Beautiful October

The weather is still absolutely fantastic, and I'm feeling well enough to get back out into the garden! A quick view of the garden now:

hummingbird feeding station
they're still around in October!

sunflower that I swear I didn't plant


the roses look great in Fall


calendula

trinidad scorpion
hottest pepper in the world


carrots


cherry tomatoes


kale and chard

basil

After cleaning out some of the dead stuff in my flower borders, it was nice to see the pretty blooms that are still there; it also gave me a chance to see what areas could use a few new perennials for next year. I love October plant sales. I got these 5 perennials


for $6 total. (The pack of pansies was an additional couple $. The sign said they will live through winter and bloom in Spring. We'll see if that works.) Seriously, fall-sale perennials are one of the best ways to build a garden cheaply! I also recommend buying small mum plants this time of year. The 3" mums won't look too exciting this year, but if you plant them in the ground now, they will be gigantic $20 mums by this time next year. This is also the time to buy Spring bulbs. They're one of the absolute best parts of Spring, and you can never have too many, so there's no reason not to go plant at least a few new ones!

So with those new perennials, I'm going to work on my front yard garden. There are parts of it I really like


but altogether it's... underwhelming.

So, I've started work on that, and hopefully I'll have it looking a little better before the freezing weather hits! I'm also going to add a little something to the boring garage garden... it's just not landscaped for Fall.


I think the addition of a couple dying, potted, crusty mums that didn't get watered over the summer will help a lot!

Another area I'm thinking about sprucing up is the area between the open patio and the under-the-deck patio. These hostas just look brownish and tired, even earlier in the season, and I think it's time they were replaced, or at least divided. We're going to need something smaller there anyway, once Mike builds the steps in place of that stack of concrete blocks.


Lastly, here are pictures from our most recent trip to the apple orchard. Almost every single one of the apples was picked, but we found a couple, and bought the rest in the shop. The best part was the branch full of tiny apples I kept for decoration. Mike tried them and they tasted horrible. He didn't want me to spend $2/ lb for horrible tasting apples just to look pretty, but I did anyway. :)

Fall is Here

It seemed like a long, hot summer! Not much to post, because I've barely had the energy to get off the couch to work in my beautiful flower gardens. It's been for a good reason, though, as noted in the ticker to the right that shows the latest size of fruit I'm growing!

The summer heat finally really broke a few days ago. I came out of work in the evening and noticed it was actually a little cool out. That night it frosted in some areas of Iowa, but it seems to have spared our backyard, and the weather has been Fallish since.

Although I haven't had much of an appetite for vegetables, I've been happy to have homegrown produce on hand when I've really wanted it, like tonight for Mike's homemade potato soup. Used up all the carrots in the pot pie last week? Of course not, just go pull some more out of the ground! And they taste way better than the grocery store ones, too!

Mike also was able to go to the Seed Savers Annual Tomato Taste Testing this year, where visitors vote on the best tasting tomato of the year. He does a great job saving seeds from his favorites each summer, but he always has so many new varieties that he wants to try that I think he'll keep buying just as many new seeds every year!

He was also super excited to find out that he is officially growing the hottest pepper in the world. The most recent testing found the Trinidad Scorpion hot pepper to be the hottest there is, and he is so proud to have some of those growing in our own little planter.

I have a few ideas for my decorative gardens this Fall- spruce up the shade garden (most things have died due to lack of water-- the house protects it too well from rain!), move some ratty looking hostas bordering the patio and put something more interesting in (more hostas? mums?), and move some perennials that look like they belong elsewhere before the weather gets cold. And, post a few pictures to this blog sometime so you can see what's up in the garden!

Hopefully you're enjoying a nice harvest from your own backyard or your favorite farmer's market. I'm already looking forward to planning the next garden for Spring!

The Big Harvest Begins

Well, Mike is sure starting to see the fruits of his labor. Here are some pictures of what he's pulling form the garden lately. And since he loves to try all these strange different heirloom tomatoes, I thought I'd give you a view inside our kitchen to see him talk about all his exciting different varieties himself!

Thus far we don't really have enough of a surplus crop to start hiding unwanted zucchinis in friends' unlocked cars, but we'll see. One of these seasons, we most definitely will!

the tomatoes


Chinese red noodle beans
like green beans but purple and longer

Clockwise from top: Chinese red noodle beans,
yellow cucumber, yellow tomato, another tomato, beet

As above with a long sweet pepper added in

carrots and tomatoes

Other exciting goings-on in our garden and kitchen: basil drying in the food dehydrator, garlic drying on the shelf, fava beans (still on the bush, of course) drying on the kitchen table. The potted basil is wilting because we don't water it (I think we're due for a storm soon), the chocolate mint came back after becoming all crispy during a mini-drought on the deck. A zucchini has grown across the garden gate, preventing our entrance from one side, and the strawberries are still trying to give us a berry or two. All in all, I'd say it's turning out to be a successful gardening season!

H O T --- H O T --- H O T

What a hot day! You know it's bad when the heat advisory goes until 11 pm... HOT! The best part is that the air conditioning is back! The capacitor needed replaced, a simple little 10 minute fix after a couple days of 90+ degree heat in the house! SO THANKFUL for a/c!

The plants are also struggling a bit in the heat, especially since we are NOT daily waterers. I think I take the survival of the fittest mentality to gardening-- if you have to be watered every day, you don't belong!

Here's what's been happening:

EARLY JULY

blooming leek
saving for seeds

traveler tomato!
so weird- you can pick off chunks to eat as you walk around

tiny tim tomato


the veg garden

our friends' garden
Mike helped them build this, and they let him plant stuff
that we didn't have room for, since the community
gardens sold out for the year!

fennel

delphinium

daisies

blueberries
birds got them all again this year! oh well.

heirloom lettuce and pansies

Gerbera daisy


garlic, now hanging to dry


MID JULY

the first of the ripe tomatoes from the garden
otherwise only had a few from pots so far
a shady veg garden is just not as productive, especially early on!


strawberries!
haven't had fruit since early summer,
but are starting to go into production again


banana peppers
just had these in dinner!


chervena chushka peppers
can't wait!
these are my favorite


pot of calendula and banana peppers


the front yard garden
just don't have the time to work on it
to keep it always blooming!


Love these persian carpet zinnias
perfect with a little fun-colored coleus

one of my containers
the third coleus died :(


zucchini!!
I love zucchini
this is an heirloom round variety I haven't had before.
Last year they got about this big,
then the squash vine borer got 'em.
HOPING for a small harvest
before they all die again this year!


Garage side garden


coneflowers
so pretty

my beautiful container gardens

I'm amazed at how long these big, plastic containers
can go without being watered
but now the plants are starting to show the effects of being dry-
better work on that daily watering habit!


RECIPE FROM THE GARDEN

Cooking from the garden is a blast, but I don't have a lot of time and energy to make fancy thingsfrom scratch. To make a delicious garden pasta salad, pick herbs, peppers, tomatoes, or whatever you have from your garden:



Cook up a boxed cold pasta salad mix:



And add vegetables:



I love this stuff! Really good way to enjoy your produce, even if you only have a small handful of a harvest from your pots on the patio, like I do!


SEED SOURCES

In case you were wondering where else we got seeds from this year:

Amishland Seeds
(most of our tomato seeds came from here)

Botanical Interests
(got our zucchini, lettuce, beets, carrots, fava beans here)

Seed Savers
(beans, peppers, flowers, lettuce, kale, etc came from here)