Finishing the Broccoli Bed

My broccoli bed was an unexpected success this year after getting off to a disappointing start.  I had already harvested four huge heads of broccoli over the previous few weeks which promptly went into the freezer.  I think at my last count I was up to over twenty bags of broccoli frozen for the winter from just those four heads.

Today I went through and picked some of the smaller heads that looked like they were at just the right point for harvesting.  They weren't as impressive as my first harvests, but they filled up a large bowl just the same.

I made quick work of washing and chopping the heads into manageable pieces and then blanched them in a pot of boiling water.  I love the bright green color of freshly cooked broccoli.  It looks so much more appealing to me than the dull blue green of raw broccoli.

When it was all said and done I added six more bags of broccoli florets to my freezer.  The chickens got the tough stems and whatever trimmings that I didn't want so nothing was wasted.  I think I will have plenty of broccoli to tide me over until the next growing season thanks to my very productive garden patch.

A Glut of Peppers

The summer is drawing to a close here and the temperature at night has been steadily creeping down closer to freezing.  The garden is still producing well for me but the forecast is calling for a possible hard freeze in the next few days.  I decided that I needed to harvest all of my peppers while I had the time even if it meant that they wouldn't fully ripen.

The bell peppers were loaded.  Even after thinning them out to make salsa a few times I still managed to find plenty of large peppers everywhere.  The sweet banana and green chili peppers didn't have quite the amount that the bell peppers had, but they had also been more heavily harvested this summer because they seemed to grow faster and be more prolific.  I carried bowl after bowl of peppers into the house and unloaded them into a box that I had left over from bringing home fruit from the farmer's market.  I was amazed when I filled the box completely and still had more peppers to bring in.  I wound up using the box lid to hold the chili and banana peppers.

There were a few peppers that had slug holes in them and those will be going into the use first pile.  I do plan on making another batch of salsa with some of these peppers, but I don't need this many peppers for how much I want to make.  

I was planning on freezing my extra peppers to cook with for the next year, but I don't think I could possibly eat this many peppers by myself in a year.  I already have three gallon bags stuffed full of peppers in my freezer.  My only other options are to dehydrate some of them and can some of them.  I think I might try a few recipes for pepper jelly and cowboy candy just to use them up.  I would hate for them to go to waste after all the effort that I put into growing them.  If the canning experiments turn out well, then they might just become Christmas gifts for friends and family when the holidays roll around.

First Frost

The weather is getting cooler here and it seems that winter is in a hurry to arrive this year.  A few weeks ago the mountaintops to the south of here got a layer a snow.  This weekend a cold front brought the first frost down into the valley.  It was a couple of weeks ahead of schedule and I wasn't quite prepared for it, but I did what I could and prioritized the crops that I wanted to save.

My main concern was the tomato bed because they had been so slow to ripen this year.  The plants were huge and loaded with green tomatoes so I wasn't ready to give up on this crop yet.  My make shift plan was to simply drape a sheet of plastic over the bed, using the trellis to support it in the middle like a big tent.  I bought a large roll of clear poly plastic last year with the intention of using it to cover the chicken pen in the winter and for green house material in the future.  I am glad that I had it because it was a perfect size to cover multiple beds at the same time.

The t-posts that supported the trellis did poke a few hole in the plastic but a little ventilation is good since I will have to leave this up during the day when I leave for work and I didn't want it to get too hot in there.  The edges were held down with a number of good sized rocks from my yard and so far it seems to be holding up well.  The three beds that it is covering contain my tomatoes (middle), peppers (left) and potatoes (right).  I didn't intend to include the potatoes in the protected crops, but it made the most sense to keep the plastic from touching the tomatoes too much in the middle.

Today when I uncovered the beds, they still looked like they were in fairly decent shape so I was quite happy with my last minute decision to protect them this way.

