Another chard harvest -- still under plastic (mild day today)

Not sure how much they're actually growing given the cold weather and low sun, but it's nice to get a few more harvests.

Chard(/lettuce) now covered under clear plastic instead of blanket

(The blanket thing was lazy/dumb)

Just for fun to see how long the harvest might last.

Chards semi-flopped from cold; will cover from tonight's snow

Last night wasn't particularly cold -- minus 5 -- but today the central bed's chards are semi-flopped and didn't bounce back during the day.  So, did a potentially-final? harvest.

Snow is coming tonight/tomorrow (5 to 10 cm) so just for fun I decided to cover the chards (and the mini late-sow lettuce).  Placed a tall fence over them then simply draped the blue curtains over the chards (including the ones against the west house, which haven't flopped yet) and a sheet over the lettuce.

Tuberous begonia tuber brought inside

A hard frost must have hit this week finally, as the plant was obviously kaput.  The thick stems were still intact, so maybe I should have / could have waited a bit longer for more frost, but I wanted to get all the containers washed up today as it's the last nice day (high of 18!).

Harvested all potted Bolero carrots: Results

The carrots sowed July 26th in the big black pot were short, but great!  Not hairy, just short -- nice ~3" beauties.  No difference in size from the ones that I thinned generously vs. the ones I left more crowded.  I wonder if they would do fine in a shorter container, given they only used the upper bit of the pot.

On the other hand, the ones sowed April 12th in the grey rectangular pots, which growed beautifully in 2021, weren't a flop, but were all hairy and short.  Did I wait too long to harvest?  The July 26th ones noted above were much nicer.

Hmmm -- reviewing my notes -- the July 26th pot had been amended with kelp and MRP, whereas the April 12th one I didn't seem to have added anything to it -- maybe that could be related?

But regardless, they're all perfectly edible!

Shade success: Potted short zinnias

The potted short zinnias (in the fake terracotta pots) did great in the shade along the fence.  Would definitely do this again.

Zucchini harvest by month

Monthly tally:

June = 4

July = 51

August = 54

September = 22

October = 7

Total = 138

Hollyhock flower(seed) branches placed into yard for birds

Took the long (very long!) hollyhock flower stems off the front plants and put them into the yard in three spots along the west bed, supported by tomato cages (and most cut in half so that they stay upright).  The house sparrows had been eating them when they were out front, so hopefully someone will enjoy them in the yard as well.

So, if holly hocks spring up in the yard next year, this is why!

138 (!!!!) zucchinis harvested this year! (final one was yesterday)

A record year for me!  That's 138 zucchinis out of a total of 8 or 9 plants (3 or 4 of which were late starts).  It would have been a few more had I not been away camping when the first ones flowered.

That's 15 to 17 zucchinis per plant!

The freezer is certainly well stocked with zucchini soups and sauces.

The varieties were Golden Glory and Eight Ball.  I loved them both, they both seemed to do equally well.

The 7 tulled zucchinis had zero issues with SVB.  Will definitely tulle most of my zukes again in future years.

SVB found inside the last of the zucchini plants (pulled today)

Since the plant was clearly killed by frost overnight, pulled it out.  Actually was going to leave the root in the ground to decompose, but when I cut the vine lo and behold there was a borer grub inside.  So, pulled the whole plant out.  Found a second borer (a big one) and there may have been more, I didn't check too closely.

This would explain why the plant hadn't done much lately.

This plant was one of the few zucchinis that were never tulled, so it's not surprising.  Actually it's more surprising that it lasted this long.

First frost was last night (first in my yard)

Alas, the one zucchini plant I hadn't pulled yet was clearly struck down by frost last night, as was one of the volunteer ground cherry plants.

The zinnias and stevias are still looking good -- as surprisingly is the buckwheat (and of course the cool-weather things like chard, celery, and carrots).

There had been definite frosts outside of the yard (with ice on cars, on the grass on the hill, etc.), but until now the yard seemed to have escaped it.

House sparrows eating basil seeds! (dried on plant)

Must be quite the flavour punch compared to millet!!

~8 bags of leaves shredded and put into yard

To shred them:  Used the big powerful whipper snipper, in basement (since noisy), leaves into green bin then "blendering" them with the whipper snipper.  Would be easier/better with wider bin like garbage can, but it still worked.

Eye goggles, face mask, and gloves.

Most of the leaves went into the beds (dug in); some went onto the grass paths.

Some left over will probably keep in basement (in garbage bag) for the winter.

Song sparrows, house sparrows, and junco in yard at same time

Fun!

Green bean harvest and meal -- OMG delicious!! [but big ones have strings]

Harvested most of the rest of the green beans I planted for a fall crop.  They were quite small, but, weather isn't great and needed enough to add to the harvest a few days ago to make it worth steaming up.

So -- steamed them up for a few minutes, and had them with margarine and salt -- and WOW it was actually delicious!!  For being so unappealing raw -- what a transformation.  Makes me totally want to grow them again next year!

[Edited on 31 Oct 2022, after eating the final mini-harvest from a few days ago, to say that the full-sized bean pods have two strings each which are inedible -- so I just stripped them off while eating.  Might be worth looking for stringless type?? (if that exists) Or consider harvesting before full-size.]

Wow!! 2 pounds of potatoes from the a/c corner with the 7 runtiest seed potatoes, no hilling! Total 6 lbs potatoes

What a great surprise!  I never would have imagined a solid 2 pounds of potatoes from this little corner, especially since it was only the runtiest seed potatoes that were planted here.

Oh -- and, I did no hilling or troughing or anything there -- just plunked them in and covered them up, and it was only ~4-5" of good soil.  Amazing!

That makes a total of 6 pounds of fingerling potatoes from the $27 worth of seed potatoes (3 packages).  Thats... $4.50 a pound :D

Holy longgg roots on the Jasper tomato!!! Will definitely grow again -- did great

Removed the plant today as part of cleaning up (it was still going strong) and WOW those roots!!!  At least one was at least 3 feet long!!!

Will definitely grow this variety again.  Yes it had early blight, but it didn't bother the plant at all, and it was completely unaffected by the late blight that rapidly took out all the other tomato plants a few weeks ago.

Plus it grow so tall!  It was in the biggest tomato cage, which it definitely outgrew, but fortunately it was right next to the vertical structure so it meshed itself onto that and grew, grew, and grew.

Leaf collection began tonight

Love my rake, makes this so much easier.  

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House sparrows eating hollyhock seeds!

Neat!  There are certainly hundreds if not thousands of seeds on the hollyhocks in front of the house.  Saw them from the kitchen window, right there eating seeds.  Fun!

First fall beans harvested! Skinny but I'll take them -- 65 days to harvest

The beans sowed on August 4th (or rather, the few that sprouted/grew) have been struggling with these cold nights as have the cucumbers, but today I noticed there were actually some harvestable-sized ones!  And with tonight's forecast of -1, figured I'd harvest those.  Still some really small ones on the plant, will leave those in case the frost holds off...