Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Never ending chores

I'm sure this is the busiest time for every gardener in North America. It's the time to do absolutely everything at once - cleaning dead plants, harvesting, preserving, composting, preparing for the fall garden, and of course weeding.

In the last week or so, I have done so much of everything, and I'm still not done with everything on my to do list.

1) Cleaning - Tomato plants are all dead from late blight. I pulled them up and cleaned the areas. I also pulled all the melon and cucumber vines from the earlier in the season. The second crop of cucumbers is slowly coming. Some pepper plants, hard beans, kale, onions (never grew), also have been pulled and the beds were cleared.

2) Fall Planting - In the newly prepared beds, I have planted: Cabbages, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Kale, Komatsuna, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Celery, Radish, Carrots, and Daikon.

3) Harvesting - A handful of beans every few days. Hot peppers are starting to turn color. The second wave of bell peppers are coming -still small but growing. Lots of herbs. A cucumber here and there.

4)Preserving - Canned 15 quarts of tomato sauce, 5 quarts tomato juice, 12 half-pints of tomato ketchup. Dried a bunch of herbs. Put away a few bags of green beans and ready-made meals in the freezer.

5) To do - Trellis peas! I planted them about 3 weeks ago and they are already flowering! Need to plant beets, Mache, more spinach, Lettuce and other greens. Build a tunnel for brassica beds. Clean old and damaged Komatuna leaves (cabbage loopers!). Transplant raspberries and Blueberries. And WEED everywhere!

6) Questions - When is it safe to plant brassica out in the open without the protection from those moths? I still see a few flying around, but will the eggs hatch and survive through the fall to damage my plants? Or is it time to get BT?

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