The peppers along the outside edge took a hit, but I had already gone through and harvested the best ones so I wasn't too sad about that damage.  The tomatoes only had a little bit of frost damage on the outside edges where the leaves touched the plastic so I should be able to keep harvesting them for a while longer yet.  This was my main goal and if I keep them covered so they get good and warm during the day, I expect they will start to ripen more quickly for me as well.  The potatoes also get a brief reprieve from the cold though I am sure they are ready to harvest.  Honestly I can't remember growing potatoes that stayed green and flowering this long, but I am not complaining.  They will be keeping me well fed through the winter.

Other crops didn't fare as well, but I was ready to let them go at this point in the season.  The cucumbers were already on their way out and I had pickled about 50 quarts of them this year, so I wasn't sad to see them go.  The summer squash bed was already mostly dead from squash bugs so the frost was just a final blow for them.  The stopped producing weeks ago but I still have a few that I kept for eating fresh and have dried several quarts of chips from the abundant harvest I got while they were going strong.  The watermelons had died back as well, but I picked three good sized melons the night before so I will be able to enjoy a late summer treat even after the weather gets cold.  The final crop that died with the frost were my green beans.  They had a short but productive season and I wound up with about 25 bags of beans in my freezer before it was all said and done.

My hardier crops are still doing just fine and I think they will keep growing for at least a few more weeks.  I only have a few more heads of broccoli to harvest and I may get a couple of heads of cabbage if they can head up in the next couple of weeks.  The carrots and parsnips are safe in the ground and I will probably harvest them as needed over the winter.  I find they keep better in the garden than they do in my fridge anyway.  The peas also survived the frost and are still flowering a lot, so perhaps I will get a few more weeks of harvests from them too.

The first frost may be a signal that the garden season has come to a close, but there is still plenty more work to be done there before the snow flies.  For now I am happy that the busy days of preserving my harvests can slow down.  I think I only need to make a couple more batches of salsa while the peppers and tomatoes are still fresh and then the rest of the tomatoes that I get for the season will go in the freezer until I have the time to turn them into sauce.  I also have a box of apples that will become applesauce and apple pie filling in the next few days and then the canner just might get put away for a while for a well deserved rest.

Chief Ouray Mine Hike

My schedule has been pretty busy during this time of year, but I was able to squeeze in a good long hike on one of my days off.  I decided I needed a day to play after all the work I have been doing.

The hike was new for me, at least partially.  The trail to Chief Ouray Mine branches off the Portland Trail Loop located to the south of Ouray.  The Portland loop is fast becoming one of my favorite local hikes if only because there are so few people that I encounter on that trail.  It is also fairly close to town so I can hike it before work if I have a few hours to spare.



The trail winds back and forth up the mountain side and then branches off to the north.  The trail is generally shady pine and aspen forest alternating with scree fields and open meadows.  Along the way there are plenty of gaps where the view opens up and you can see down two different valleys.

The trail also happens to take you past the Upper Cascade Falls which I was surprised to see still flowing well for this time of year.  The falls originate high on the mountainside and tumble down hundreds of feet on their journey down the rocky terrain.

This is the view looking down a steep drop in the falls.  The trail crosses here so there was much to investigate.  The view up the falls from the same spot reveals dozens of small cascades tumbling down the mountainside.

Chief Ouray Mine was a bit of a letdown.  The entryway was barred off to keep foolish people from hurting themselves.  There were lots of loose rocks that looked like they were starting to fill in the entrance hole.  The old miner's camp however was still fairly intact.  If you look closely at the left top of the cliff you can see the building with galvanized metal walls.  That was the miner's bunkhouse and it still held their cast iron stove and old mattress coils in their sleeping quarters.  There was another building on the cliff side where they must have processed the ore to extract the precious metals.  

 From various vantage points along the trail you could also see cavernous hollows dug into the mountainside.  There were likely pilot holes dug by the miners looking for a vein of ore that could prove lucrative.

On the way back there is an overlook by the amphitheater.  There are dozen of small waterfalls flowing down the mountain side across the valley.  I felt like the longer I stared at the valley, the more waterfalls I found.  They all  come together at one point and become Portland Creek.

