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One of the questions in the autism assessment was something along the lines of, did you line toys up or sort them as a kid?
Well, it's fall. If spring is for sowing, summer is for harvesting, then autumn is for transforming. And transforming looks a lot like processing three roosters into fifteen jars, taking a clump of a thousand tomato seeds on a paper towel and winnowing them apart and separating them into packets, or taking lumps of fat and rendering them into amber lard which gets zipped into bars of shining ivory soap.
It's for transforming chaos into order, for taking the bounty scattered across the house, capturing it in geometric shapes, and shelving it in shining lines according to its properties: meat, fruit, vegetable, seed, soap.
Sowing and daydreaming brings great satisfaction. Reaping the harvest gives great satisfaction. When so much of that has been done that I'm glutted on it it's time to sort my toys in beautiful piles of abundance and line them up in shining lines.
Well, it's fall. If spring is for sowing, summer is for harvesting, then autumn is for transforming. And transforming looks a lot like processing three roosters into fifteen jars, taking a clump of a thousand tomato seeds on a paper towel and winnowing them apart and separating them into packets, or taking lumps of fat and rendering them into amber lard which gets zipped into bars of shining ivory soap.
It's for transforming chaos into order, for taking the bounty scattered across the house, capturing it in geometric shapes, and shelving it in shining lines according to its properties: meat, fruit, vegetable, seed, soap.
Sowing and daydreaming brings great satisfaction. Reaping the harvest gives great satisfaction. When so much of that has been done that I'm glutted on it it's time to sort my toys in beautiful piles of abundance and line them up in shining lines.
Every day something new
Sep. 27th, 2022 10:33 amI made garden signs for all my roses and gooseberries. Soon will do cherries and haskaps and apples, at least the ones I know the names of. These are signpost-style, with a stake and painted sign screwed to it. My plastic tags were not holding their marks, I guess sharpies have been reformulated, and so I lost some names that way. I lost some other names because crows and geese like the tags. So, wooden signs seem both practical in an enduring way and kind of charming. Now if only I had pretty painting handwriting, but I was not turning this into a stenciling project.
I found two more squash out there that looked pretty ripe, hiding among the weeds where they were sheltered from frost.
Josh helped me find a dairy crate full of relatively ripe cascade ruby gold cobs, so I'm calling that more of a success than I earlier anticipated. We'll be looking through the painted mountain today. The plants were definitely frost-nipped but I don't think the cobs themselves were harmed.
It's neat to be out in the corn and hear that dry, rustling noise of the leaves. Humans have been listening to that sound for many thousands of years as they bring in the harvest.
I've done a bunch of mixed pickles as documented on my preserving site, urbandryad on dreamwidth (I just keep recipes there). Basically I've done a couple gallons with my zesty brine at half strength for salt and sugar, a couple gallons with a lightly sweet brine, and I'll do a couple gallons with a salt-only brine. all have bay leaves and pepper, I forgot the garlic in the lightly sweet ones. Oops. The veg mix was largely brought up from the big farm on Josh's way from the city, it's more-or-less 1 part cauliflower, 1 part carrot, 1 part green beans, 1 part hot peppers, 1/4 part celery. The goal is a moderately hot pickle mix to eat with charcuterie, everything bite-sized.
Meanwhile Black Chunk (who has still not got a better name) had 8 piglets, and she's doing well with them. Lotta piglets this fall it seems. Ugh I guess I need to castrate, better do that while Josh is here. I will probably miss Tucker's calming presence for it.
A chicken in the bottom chicken run got huge adobe balls on her claws, they must have accumulated through iterations of mud (the ducks splash by the water a lot), dust (everywhere else in the run, it's been a dry summer), and straw/wood shavings from inside the coop. It took Josh and I roughly 3 hours to soak them (did nothing), chip away at the very edges with pliers delicately so as not to hurt wherever her toes were in the balls, and then finally pry the last bits off. I do not know why she got it and no others did. Her toes inside the balls were fine, though she did lose a fingernail by getting loose enough to shake her foot when we were part done and... you know, just don't think about it too hard, let's just say it was another weird and uncomfortable farming moment. She's good now, I gave her a penicillin shot for the one raw bit of the toe where the mud was rubbing and the toenail, I figured her body could use the help, and put her back in with everyone. She's lifting her feet ridiculously high as if trying to compensate for the weight that is no longer there, but is walking and perching just fine. Poor girl. Also I'm much less suspicious of cobb houses now, my goodness that stuff was durable. Clay soil, wow does it behave in unexpected ways sometimes.
