Fall is supposed to be about winding down. Cozy sweaters, shutting things off, preparing for winter. Southern Ontario missed that memo as we are entering our 17th month of summer. I love you summer but you're like a party guest who doesn't realize the music stopped 2 months ago.
By this time of year I'm ready for wood fires and flannel pajamas. I know those of you who live in moderate climates extol the virtues of a land without down filled coats or ice scrapers but I like my seasons. And I want them to land where they're supposed to and feel like they're supposed to.
Not that I'm rigid, but I am. So while I'd normally be bringing you tales about stacking wood or burrowing, I am still talking about the garden.
Leisurely Little Lettuce
The lettuce I started August 20th is still growing but not at a speed anyone would describe as useful. I wanted it for Thanksgiving dinner. To serve 12. Unfortunately, I don't think twelve people can split 18 leaves. Not unless I call it "elevated" and squirt a single dot of dressing on the plate.
The lettuce is an heirloom variety from the 1830's - a decade older than my house - called Tom Thumb. It's a mini butterhead that smaller than a fist when completely mature.
The Glory Bin
While the lettuce struggles to be taken seriously, everything else is still coming in hot because the weather in Southern Ontario has been brought to us by South Carolina by way of the Sahara. Today the forecast is sunny and 29C. That's 84 South Carolina degrees. This is how it has been.
My green bin is crammed daily with dahlias, zinnias, and Bells of Ireland that I'm sure are pining for the green green grass of home after having survived this dustbowl of a summer.
Fossils in the Kitchen
What lies above is everything that was underneath the flowers in the green bin. This year's sweet potato harvest looks like something dug up at a paleontology site. I planted just 4 sweet potato slips. One per very large pot (the kind a tree would come in). From those 4 slips I got 9.6 pounds of sweet potatoes.
And yes, in Canada, Metric is my first language for temperature, Imperial is my first language when it comes to weight. We are a complex nation.
I also picked not a peck of peppers. Usually I roast and freeze my red peppers because there aren't a ton of other ways to preserve them, but I'm considering roasting and preserving them in oil this year. Which feels fancy, but also possibly fatal. I'll have to look into it.
If you want to grow sweet potatoes next year, I already have it all figured out.
Gate Envy
Spotted a gate while walking Philip. I don't have a place for it, but I want it anyway. I'm starting to collect imaginary real estate.
Ginger Ninja
Would you like to save this stuff?
We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.
Have I mentioned I'm growing ginger for the first time? It's not typically fond of this this climate. We don't have a long enough growing season for it here in Southern Carolina, Ontario. In January when I started it, my ginger plants were so vigorous I thought I might get invited to lecture halls.
Ginger was reported and researched to be notoriously slow and difficult to start. Mine exploded with shoots about a day after I planted it.
I was a ginger savant. I just knew it.
Then I put the potted ginger outside in the spring and carefully hardened it off. It died what I would describe as an overly dramatic death. I continued to water the corpse for months.
Now, in October, the leaves are back but the rhizomes are still pretty small. So either I take it inside and baby it under grow lights before the frost kills it, or I accept that my legacy will not be the woman who grows giant ginger.
Compost Karen
I love composting. It's exactly as miraculous as growing vegetables but in reverse. You can grow your own dirt. THINK OF THAT.
Last fall I crammed tomato skins, weeds, bark, and fall leaves into the compost bin, half heartedly turned it (maybe) twice, and watered it. If you don't water compost it won't compost. It needs to be damp. Most people don't know that.
This week (a full year later) I screened it into a wheelbarrow and ended up with a full wheelbarrow of perfect, rich compost. It easily holds together when I close my fist around it but breaks apart with the touch of a finger. Which proves that sometimes the lazy way is the right way-at least when you're dealing with garbage.
I dumped the larger sifted bits onto another compost pile I had going on the ground. Once the bin was empty and sifted, I put that little compost pile into the bin. Next will go the leaves, garden cleanup debris and it'll start all over again.
Consider this incentive if you've ever considered composting but think you can't be bothered. Try it this way this year. The easy way. Not much will happen from now until next summer, but suddenly one day you'll notice that it's all dark and turning into soil.
If you're super-enthusiastic about compost (I am) you can also make finished compost in a few weeks. Basically you keep it watered and turn it several times a week, so there's more work up front, but that work results in compost that's ready to use very, very quickly. It's called hot composting.
Learn how I make hot compost here.
Too Many Bouquets
The mason jar bouquets keep multiplying. If I brought them all inside, the house would look like an open casket. I give them away. I am giving. And inundated.
That was this week: the lettuce is a slow grow, the ginger lied, and the compost quietly became the most successful member of the household.
What weird, fun or bland thing did you do this week?
Have a good weekend!
Nina
Hi. Over this last week I picked and cleaned pomegranates from my tree. I don't know if how many. Then made and strained the juice until I had a half gallon. Let it set in the refrigerator, and today strained it again. Then I made 12 lovely 1/2 pint jars of jelly. They look like rubies. I scraped out the bit left in the pan and tasted it. Devine! I used the recipe in the Ball Canning Book.
Plus, we're still eating pomegranates.
Kat
Many of the peppers succumbed to the pepper beetle, but now the peppers that survived are thriving! The ginger was a bust because I forgot to water it, but the tomatoes and basil were prolific, albeit smaller than other years. Grew zucchini successfully for the first time in ages and used your method of pruning. But my biggest surprise was growing luffa for the first time (because of you!) and got 9 huge luffas. I was REALLY excited! Harvested two so far, but the rest are green and are still growing! They didn’t seem to like the extreme heat this summer, but really took off in September. I am in luffa glory especially since last year. I got one measly luffa the size of my pinkie that only started growing in November and then the frost killed it. Harvest was bountiful, but not looking forward to my municipal water bill from June July and August!
Avril
I picked the apples from our tree, don’t know what kind but they taste good and crispy. Then I cored, peeled, cut into slices, lemon juice bathed them, put them on a tea towel to dry, and ended up with 7 parchment lined cookie sheets of apples that went into the freezer. I ended up with 4 large ziplock freezer bags of apples. That was about half the amount that was picked. I’m thinking of either making apple sauce from the rest of them or giving them away! That’s what I did this week for a couple of days!
Randy P
Just finished individually vac sealing and freezing an 11 pound batch of home-made breakfast sausage, portioned into approx. 55 three oz. patties. LUV my neato patty press and FoodSaver vacuum sealer. For me, it's 'sorta' like gardening stuff, but with meat. Should be enough for breakfasts till December.
Karen
Maybe this was a bad idea asking everyone to join in. Because now I really want to make sausage. ~ karen!