The trail back wound it's way down the mountainside through more pine forests and meadows.  Along the way I came across some impressive dead trees that were still proudly standing despite  having probably been struck by lightning.

I love that I am able to take a day for a nice hike like this every now and again.  Working in this area is not quite the same as getting out and exploring it.  Even on trails that I have hiked before I always notice something new along the way.  No two hikes are ever the same.

A Beautiful Disaster

I was reading through some of my older posts this week and I came across a picture of my garden area from early spring.  The area looked so barren to me compared to the way it looks now.

This picture was taken in May.  At this point in the season I had a couple of established cold tolerant crops like onions and garlic.  Most of the other beds had just been or were soon to be planted.

A little father along in the season, the beds were filling in.  I seemed to have had enough time here to keep up with weeds and trellising in most of the beds, though I will admit that this was the time in the season that pulling weeds began to slip father down in the order of things that needed to get done.

Looking the other direction up this side of the garden you can see that each garden bed was brimming over with vegetation.

Now in the early fall my neglect has become apparent.  Some of my main pathways have become lost under the cover of weeds as the main focus of my gardening became harvesting.  I am spending enough time now harvesting and processing my crops for storage that I don't have the time or energy to fight the weeds any longer.

 This picture is the same view as the very first picture from early spring.  It doesn't even remotely resemble the blank slate that was my spring garden.  Most of my garden beds have plenty of weeds in them, but the crops are growing so strongly that I am not worried about weeding the beds.  When I find time along the way I might pull a couple of the larger weeds that have grown up in the paths between the beds, but most of the garden clean up will have to wait until after the first frost.

There are a few clear areas despite my neglect.  The onion beds were weeded very well when I harvested them, so that is one area that still looks like it is under control.  The bed that held my volunteer potatoes also looks pretty good, since I have dug up most of that bed too.  One by one the beds will return to their empty state as the weather turns to autumn and the crops are harvested.  Until then I will continue to reap the benefits of my hard work and fill my freezers and pantry shelves with delicious fresh bounty grown right in my front yard.

End of Season Bounty

Summer is drawing to a close here.  I can feel it in the cooler evenings and shorter days.  The trees have begun to display their fall fireworks up and down the mountains nearby.  Just a few days ago a rainstorm down here in the valley brought snow to the higher elevations and dusted the tops of the mountains to the south and east of me.  I fear that it won't be long until the snow flies here as well.

In the meantime I have been keeping busy trying to keep up with all the harvests in the garden.  Here and there I have been pulling up carrots as I need them and these beauties went into a batch of chicken stock that I was working on today.

The pickling cucumbers have slowed down considerably, but they are still producing.  They are showing signs of powdery mildew, but I think they will be able to hang on until the first frost.

The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen in larger numbers, though if they wait too much longer they will all end up ripening in my kitchen when the weather gets too cold.  This round of harvesting will get to ripen for a couple more days until I can find the time to turn them into salsa.

The peppers are producing very heavily right now.  Today I went through and picked the largest and most ripe of them, but I left plenty on the plants so they could continue to change into their final colors.  

 All of the sweet chili peppers went into the freezer today, but I left out the bell peppers for when I make salsa again in a few days.  I already have three gallon bags packed tightly with frozen peppers in the freezer and I will probably get at least three more in there before they are done for the year.

 The tops of the peppers that didn't make it into the freezer were chopped into smaller pieces and spread out on a tray for the dehydrator.  I want to try making a dry salsa mix from my left over pepper pieces and using up the tops means that I waste even less of my hard earned harvest.

This week at the farmers market I got some good deals on the local fruit grower's end of season crops as well.  I had been wanting to get more plums from the market to make a second batch of plum wine and was rewarded with the very last box of plums for the season for $10.  They were over ripe and some were beginning to go bad, but they were going to be fermenting so that didn't matter as much.  I simply picked through the box and scrubbed the keepers before I pitted and chopped them to begin the wine making process.

