September 12, 2016

fall vegetable varieties

These are the varieties I planted for our fall seedling sale: Broccoli, Bay Meadows and Arcadia Kale, Nash’s Green and Vates Beets, Touchstone Gold and Red Ace Cilantro, Calypso Swiss Chard, Bright Lights and Peppermint Calendula, Flashback Escarole, Natacha Lettuce, Cherokee, Monte Carlo, and Allstar Mix Bok Choi, Black Summer and Win Win Mustard, Scarlet Frills Spinach, Emperor I’ll let you know what grows well. This year, it seems very dependent on the weather. Who knows what fall will bring here in the NE!!

September 11, 2016

fall seedling sale

We’re still growing! Here’s a link to our Facebook page with photos of our fall seedling sale. Belmont Victory Gardens fall seedlings on Facebook

September 9, 2016

fall seedlings on a hot September day

I brought my fall seedlings inside to stay cool today. They’re covering most of my dining room floor. It’s mid-September and it’s going up in the 90’s!! Hard to believe. I’m growing the seedlings for our community garden, but it’s been a struggle to keep them happy this year. They’d like cool weather. They were outside the last 2 weeks, but now they’re inside. Tomorrow we’ll sell them and gardeners will plant them out. Fortunately the forecast is cloudy and cool (low 80’s) with scattered showers. I’m growing the seedlings…

September 9, 2016

my garden today

My garden is overgrown with all sorts of vegetables and flowers. I love it!! My tomatoes are tall – 15 feet or so. Peppers, at least 5 feet tall. Squashes, watermelon, and beans are rambling all over. I’m harvesting, canning, and pickling almost every day. And weeding, staking, planting fall crops, and pulling past summer crops. Gradually the summer is moving towards fall. We have temps of 90F coming tomorrow, but that seems like it may be our last hot day. Our nights are cooling off. All we need is…

September 1, 2016

comparing paste tomatoes

I’m growing four varieties of paste tomatoes this year. Top: Amish Paste, middle: San Marzano, bottom: Jersey Devil. (My Heinz 2653 plant doesn’t have any ripe fruit right now.) My favorite is Jersey Devil, big, meaty, and very productive. I’ll definitely grow this one again next year. Last year I grew eight paste varieties (Cordova, San Marzano, San Marzano Gigante 3, Stump of the World, Opalka, Nova, Polish Linguisa, and Heinz 2653). My favorites were Polish Linguisa and Opalka. I wanted to grow these again this year, as well as…

August 30, 2016

“sun-dried” tomatoes

I have an inexpensive vegetable drier. It is great. We cut up and dried down two big bowls of tomatoes. At 135 F, most were ready after 12 hours, a few went about 5 hours longer. We packed them into several pint and half pint jars and covered them with olive oil. In the past, these have kept 6 months of more in the refrigerator.

August 29, 2016

today’s harvest

This is today’s harvest from my community garden. It was boring digging potatoes alone. As a pup, Skippy would dig a bit with me. As an adult, he would bark at passersby. Not really a good think to do. I’d say “shush!”. He thought it was his garden and I was more than glad to share it with him. The other story today is the dryness. The garden soil is rising in clouds as I dig. So dry. I’ve been watering as when I can, probably every four days, a…

August 28, 2016

distractions

An hour or so after Skippy died, my husband came home from work. My mother in law was visiting. We worked together, talked, cried. We made and canned bread-and-butter pickles, dilled beans, raspberry jam, and bottled 50 lbs of honey. The next day we dried 4 pints of tomatoes, and donated 30 lbs of squash to the local food pantry. I have to stay busy.

August 23, 2016

water restrictions

Our whole region is now in emergency drought restrictions. The town has banned any outdoor sprinklers or irrigation systems. We can only water by hand and only between 6 pm and 9 am. So I can still keep my vegetable garden growing. Everything else will dry up. I’m sure we’ll loose a number of bushes around the house.

August 22, 2016

fall seedlings for my community garden

It seems crazy to be doing fall and winter planting in the middle of this August drought and heat. But it’s time. Since so few fall seedlings are available in nurseries, I’ve volunteered to grow seedlings for our community garden. I have 50 orders for about 150 pots of about 10 different varieties. I’m growing the. In small pots, about 4 plants per pot. I set up a large table in my garden to grow them on. I had to cover then to keep the cabbage worms away. With the…

weeks and counting until my last spring frost