Mid-September Garden and Food Preservation Report

The garden is finally winding down. It's a bittersweet time of year: I love the fresh produce but by September I am quite weary from all of the effort it takes to tend a big garden. I have pulled up the pickling cucumber plants and the green bean plants, and am in the process of digging up the cornstalks. The zucchini and yellow summer squash plants are still producing, as are the slicing cucumbers. There has been no hint of frost yet, which is unusual, so I have left the winter squash on the vines, and have not concerned myself with the carrots or onions. The tomatoes have been ripening on the vine, and I have been freezing them whole to make salsa and spaghetti sauce later, when I have more time and energy.

This year I tried a short season (72 days) variety of corn recommended by @generikat. It's called Sugar Buns, and I got it from Pinetree Garden Seeds. I was delighted to harvest most of it on Aug. 20th. This picture shows less than half of what I froze. We feasted on corn many times, and shared with friends.

I tend to leave the flowers out in the garden, but finally remembered to bring a few in to enjoy indoors. Zinnias last a long time in a vase, which I appreciate.

Cosmos, on the other hand, don't last long at all in the house. But they do make a cute bouquet.

If you've been reading my gardening posts, you may recall the ground squirrels ate the broccoli plants just as they were beginning to form heads. To my surprise, the plants made a modest comeback and produced a few bites of late-season broccoli!

Similarly, the dill, which was also consumed by critters, was not completely destroyed. A few plants grew back, and I got about a dozen heads of dill off them, and used them for pickling.

The tag claims these are golden bell peppers. Well, they may or may not have time to turn golden before frost hits. I picked all of these off one plant that I kinda knocked over with the wheelbarrow by accident. They are a tiny bit bitter, but still quite usable. I diced and froze them. (The teacup is there for scale.)

In addition to a dozen quarts and eight pints of dill pickles, I made at least two batches of refrigerator pickles, a batch of sweet pickle relish, and one of cucumber sandwich pickles. The latter two took a great deal of time and effort for a rather small result. One more pickling experiment will be described in a separate post when I get around to it.

As if I wasn't busy enough with pickles, I bought a box of pears and a box of peaches. I do like having at least a few jars of home-canned fruits on my shelf! This is just a drop in the bucket, compared to what I used to can when I was younger and had children at home to help, but it's still better than nothing.

Earlier this week I began to dig potatoes. Next time I leave them in the ground this long, I need to mark the hills with stakes so I know where to dig! The plants were so dried up, I could hardly find them.

The seed potatoes I bought were a mix of purple, red, and yellow potatoes, which I planted randomly in the rows. The purple ones produced prolifically, while the red ones only had 2-3 potatoes per hill, and I only found one or two hills of yellows. There were gaps in the rows where the plants never came up, so I suppose those must have been the rest of the yellow ones.

I only kept about a dozen gladiola corms last fall, intending to buy fresh ones this spring. I never got around to doing that. But I still have enough for a pretty bouquet in the house.

Just recently the fall-blooming crocuses suddenly popped up. They are such an odd plant! They grow lush, green foliage in the spring, which then dies off and looks dreadful. Then these lovely flowers spring up out of nowhere in the fall.

Last weekend my husband cut his foot with the chainsaw, resulting in a trip to the ER, an overnight stay, an operation to thoroughly clean the wound the next day (including a broken metatarsal bone), and another overnight stay to monitor him and administer more IV antibiotics. He was very glad to be home again in his own recliner with his own sleepwear. Home health will be coming out several times a week for PT, OT, and nursing care. He gets around with a walker, wearing a special boot, and is supposed to not put any weight on the injured foot. It's going to be a long haul until it heals, complicated by his diabetes. I will have to stay home more than I usually do, and miss out on time with the grandkids for a few weeks, but that's the way it goes. I'm just glad it wasn't any worse.

All photos taken on my Android phone.