 All in all I wound up with about twelve pounds of plums that were usable from the whole box.  I won't be making a large batch of wine from this many plums, but I hope to get at least nine or ten bottles of wine for my trouble. 

The other final fruit crop that I was able to snag at the market was the last pears of the season.  I only had a couple of jars of canned pears from this year and wanted more, so I bought up all the pears that they had left.  They are still green yet, but they will ripen over the next few days and I should be able to find time to can them before they go bad.

Winter will be here before too long, so I am happy to fill my days preserving the bounty of my labors.  Every week I am putting more filled jars on my shelves and bags of veggies in my freezer.  It is becoming a balancing act of having enough space for everything and having enough time to process it all.  I have been going through older things in my freezer and trying to use them up to make room for all of the incoming produce.  Not everything that goes into the freezer will be staying there all winter, but freezing crops like tomatoes really helps because once they are frozen I can process and can them at my leisure.  These last few weeks before the first frost can be hectic with all that needs to get done and I look forward to the break that is coming with the colder weather.

Broccoli Harvest Begins

This year the broccoli got off to a late start, but they have made up for lost time from the looks of things.  My starts didn't grow well and died off within weeks of planting so I ended up planting a flat of broccoli from the local nursery.  They were slow to start growing also and I was afraid that I wouldn't be getting much of a broccoli harvest this year, but I have been pleasantly surprised.

The broccoli bed hasn't gotten much attention in the past few weeks since I have been so busy harvesting the squash, beans and cucumbers.  I did notice that they had started to growing their flowering heads but they were small and unripe the last time I got a good look at them so I thought it would be awhile before I could harvest anything.  I am glad that I had a chance to check on them today.  The heads were huge and a couple of them were on the verge of bolting so I made a beeline for my knife and a bowl and promptly harvested two enormous heads.

I think broccoli stores best frozen so I made short work of one of the heads by chopping it up into manageable florets and blanching it in boiling water for 3-5 minutes.  Once they were blanched I transferred them to an ice water bath so they would cool quickly.

After they cooled down enough I drained them into the sink and let them drip dry for a few minutes

This year I am only freezing the florets for myself and giving the chickens the scraps of the thick, tough stems.  I think I will still have plenty for the freezer despite giving half the head to the chickens.  This one broccoli head gave me at least eight servings of broccoli that I will be freezing for later.

They are so fresh and tender when they get frozen this fast.  It will add nice variety to my dinners this winter and it will be tastier than anything that I could buy from the store with the bonus of costing me nearly nothing.  In a few weeks this harvest will soon be over and my freezer will be fuller with many fine veggies from my front yard.

Canning Salsa

Fall is fast approaching and I was wondering if I was ever going to be able to make salsa this year.  Last year I had salsa on my shelves by the end of July, but here we are at the beginning of September and I am just now making the first batch of salsa for the year.  The tomatoes have been very slow to start ripening and I have been throwing them into a bag in the freezer as I harvest them.  This week they decided to ripen enough for a whole batch of salsa which calls for 10 cups of tomatoes.

The recipe also calls for 5 cups of sweet peppers.  I used mostly large green bell peppers, but threw in some sweet chili peppers too.

 The 5 cups of onions that went into the salsa were the small or damaged onions from my harvest that needed to be used first.  Preserving them in salsa is a good way to make sure they get used before they go bad so I waste less of my hard earned crops.

This was the first jalapeno harvest of the season and I picked the biggest and thickest ones I could find and chopped up 2 1/2 cups of them and added them to the pot. I also threw in a couple tablespoons of cilantro and salt and topped it all off with apple cider vinegar.

Once I had all the ingredients chopped up and in the pot I started to heat the whole mixture up, stirring it all the while.  It was a colorful batch of salsa fresh from the garden.

