The Cherokee Purple have the worst cases of catfacing I've ever had on them. We did have some pretty chilly weather when the plants were young. I read that it can cause this and Cherokee Purples seem to be quite susceptible to it. This might be my last year for this variety even though I love the flavor of them. They are also dying from some speckled disease. (see below)

Something is happening to the Silver Fir, Glacier, and Stupice tomatoes that looks like this. Insects? Disease? Any opinions welcome.

Then as the tomatoes ripen the flies and other bugs have too much access to them or the bottoms and insides are just gone - turned to mush.

 Then there is the tomato disease that is ravaging the plants. Spots all over the leaves and stems (not the fruit). I wish I had got control of it when I first saw it but it's way to late for that now. Now I'm just hoping to harvest some of the tomatoes before the plants are totally shot. Some of the plants are losing the leaves at a rapid rate. I think it is either Early Blight or Septoria Blight. Not good news for the garden next year.

Here is a better photo of the leaves as the disease progresses. Again, any opinions welcome, including how to control it.

 On a happier note - the butternut squash are finally starting to set fruit. This one is 4-5 inches long. Hope they get ripe before frost. They seem very late to me.

And while I was somewhat housebound and restless between eyes one and two of cataract surgeries I decided to do a bit of bread baking after years on not doing any yeast breads. These are hamburger buns. They tasted really good but were a bit flatter than they probably should have been. Definitely worth trying again though. I also was given some Amish Friendship bread sourdough starter. That also was very tasty. I hadn't done anything with sourdough for years either.

Identity Crisis

I think I'm having one. I changed the name of my blog from Sow This, Sew That to C Three, then I changed it back to just Sow This. Now I have this urge to change it again. I also changed the design and header image but I'm content with those changes. Now if I can just settle on the name...again.Hope everyone visits anyways.

The change to C Three was with the intention of combining my 3 blogs into one. But personally I'm not fond of those kinds. If I want to read about quilting I go to blogs that are mostly about quilting, ditto on vegetables, inspirational stuff, cooking, etc. I don't much like to wade through a lot of unrelated posts to find what I'm interested in seeing. So I guess this one should stay Sow This and remain primarily a gardening blog. Too bad. I liked the C Three concept and name. Guess there could be a fourth blog. Or maybe not.
Just for fun - a kaleidoscopic image from one of my nature photos. It was just picture of a bunch of weeds recycled into this beautiful cross.
And I fixed my email notification on comments. I didn't think I was getting any comments, but I just noticed I had put the wrong email down in blogger. Oops.
Thank you to those who made comments. I appreciate every one.

Lemon Pickles and Onion Harvest

 Lemon Cucumber Pickles, canned last week. It's a new recipe and I haven't tasted them yet. The Boothby's Blonde cucumbers seemed to break down too much or I cut them too thin. I mixed about 3 varieties of cukes into the batch. But I've found I really like zucchini pickes and they are usually easier to grow. For my cukes I had lots of flowers and not so much fruit. Then the cucumber beetles came with the accompanying disease. But I also have an abundance of squash beetles this year which aren't doing the zucchini any favors.

 Bob and I have become totally spoiled with the daily garden additions to our lunch salads. Usually it consists of kale, dill, lemon balm and basil. Yum. I wonder which of these I can keep going in the garage studio over the winter. Last winter I had Red Russian Kale and a freckled leaf lettuce, also some tah tsoi. They all did well under the daylight flourescent bulbs.

I planted a variety of 3 types of onions, Walla Walla, Red Zepplin, and Ringmaster (their Northern Collection), this year from Territorial seed. They grew quite well with no diseases of bug damage. Most were average size, but one bulb was a whopping 2 pounds. These were grown from onion sets, not seed.

The tomatoes are finally just starting to ripen. And now we're getting lots of rain. Hopefully it won't harm the tomatoes too much. Last year when that happened a lot of the tomatoes split from too much water too fast. But most are still green enough that maybe it won't matter. 

All in all the gardens have been producing pretty well this year. The only exception being anything that has male/female flowers. I seem to be getting mostly male with little pollinated fruit. Even one variety of dry bean is having flowers but no beans. What's up with that?

Canning Mishaps, Harvests, and Pesto

 Today's harvest: Boothby's Blonde cucumbers, a variety of onions including a 2 pound purple one, the almost in flower Purple Peacock broccoli head, and my 6 heads of Caraflex cabbage which, I think, were about to bolt from the heat - so I harvested them. A few are pretty small. Notice, not a ripe tomato in the bunch yet.

