What gardeners are up to in October

Harvesting, canning, cleaning, planting ... did I mention canning? This time last year our garden was pretty much bare earth in the existing raised beds with lots of apples and figs and a single pear. This year, I've got a whole different animal on my hands. It looks so bucolic in this picture.

Stupendously huge black jack figs.

When the figs started ripening last month I ran out into the garden with excitement every time we arrived on Saturday mornings. Six weeks later, I groan when I see them hanging low with cracked skins. It means more work in the kitchen. I've lost count how many jars of fig jam I've made. We visited a music store over the weekend and the elderly owner ran out and begged us to take some figs from her two trees which were over fifteen feet tall. Poor lady!

Fig jam, fig tortes, fig whatever ...

I'm at least thankful that the crush didn't hit me early on or I probably would have fled and never looked back. Not really, but at least I was able to slowly build up my expertise over the past year before September and October hit fast and furious.

Two more batches of applesauce and then I'm done for the year with that! And now we enter squash and pumpkin territory ...

Two different mystery squash, pumpkins, and the lone melon this year.

Well, I thought I planted watermelon transplants from the nursery but instead I got squash. Plus, we have a volunteer squash (in front) who popped up last year. I personally love squash, especially a wonderful squash soup. My husband detests the stuff. Too bad. He can eat out that night!

Cabbages (well, there were cabbages there), beets and onion seedlings.

It's also time for cleaning up the beds and prepping for the winter planting. First project was to replace a dying bed right in front of our fig tree.

The old beet, onion, potato, pumpkin bed.

It's made it hard to access the blackberries and there was a perfectly good trellis a few feet away that wasn't being used. I think the previous owners used it to keep the blackberry thorns away from their toddler.

Peas, turnips, onions and rutabagas.

My amazing husband has been rebuilding all the beds in our yard to keep out the gophers and replace all the rotting wood. Only twelve more to go! This one is now planted with Blue podded Blauwschokkers peas (What. They sounded cool, I couldn't resist). While he was busy building, I was a few feet away clearing out the summer bean bed and nursing my parsnip seedlings (which are very persnickity). The beds look beautiful now all neat and tidy. I planted at least eighty more peas, mostly sugar snap, in the square bed with bamboo poles.

I'm about four weeks late planting the peas (eight weeks before first frost is the rule) but they wouldn't have survived the heat wave that hit last week. We'll see if they turn out as this is the first time I've grown peas from seed planted in the fall, I'm usually of the February variety. Here was the aftermath of the bean bed, shelling. Lots and lots and lots of shelling to be done.

But the end result is lovely. I'm planning on doing a trade with a friend here for some of her tiny haricot verts that taste perfect right on the vine.

Next weekend will include a little tarragon oil making and freezing, thanks to my friend, Shelly, who turned me onto the 101 Cookbooks blog. This sweet little plant will be ripped out to make way for cool season lettuces.

You have to be brutal in gardening sometimes. On the softer side, check out my quickly growing Pinterest board on enjoying and preserving the harvest.

A mid-June weekend

Here's a peek at what's going on in the garden in mid June. We had a heat wave last week and all seems to have survived except the remaining english peas turned starchy. I learned that fall planted peas are much more worth it. Those did really well and produced for a much longer time period than the early spring planted batch. Note the hose lying off to the side, well used this weekend.

We bought an umbrella for the center of the garden so I can escape the sun every few minutes. I'm still not sure what seating to put underneath it. A table might be nice but it sure would be great to have a lounge chair out there.

These are the left beds that include my daughter's bed with broccoli, my gopher safe tomato and parsley bed and a bed that held the most productive pea plants. So productive the bamboo trellis wouldn't hold.

The bed above is the most authentic square foot garden we have with a huge variety of plants. The chard here hasn't bolted, yet. And we have tons of calendula flowers popping open every day. There are some bare bits that need succession planting but haven't been able to do anything with this heat.

This is a view of the opposite side of the garden with a weeping Santa Rosa plum on the left. Lots of plums growing. There are brussel sprouts in the center and several bush variety english peas adjacent that I will never plant again, they hardly produced.

I did manage to weed some this weekend. Oxalis is taking over this bed. I'm hoping if I just keep at it and remove all the soil along with the weed, I'll eventually knock those back. I hate oxalis. The kale didn't seem to mind but the lettuces couldn't survive.

And finally, the most important planting of the year, according to my daughter, corn! Not something I would have chosen due to the huge amount of space they take up for so little reward but I hope I'm proven wrong! They certainly look good in the bed. Next weekend I plan to mulch more of the beds. Planting in 95 degree heat wasn't fun but I did manage to finish the irrigation with some help. The beans are behind the corn and are doing well. No gopher action ... yet. And also this weekend, more cherry plum jam making. It looks like a few more weeks before the other fruits are ripe, whew.

Cherry plum jam making

Once again, I looked up this weekend and noticed another fruit was ready to be harvested. There's a cherry plum tree that hangs over our yard with plenty of fruit to share. When we first bought the house, we had an arborist come by who pointed out the 'canning' plums and sure enough, when I saw A Sonoma Garden's recent post on past Junes, there was a recipe.

I found very few other recipes for cherry plum jam online. I decided it kind of something you made up as you went along, depending on which variety of cherry plum you have. I started with 5 pounds of fruit which I threw into the pot along with 1 cup of water. I boiled and simmered those for about 15 minutes until the pits separated from the fruit. I then pushed the contents through a fine mesh sieve which left about 3 pints of juice behind.

I added 1 1/2 cups of sugar to the pot but upped it to 3 cups as it was tasting too tart for my liking. I simmered this mix for just over an hour and was left with a little over 8 - 5.4 ounce jars of jam. These should hold my friends over for a year. It's a nice sweet-tart jam with a beautiful bright red hue. Next weekend I'll be making more as only half the fruits were ready this weekend.