After it came to a boil I continued to stir the pot while it simmered for another ten minutes.  While I was preparing the salsa I had set up my canner and jars and they were hot and ready to go by the time the salsa was cooked enough.  One by one I filled the jars and set them back in the canner where they boiled for twenty five minutes.  When time was up I let them cool down for ten more minutes before I removed them from the water bath.  I ended up with eight pints of fresh salsa total (plus one not totally full jar in the fridge) with many more on their way before the season in over.  I think I might need to replenish my pint jar stash soon because the tomatoes are going to start ripening in droves over the next few weeks.  That means there will be lots of salsa and tomato sauce in my future.

Mixing Crops In The Garden

As I have progressed through several years of gardening I like to try little experiments from year to year just to see if there might be a more efficient way of doing things.  Companion planting is something that I have attempted over the years and have learned that some combinations work out better than others when it comes to certain crops.

I have grown several variations on the three sisters planting of corn, beans and squash with various outcomes.  The first year I tried it I laid out a block pattern with patches of corn and beans alternating with spaces filled with squash.  It turns out that my timing was off with some of the plantings so things didn't grow quite the way that I had hoped.  The happiest crop was the corn which grew super tall and shaded out the squash below.  The beans were happy to grow up the corn but I found them very difficult to harvest and decided that shelling beans would be better for this kind of set up.  The squash that grew along the edges of the blocks did ok, but weren't super productive.

Last year I think I found a way of mixing these crops that was better for all of them, but the plan could still use a little tweaking.  The squash was only planted along the front edge of the bed and were given plenty of room to spread out.  They made a great ground cover to keep the weeds at bay once they were well established.  The corn was planted as early as possible and once it came up I planted the beans among them where ever there was a space from a corn seed that didn't germinate.  The corn gets a head start on the beans this way and makes a great trellis for the climbing pole beans that I like to grow.

Another crop that I have experimented with are tomatoes.  The main issue that I have had with tomatoes is that I still haven't found a trellis that I really like for them.  I have done the cheap wire cages and tying them to a stake.  They usually end up overgrowing the trellis and pulling it to the ground defeating the purpose.  This year I am trying the same kind of trellis that I used for my cucumbers last year.  I have chicken wire with two inch holes stretched between t-posts that I drove into the ground.  I have done my best to prune off the lower suckers and secure the growing vines to the fence with baling twine.  This method seems to be working the best so far and there is enough room at the base of the plants that I decided to see if they could happily share the bed with a handful of other crops.  I had planted the basil seedlings that I started this spring along the edge of the tomato bed spacing them several feet apart.  After the second pruning and trellising session with the tomato vines I found I had plenty of space between the basil plants to add in a smattering of carrot seeds.  They will probably grow very slowly in the deep shade beneath the tomatoes but I will leave them in the ground until after the tomatoes die back in the fall.

Carrots are one of those crops that are discreet enough that they can be tucked in just about anywhere there is a little space.  They can stay in the ground well into winter so I don't even have to worry about harvesting them during the busy season of summer.  All I do is sprinkle a few seeds where ever I can find a little room and I will have plenty of hidden treasures to dig up long after the summer garden is gone.  I like to use them to help break up soil in a bed and they also help to bring deeper nutrients in the soil closer to the surface for other crops to use.  They don't interfere with the above ground growth of most crops because they have fern-like leaves that don't grow very tall.  I have planted them in my broccoli beds, alongside my tomatoes and peppers and mixed in with lettuce.  The general rule with carrots seems to be that you have to plant them far enough away from the main crops that they have enough light to get established.  If they get buried under large shady leaves then they will not get very big until the shade is removed.

Lettuce is another crop that can be mixed with other crops if there is room in a bed.  I did sprinkle some lettuce seeds among the corn last year and it did well in the summer heat because of the cool shade of the corn they were growing under.  Lettuce also has a fairly short growing period so it can be used in succession planting to fill in holes in beds, or it can be planted to fill in a bed where an early crop was cleared.  There are so many varieties that the array of leafy patterns can be quite decorative in a vegetable garden.

Peak Season Garden Tour

The garden has gone into overdrive at this point in the season.  The plants have thoroughly taken over their beds and have been crowding the paths between beds too.  Making my way through the garden now is like a little adventure every morning.  Harvesting has become a daily chore as well.  I usually visit each bed with a large bowl and once I have picked all that I can, I make my way inside to deposit my bounty for further processing.

