Gardens

Tis the season to pick and preserve produce, as well as dry and put up seeds.

Things have been so crazy with us recently, and I feel like I am months behind in this blog. I’ll try and catch up as much as I can, but there are a million small things we’ve been doing that will probably remain undocumented. Sorry for the omissions, but such is life. So, to begin…

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The gardens, both annual and perennial, have done great this year. We got fruit (plums, peaches, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, figs and strawberries) and all kinds of veggies throughout the summer months. It seems like almost everything we planted did well. We even have many veggies stored for winter, including potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and squash.

We did miss out on a few chances for preserving food. For example, we were away (or too busy) during apple season, so didn’t get to make juice or cider. And we didn’t get to enjoy all of the broccoli, which goes to seed without vigilant picking. For the most part, however, our losses weren’t too bad.

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In the past week or so, we have been scrambling to get any remaining produce in before it freezes, and just have one or two left to do (hopefully later today). We have also been collecting a bunch of seed from all the different plants, which are either drying or put up already.

We were a little late in getting our roots planted this Fall, but we’re hoping some of them will make. And then there are some things we’ve taken cuttings of to winter in the inside garden, which has been replenished with aged compost.

So pretty much caught up with things in the garden, which is a relief. Now we have a couple of months to plan the new additions we’ll be making to the forest garden, which has worked unbelievably well so far.