I don’t know where summer went except I know I was terribly busy. The hot summer brought all of September’s harvesting activities into August and then the showers and cooler September weather slowed everything down, although the self seeders burst into life and bloom.
Huge borage plants sprang up almost overnight.
Finally, I just had to admit that was it, and take everything down so maybe 20 pounds of mostly green tomatoes were on our kitchen counter and slowly being eaten as they ripened. Today, so many were ripe, that they were cut and then roasted with a bit of onion and garlic for tomorrow’s pasta sauce (and some for the freezer). Otherwise all the carrots and potatoes have been cleaned up for storage, basil blended with a bit of oil and frozen, peppers reluctantly cut and frozen as well. They were the best peppers ever this year and I hated not being able to keep them fresh, but I will enjoy them in soups and stews.
So many delicious peppers this year.
One thing I am focusing on right now is putting every bit of organic matter I can into the raised beds because there was not enough water retention in most of the soil this year. Even though mulched and well watered, the veggies wilted. So I am composting directly into the beds – green stuff, seaweed, manure with a layer of straw on top. And, of course, my compost bins are full of the fall cleanup stuff. Recently I have been reading a book – Permaculture for the Rest of Us by Jenni Blackmore – and she describes a chicken composter. The compost is right in the chicken run but in a 5 x 5 shallow wood bin so that the chickens can do their stuff with it and then it can be cleaned out and put in the conventional compost to complete. Great idea as we frequently throw grass, hay, big greens, etc into the pen and it gets picked over, then scattered everywhere. We made a bin today and hauled it up to the run and the chickens came running over to investigate but were a little underwhelmed. Wait till I start filling it. Tomorrow I’m going down the road for a truck load of leaves and instead of putting it in a wire composter for a year, it’s going straight into the chicken composter.
And, to finish, a picture of the last of my lavenders to bloom. Fred Boutin is a late bloomer and flowers often have to be cut off if one does a fall pruning of lavender – which i do. So it was the last of the lavenders to get cleaned up this year.
A late blooming lavender. Check out the grass in the background, such a sad backdrop at the time, but it is bright green again.
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