Garden Report & Frugal Living 23.09.12
The Foxwelp have been harvest and are 'curing' in the dining room where it is cool and dark. Didn't quite get the Queen Cox down even with a kid in the tree. It will take the orchard ladder in the growing smaller space. While squinting up at the branch, I spied some fuzzy bottom quinces! The beauty had not totally forsaken us! There will be a lovely small basket in about a month if she can hang on to them that long.
The Autumn Anne raspb's are coming off just a handful a day. Such a delicate flowery melon taste. To me thay do not have the same taste as a tay or raspberry. I have to move those or cloth protect them before the neighbor comes and sprays through the fence with his herbacide -- truely a demented man who just happens to be an arborist that hates trees.
Harvested a load of rose petals to put through the dehydrator for tea. The lemon verbenia is ready for the second hards. The nettle bed had become a perpetual green bed of goodness -- it just now is thinking about flowering. The chives are ready to harvest. The Chinese garlic chives are flowering (perhaps I can gather seed?).
The neighbor's cat Minkskie has decided that stalking the hens are a good thing. Our presence is not and she damn near kills herself trying to escape the garden. Its a wonder she has any head left.
Decided to keep the vermiculture going but now I have to get serious about winter prepping them.
The hops I was lamenting; they were not to make it this year but in a week they have totally formed their hops! From wee little sparkle of a flower to fully formed cone. I have never seem them go that fast but maybe I just haven't been paying attention!
I need to build a horseraddish box. I have them in larger pots but this year they leaved a very sort period and was done. I know it was an off year but ... the comfrey is also just now starting to grow!
Other things that are off is the Belladonnas. Usually they bloom early August but here they are just getting in mid-September when my mums and astors are done!
Winter pantry: drying asaian pears in addition to flower petals for tea. We had a watermelon that was pretty much over ripe. The hens love the seeds (only one child likes watermelon seeds so I don't do them bc she will eat a hand ful once every couple of years; we can get them cheap at the shoppes). They also love the rines -- no watermelon pickes becasue the rhine is so thin. BUT with the heart, I am making watermelon taffy/watermelon jerky/ dried watermelon. Its a little sticky but I save those little packets they drop in your pill/suppliment bottles to keep them dried out and i drop them in the dried fruit jars that i have concerns over (in addition to keeping an eye on them for the first week and then checking after a month).
Hope everyone is enjoying the harvest season and tasting the sweetness life has to offer! Get out and enjoy it all.