 So, my big canning tip for the summer is to put the clean jars in the water before it gets too hot, because even warmed from washing in hot water may not be enough

 Proof of this. I heard a small pop when I put the jar in the almost boiling water and thought that was probably not a good sound. It wasn't. But at least it was a nice clean break...

 My first batch of Avocado Basil pesto. It was good, but so rich. While I like pesto, it's not something I can eat a lot of. I didn't really use a recipe, but it contained a medium avocado, a bunch of basil, a bit of Lemon Balm, juice from 1/2 small lemon, some oil, and 2 garlic cloves.  The lemon was good in it and probably helped the leftovers keep until the next day with just some browning on top.

I'm having mixed success on the computer and doing most everything else right now. I had my first cataract surgery yesterday ( only 8 hours with the patch). Now for the next 2 weeks (until I have the 2nd eye done) I'm glasses free, but nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. Two week headache and limited time for reading, sewing, computers, etc. Also limited a bit on gardening because of limits on lifting, pulling, pushing. Is it 2 weeks from now yet?

Blogger comments and problems

I have been having so much trouble signing in and making comments lately! Thomas kindly left a comment. I tried to respond and got caught in a continuous loop of signing in and getting kicked back to the comment then being told to sign in again. Frustrating not to be able to comment on my own darn blog. But thank you Thomas for the visit and comment.
Anybody know how to fix this or what could be causing it? Others can comment - I just don't seem to be able to respond the correct way. But I have been able to comment on other people's blogs.

Amber Garden and Raised Beds

This year I'm also gardening at the Amber Garden managed by the Nazarene Church down the street. It's been very nice so far. The plots are about 4 x 24 feet, plowed in the spring, and somewhat irrigated with drip irrigation (but it isn't working as well in some places as it should). There are over 100 plots, most of them being used. It is surrounded on 2 sides by fields, and has the county fairgrounds parking lot on the third side. It is so very peaceful working out there!

 My three plots are the straw covered ones at the front. Compost and aged manure piles were available for soil additions so that was good. Plus there were seedlings, seeds, tools, and wheelbarrows there for anyone to use.

 The Bintje and Purple Viking potatoes are from my raised bed garden at home. This is the 1st harvest. I like the Bintje. I love the Purple Vikings, but they seem more susceptible to worms in the tubers.

 Having read about replanting the potato plants after harvesting the bigger tubers, I tried this on any plants that still had tiny potatoes showing. So far (2 days) the plants look good. I watered them in well and cut about 1/3 of the tops off to help the roots set in again.

 The raised beds are really lush this year. Maybe it was the 12 wheelbarrow loads of new compost - maybe the cool moist start we had to summer. I don't know, but I like it.

 Pattypan squash doing well in the new SWC. But the squash bugs have arrived.

 Mostly pepper plants in these Earth Boxes. Several varieties that I neglected to mark. We did a taste test yesterday with Bob testing for hot ones - but I got ahead of him. Found one! Ouch. I don't do hot.

 The first batch of Zesty Zucchini Relish. I hope to do at least 2 more batches. I love a spoonful of this stuff on a salad with smoked deli turkey and some honey mustard dressing.

 The Blondie Cucumbers are doing well this year. Last year I got one deformed one. Just enough to decide I liked it and should try it again this year. So far I've harvested about 8 of them.

 The Polish Softneck garlic all harvested and drying. This year I hope to order a couple more varieties from wegrowgarlic.com. They have a very large variety to chose from but I'm still awaiting their 2011 online catalog. And this year I'll know better than to plant the tiny cloves. Last year I planted every scrap and most of them grew but they're very small like pearl onions.

 My first year growing Japanese Black Triffle tomatoes from Totally Tomatoes. The shape is so cute. None ripe yet.

 And the Japanese Black Triffle plants. Very large and prolific. Hope they taste good.

 I also put in 3 Opalka paste tomato plants from Totally Tomatoes. There are about 3 tomatoes growing on one plant. Very disappointing!

That far bed has the 3 Opalka and one Belgian Giant. None of the plants are as green as my other ones and none are showing many tomatoes. A few flowers but mostly just big plants that are pretty bare. I've tried more tomato fertilizer and also a misting with Epsom salt water twice. Nothing.

So that's the mid-July garden.