This was my first attempt at growing watermelons.  They got off to such a bad start this year that I didn't think I was going to get a harvest from this bed, but they surprised me.  After replanting them twice and then watching them stall out for several weeks after they germinated I wound up with two plants which are now growing quite happily.  I think I will get at least three melons from these plants so my efforts here aren't wasted after all.

The summer squash bed has been producing loads of squash for the past month or so, but things have finally started to slow down for this bed.  I have found that my patty pan and yellow squash have become infested with squash bugs and they are slowly but surely dying back.  The zucchini however seem unaffected thus far and are still going strong and giving me one or two squash daily.

The bed of Glass Gem Corn has made an excellent recovery after nearly dying from a watering system malfunction.  They are about five feet tall now and have sent up their tassels.  I do my best to help pollinate them when I find new silks peeking from between the leaves.  I look forward to the colorful harvest that I will get from this bed.

The cucumbers are doing extremely well.  They are spreading so much that they have invaded the beds on either side and would soon take over the garden if I gave them half a chance.  I fill a gallon bag with cucumbers for pickling nearly every day and at this point in the season I have pickled well over thirty quarts of them.  I expect they will keep this up until the frost hits so I still have at least several more weeks of this until I can take a break.

The peppers are quite happy as well.  The plants are heavy with fruit and I have already frozen several gallons of them.  I am saving my next big harvest for when I have enough tomatoes to make a batch of salsa.  Whatever doesn't go into salsa will end up in the freezer and I will be eating fresh peppers well into next year from the looks of things.

The tomatoes have become a massive solid wall of vegetation and have grown taller than the trellis that I have secured them to.  I have given up on trying to train them any longer though I might trim back some of the more unruly ones just so I can walk down the path to harvest them.  They are still ripening very slowly though I am now getting a few each day, though still not enough to make a batch of salsa.  I fear that they will decide to ripen all at once and if that happens I hope I can find the freezer space to take on this many tomatoes.  I have never tried to grow this many tomatoes at once, but apparently I am doing something right from the looks of things.  

These peas were planted after the first onion harvest and so far they look to be growing quite well.  In previous years my attempts at growing fall peas didn't do well because I waited to long to get them into the dirt.  This year I might have gotten the timing right and if I am lucky I will be able to harvest them right around the time that the weather starts to cool.

The green beans are doing very well now that they have filled in the bed.  I had to replant this bed three or four times and was afraid that I wouldn't get very many to freeze for my winter stores.  Thankfully these plants grow quickly and I am now harvesting beans from the seeds that were planted last.  I am very happy with the quality of these beans too.  They grow very long and even when they are large, they remain tender and stringless.  I wasn't going to grow this variety again, but now that they have actually done well, I might consider them for future plantings.

Carrots are the main crop in this bed, though they have been taken over by weeds.  There was supposed to be cabbage on either side of the carrots, but the seedlings that germinated were killed by slugs.  Only two of them survived the slug attack, so I may still get a couple of cabbages out of the deal, but I'm not sure they will finish growing by the time the weather changes. 

The broccoli bed is finally getting around to making broccoli for me.  The plants didn't send up any flower heads until just a few weeks ago.  From the looks of things I will get about nine or ten nice heads of broccoli from this bed.  Broccoli is another crop that I store in the freezer.  I think this crop will be ready soon and will probably get processed in one session just to make my life a little easier. 

Last but not least on this tour is my flower bed.  The irises that were planted this spring have made a full recovery and it looks like they will be here to stay.  The wildflowers that I planted behind them also are doing quite well and have added lots of color to my yard.  I love to look out at see the diversity that I have helped flourish in this small space that I have to work with.  Not only are there plenty of happy, healthy veggies and flowers, but there is also new wildlife in my yard.  I have come across salamanders and toads, all manner of insects and several different species of birds that didn't hang around my yard when I first moved here.