This week was a dichotomy of waiting and shoveling. When I wasn’t shoveling, I was waiting for someone – an internet technician, a contractor for a quote. And when I wasn’t waiting, I was ankle-deep in the compost pile, pitching one shovel-full at a time into the back of the gator. I made use of the waiting periods as best I could – browsing wallpaper designs (are all wallpaper designers on acid?) and area rugs (same question).
Growing Food
I finished filling the three garden beds I installed last week – the unloading much easier than the loading, thanks to the dump bed on my family’s gator. This job would not have gotten done without it, which amplifies my urgency to buy one of my own – but I digress.
I then worked in a bucket-full of perlite, left in an industrial quantity from the previous owners. I wouldn’t typically use perlite because it’s not a renewable resource, but I’m happy to make use of anything that’s been discarded!
With all of this garden space, I also made some executive decisions regarding my fall garden. One bed is already home to strawberry plants; the other two are reserved for asparagus and garlic, respectively. However, garlic won’t be planted until October, and I’ve decided to forgo asparagus until the spring, so that I can benefit from having a lot of varieties to choose from rather than narrowing my choices down to the slim pickings that are available at this time of year.
That means I have two eight by four foot garden beds that I can plant out for a fall harvest, plus the cold frame left from the previous owner for fall and winter greens. While I have a hoard of seeds from years’ past, I don’t have many seeds appropriate for a fall planting – a thinly veiled excuse to place an order, this time from Territorial Seeds, for carrots, peas, and lettuces.
We had an excellent harvest of garlic at my family’s farm, which really just feels like a bonus compared to the garlic scape harvest we pulled from the same crop earlier this summer. Although we can’t remember the name of the variety, I will replant some cloves in my garlic bed and also ordered Spanish Roja for something a little different. I have no interest in ever planting softneck garlic again, because the scapes produced by hardneck are even better than the garlic bulbs themselves.
Preserving the Harvest
Here in Zone 6b, our garden is just now starting to produce fruit – a few zucchini, a couple of cherry tomatoes. However, the herbs and leafy greens have been exploding for several weeks.
I am historically bad at staying ahead of the herb harvest – suddenly they are sparse and weighed down with seeds, and I realize I’ve forgotten to dry any for the winter. With little else to preserve, this has been a good time to get ahead of it.
I cut a basket of oregano, basil, sage, dill, and borage. I need to come up with a better system for drying herbs, which will be easier to make decisions about once I’ve painted and refreshed the kitchen. In the meantime, I hung a bunch of sage and a bunch of basil in the kitchen window, and sent the rest through the dehydrator that I’ve lugged through two cross-country moves. I believe hang-drying is better for preserving the most flavor, but the dehydrator was spectacularly fast and made my house smell incredible. On the lowest temperature setting (about 95°F) it took about 12 hours for most of the herbs, with a few extra hours for some of the larger, more stubborn basil leaves.
While I was in the garden, I also harvested some kale for the freezer. It takes almost no effort to preserve this way and is an easy addition to smoothies and soups. Plus, harvesting frequently improves the quality of the subsequent leaves – a win-win.
Moving Forward
There have been a few tasks that have been shifted from week to week that I’d like to get off the list once and for all. My two mulberry trees that have been in fabric pots since March would surely love a permanent home, and I need to stitch together pallets for a more formal composting system.
It’s also time to start firewood considerations – there are piles throughout the property, but I need to set up a rack in the barn and pull the piles together to see what I’m working with. Then, I’ll need to finally learn how to use my dad’s chainsaw and start processing some of the fallen trees on my family’s property. There’s more than enough firewood here for several years, but some will need more aging than others.
I also need to push on with house decorations – drywall repair and painting in the entryway and kitchen, shopping for a kitchen table, final decisions on rugs…
That seems like more than a week’s worth of work. I AM having fun, I swear!
Talk soon,
KC