It’s October?!?
Oct 8th, 2008 by Laura
Where on earth did the early fall go? I feel like I blinked and it’s gone. The nights are cold, the mornings are dark and the garden is putting itself to sleep.
I pulled in all the peppers, the tomatoes and the last of the cucumbers Sunday afternoon. I probably could have left them a bit longer, but they’ve been predicting nights in the low 30s for a week or so, and picking a second wheelbarrow load of green tomatoes plus everything else in the dark after work didn’t sound like any fun.
The green, yellow and orange tomatoes are all now in boxes and paper bags in the garage. Some are already starting to ripen and it seems that sauce making will be starting this weekend. The first 20 pounds of ripe romas became 10 quarts of cold packed diced tomatoes on Monday night and the first 25 pounds of Principe Borghese became sun dried tomatoes.
Man are the sun dried ones (done in the oven) amazing. So sweet, so perfect. The second half of them are finishing up now. I think we’ll wind up with about 3 pints in the freezer - now I’m trying to decide if we need more than that.
Of the summer garden, all that’s left is the leeks, spaghetti squash, delicata squash, pumpkins, Brussels sprouts and carrots. The leeks and carrots can stay in the ground until we use them, the squash and pumpkins need just a bit more time to finish. The asparagus is fern like and swaying in the breeze and the fall peas are just blooming - I’m not sure that they’ll make it.
There are purchased starts of cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli racing the end of the good weather. A few baby lettuce and some flea bitten radish. Time got away from me and now I’m racing to get the winter garden in.
I started lettuce, kale, chard, more leeks and scallions inside. Then I forgot about them, so tonight I rescued the lettuce starts, potting them up and giving them a dose of fish fertilizer. The kale and chard will get the same treatment tomorrow night.
The garlic seed and the cover crop seed are still sitting on the potting bench. Hopefully this weekend there will be time to clear out the sad tomato and cucumber plants and get in the garlic, leeks and onions. Perhaps I’ll finally manage to do the final weeding and tilling so that I can spread the cover seed.
If I’m really ambitious this weekend I’ll get the hoops for the winter poly tunnels set up. I’m planning one tunnel over the brassicas and another over the lettuce, radish (seed), kale, chard and spinach. If I can get them going soon, we may even have winter greens.
So behind, I can’t figure out where the last month went. To canning, freezing, jamming and harvesting I guess. Maybe next year I’ll be on schedule…
Now off to answer the comments I’ve been ignoring enjoying and trying to find time to reply to.
I’m feeling the same way - how did the time pass so quickly? I wish I had a pause button so I could catch up.
The Principes are amazing aren’t they? We had a bumper crop last year and I dried enough that we still have enough for the coming winter. I did them in the oven too and have actually just stored them on the shelf in a glass container with no spoilage. This year they didn’t do so well with the cold - but they remain on my preferred planting list for next year.
We planted the Principe tomatoes this year as well. I was impressed by how much they yielded (I picked the ripe ones in stages instead of harvesting whole branches). We used some oven-roasted ones in pasta last night, and I agree they are amazing that way. I hope we still have enough good ones in the garden to do some more. I should try the green tomato thing, too - we certainly have enough of them.
The rest of my garden sounds a lot like yours, except I haven’t even had time to start my seeds. My garlic just arrived, and I need to get that in, too. Busy, busy, busy.
I know, right? I can’t believe it’s this far in October already. But like you, the time just goes quickly when there is harvestin and canning and for me, home schooling the kids.
I wanted to let you know that I tried your chili recipe, with a few modifications– I didn’t have chorizo on hand and substituted tomato soup for the tomato sauce. It was yummy!! I put it in the crock pot to cook a few hours while we were outside working on our firewood and coming into the house was driving us nuts with the smell of the chili. Thanks for sharing the recipe, it’s a keeper!