Speaking of plums, there are Italian plums growing rapidly in the garden this week. I love the bluish color and oval shape of these.

The green and purple podded beans are clamoring up their supports.

And lots and lots of harvesting other veggies this weekend, including the last of the English peas. We're having a heat wave this week so who knows if they'll last. My daughter set up a nice sunny spot on the kitchen floor. She probably ate half of the peas she shelled.

Here's the rest of the harvest this weekend, including just a smidgen of lavender from the one large bush we have. It's the bee's favorite spot in the yard so I'll leave the rest for them to enjoy.

English peas, beets (beet greens are the best), lettuce, oregano, chard and strawberries.

Next year, I would love to have much more lavender growing. It's gopher and drought
resistent, two things that my garden have plenty of.

Basil, summer savory, german chamomile, mints and red shiso.

The garden is on steroids - compost!

Seriously, something happened in the span of a week that made my plants double in size. As the previous owners just posted on their own blog, it must be the compost. I ran around the garden Saturday morning after being away for a week, "Look at that! This one was half this size last week, OMG, etc."

The biggest difference was in the tomatoes. We bought ten tomatoes plants all the same size. I had one left still in it's pot that was waiting for a space. The ones I had planted the week before were twice the size of the little one. See the wimpy one in the back right of the bed? That's the newbie. Oh and that post? I need to pound it down more but it's from the previous owners who swear by this method to deeply water their tomatoes. We're going to do an experiment and compare sides this summer.

The strawberry bed is kicking in too. We planted thirty-six plants, enough to feed a family of four. A few strawberries here and there are ripe, enough to bring a smile on your face when you take a bite. There's nothing like a homegrown strawberry, they're so much sweeter than even the ones from the farmer's market. Why is that?

On the inside of the house, we're getting the kitchen ready for a bumper crop just in time for summer. Gutted and gone!

Our contractor is working at a furious pace and hopes to be done by the end of May. In the meantime, here was this week's harvest in three acts. Chard and spinach, lots and lots of it.

Peas, broccoli and a lemon. These peas are from seedlings planted in November. Lots more coming next month.

Green onions, lettuce, radishes, parsley, mint and chervil.

Next weekend will be all about the watermelon and pumpkin beds, the last beds to be ready for planting. Then the hard work will be done!

Planning the garden

It's time for some organized planning. I've struggled with how to keep my thoughts in order with so many beds to lay out using the square foot gardening method. I decided on a plan to have two large gridded sheets. It naturally worked out that one sheet covers most of the early spring plantings and the other the later spring plantings. I can use the see-through vellum to overlay succession plantings for the next go round. I tried to keep track of everything on the computer but I just couldn't coordinate well enough between the actual planting into the keyboard.

Finishing the planting of bed J (lower right on the sheet above) was the focus this weekend. I had half of the bed completed but was afraid to tackle the rest because I knew what was lurking underneath.

The bed from hell. These are roots of a certain pesky weed which I can't remember the name. And these are likely those weeds that just multiply when you break the root in two. Sigh. I did my best but at least I know I won't be planting any carrots here! I first sowed one more row of shelling peas just in case 132 plants aren't enough. Seriously, they say 170 for a family of four. We'll just see!

Then onto the weedy bed. It will be a guess just how much sun this bed gets in the full summer. I think a fair amount. There's a cedar tree just south of it that blocks out most of the sun in the winter.

I hope to save this leftover chard in the foreground. I transplanted two spinach plants over and planted two more squares. The bed will also have lettuces, radishes, kale, beets and flowers. And a surprise awaited me in the compost pile. A rapidly growing rhubarb plant which I did my best to salvage for another bed that already had the rhubarb.

I suppose in my haste of weeding beds last fall I chucked it before I knew what it was. We'll see if it survives although I'm sure any plant would be happier growing in pure compost.

January in the garden

My weekends are being filled up with bed preparation and future planting days. Although I didn't account for getting the flu last weekend. I managed to prepare one bed until my husband made me stop. Sure enough, I overdid it. And now I'm behind on everything, artwork and other responsibilities included. Oh well, I feel good about what I accomplished out there. This is one of the beds ready to go. It will contain onions, spinach, carrots, calendula, basil, oregano, peas and some tomatoes based on the square foot gardening method. My daughter had fun pushing the onion sets into the soft soil.

Planting onion sets in a square foot grid

I've been looking to other local places to see what they've been putting in the ground this month, looking through the farmer's almanac as well as my local master gardener website recommendations. It's all spinach and peas this month and into early February. The Farmer's Almanac seems to me a little early though.

Charming french bistro chairs I found at Maison Reve before it closed, sniff, sniff.

I was able to transplant the remaining stray chard plants as well as some spinach and lettuce I started in the fall into my first prepared bed. I could have spaced them closer, I'll see how much extra weeding it will involve. The spinach will be thinned once they get used to the transplant.

 Chard, spinach, lettuce, radishes, shelling peas and Nigella will live here.
I created a little straw path for pea picking. Next year I will garden more intensely if needed.

The garlic I planted in the fall is growing well. There are a few onion survivors popping up next to some of the garlic but I'll just pull that garlic sooner for some nice green garlic to throw on the grill.

 Garlic under the apple tree with a great resting chair
for when I need a break.

A site plan, sigh, I have about four going right now and am trying to figure out the best way to work. One on the computer, two on grid paper, and one on many different pages of a notebook. For some reason, the notebook technique is winning but it looks impossibly confusing!

And finally, the mushroom compost has arrived! I learned about this compost from reading the previous owner's blog. Now I understand why the soil in the beds and under the fruit trees is so amazing. Why fix what isn't broken!