Garden Share Collective - September 2014

Beds 1-3

August was a great month in the garden, but it lacked the usual rainfall. Our average is 3.5 inches in August, but we got half that and it was all on one day. So I watered the garden a lot. But because of that we had a lot of sun and the plants were for the most part happy.

Beds 3-8

I had mosaic virus show up in my celery plants. I got a small bit of harvest, but not much. The Kentucky Wonder beans got rust before even producing much at all. I pulled them early. I left in the Golden Gate beans that seem more resistant, but they too are starting to succumb. I think next year I won't grow Kentucky Wonder any more. Rust is just too prevalent here. I will probably grow fewer beans too. I got enough with just the Golden Gate beans and I only had six plants.

Circle Garden with beds 6-8 in the background

The insect pests weren't too bad, but the aphids are starting to show up. I successfully kept my zucchini alive through the squash vine borers only to find out why they weren't producing well this month. I had a wall of cucumbers along the back of the bed and the cucumbers were blocking the sprinklers. So the zucchini didn't get any water. I'm surprised they survived at all. Now that the problem has been diagnosed and fixed they are starting to produce. But sadly that bed doesn't get much sun this time of the year, so I won't get a lot.

August Completed

• August 1st Cleaned and Stored the Garlic
• August 1st, 5th, 11th, 18th, 23rd, 29th Watered Garden
• August 4th Transplanted Kale underseeded with Cilantro, Mache Bed 4W
• August 7th Transplanted Lettuce Bed 3W
• August 16th Removed Kentucky Wonder Beans
• August 17th Removed half of the Cucumber Wall
• August 19th Seeded Bok Choy and Choy Sum Bed 7E
• August 24th Seeded Turnips Bed 2W, Seeded Radishes Bed 6E
• Braided onions for storage as they dried
• Took down corn plants as they were harvested (not completed yet)
• Have been keeping the zucchini cleaned up so mildew doesn't take over
• Did some weeding but not enough

Harvests

Almost every day I harvested beans and cucumbers. Lots of cucumbers. More cucumbers than I could stand. I gave a lot away. And I did weird things with them like make cucumber juice. If I had gotten more of them I think I would have started leaving them on people's porches, ringing the doorbell and running away. Usually you just want to do that with zucchini, but my zucchini was being stingy this month with only about a pound a week. One week I got 15 pounds of cucumbers. And they have a third of the space that the zucchini has. I think cucumbers will take the award of "Most Productive Plant" this year. Some years chard has that honor.

Not to be left out I got a huge amount of corn in August. A lot of corn. We were very happy eating corn every day and not just a single ear each day. It turns out that three ears is my husband's limit. In addition to corn, cucumbers, and zucchini we picked broccoli, onions, celery, chard, kohlrabi, beets, and turnips. For herbs we picked parsley, basil, dill, and tarragon.

Oh how the peaches rolled in. I picked over 50 pounds from my one tree. This is its fourth year. Go tree! In addition I have started picking melons, both cantaloupes and Sensation melons. I have more out ripening on the vine. It has been a good melon year as they are very sweet and quite a few set. The last of the fruit harvested this month was the raspberries. I never get a lot at once. But I have enough to put some on my cereal every morning.

Preserving

You see above the onion braids. I have more that were braided earlier. I have almost 50 pounds of storage onions hanging in the basement now. I also cleaned up the garlic and got that into the basement too.

I did a little canning. I canned peaches. I did some preserves, some cobbler filling, and above is some peach rum sauce. The latter I made for gifts. It tastes so good. In addition to canning I did some dehydrating of herbs and the aforementioned alliums.

As is typical I froze a bunch too - the little celery that was good, some chard, zucchini, and lots of corn.

My yearly totals that I've preserved for the winter so far:

• Spinach: 24 servings
• Chard: 10 serving (need 8 more)
• Kale: 28 servings
• Broccoli: 19 servings
• Chinese cabbage: 7 servings, 4 soup packets
• Celery: 5 cups
• Zucchini: 8 cups
• Corn: 16 cups
• Cucumber juice: 2 quarts
• Rhubarb syrup: 4 half pint jars
• Gooseberry jam: 2 half pint jars
• Peach cobber filling: 4 half pints
• Peach preserves: 4 half pints
• Peach rum sauce: 6.5 half pints
• Dill Relish: 10 half pint jars
• Mizuna Soup: 4 servings
• Basil: frozen leaves
• Cilantro: frozen leaves
• Onions: 11 braids
• Garlic: 9 pounds

September To Do

• Keep up with the watering if we don't get rain (though we ought to)
• Weed
• Clean things up as the summer plants die off
• Seed tatsoi
• Seed spinach
• Possibly harvest sweet potatoes, though I might wait until October
• Sift through compost and turn pile

This post is part of the Garden Share Collective hosted by Lizzie at Strayed From the Table.