Meanwhile I am going to keep one of the americauna roosters from my friend in town, and give another to a friend who has a couple hens and wants to let them hatch out more chickens in spring. That means 7 going into the soup pot this week, which is manageable. I've had the propane ring on the deck and that makes canning a lot more comfortable given the humidity situation in here, not sure if I'll can the roosters immediately or freeze them a bit but I'm more likely to can them now.
Asparagus planted. Daffodills, chiondoxia & relateds, and muscari ordered. These are all supposed to be vole-resistant, we'll see how it goes.
I found two more squash out there that looked pretty ripe, hiding among the weeds where they were sheltered from frost.
Josh helped me find a dairy crate full of relatively ripe cascade ruby gold cobs, so I'm calling that more of a success than I earlier anticipated. We'll be looking through the painted mountain today. The plants were definitely frost-nipped but I don't think the cobs themselves were harmed.
It's neat to be out in the corn and hear that dry, rustling noise of the leaves. Humans have been listening to that sound for many thousands of years as they bring in the harvest.
I've done a bunch of mixed pickles as documented on my preserving site, urbandryad on dreamwidth (I just keep recipes there). Basically I've done a couple gallons with my zesty brine at half strength for salt and sugar, a couple gallons with a lightly sweet brine, and I'll do a couple gallons with a salt-only brine. all have bay leaves and pepper, I forgot the garlic in the lightly sweet ones. Oops. The veg mix was largely brought up from the big farm on Josh's way from the city, it's more-or-less 1 part cauliflower, 1 part carrot, 1 part green beans, 1 part hot peppers, 1/4 part celery. The goal is a moderately hot pickle mix to eat with charcuterie, everything bite-sized.
Meanwhile Black Chunk (who has still not got a better name) had 8 piglets, and she's doing well with them. Lotta piglets this fall it seems. Ugh I guess I need to castrate, better do that while Josh is here. I will probably miss Tucker's calming presence for it.
A chicken in the bottom chicken run got huge adobe balls on her claws, they must have accumulated through iterations of mud (the ducks splash by the water a lot), dust (everywhere else in the run, it's been a dry summer), and straw/wood shavings from inside the coop. It took Josh and I roughly 3 hours to soak them (did nothing), chip away at the very edges with pliers delicately so as not to hurt wherever her toes were in the balls, and then finally pry the last bits off. I do not know why she got it and no others did. Her toes inside the balls were fine, though she did lose a fingernail by getting loose enough to shake her foot when we were part done and... you know, just don't think about it too hard, let's just say it was another weird and uncomfortable farming moment. She's good now, I gave her a penicillin shot for the one raw bit of the toe where the mud was rubbing and the toenail, I figured her body could use the help, and put her back in with everyone. She's lifting her feet ridiculously high as if trying to compensate for the weight that is no longer there, but is walking and perching just fine. Poor girl. Also I'm much less suspicious of cobb houses now, my goodness that stuff was durable. Clay soil, wow does it behave in unexpected ways sometimes.
Meanwhile I am going to keep one of the americauna roosters from my friend in town, and give another to a friend who has a couple hens and wants to let them hatch out more chickens in spring. That means 7 going into the soup pot this week, which is manageable. I've had the propane ring on the deck and that makes canning a lot more comfortable given the humidity situation in here, not sure if I'll can the roosters immediately or freeze them a bit but I'm more likely to can them now.
Asparagus planted. Daffodills, chiondoxia & relateds, and muscari ordered. These are all supposed to be vole-resistant, we'll see how it goes.
Every season is the best season
Sep. 16th, 2022 09:23 amI do not understand how I can have so much trouble with most transitions, but also do so well with seasons. Still, I do well with seasons. I love the seasonality of this place. I'm fully ready for each season in turn to shift my focus and my activities. Maybe it's the predictability, the feeling of processing through familiar sets of activities and so I can improve or alter what I did previously but don't need to start again from nothing. Maybe it's the feeling of building on last season's work so I never feel disconnected from the past, and knowing next season will build on this season's work so I don't feel that abrupt slicing loss of transition.
Either way, gardening is pretty much over and I'm ok with that (!?!!!???? !! ? !). I have turnips, the last of the soup peas, and some beets to bring in. I have the favas to look over, and the beans to see if any pods ripened. It's been too dry for me to plant winter grains, I daren't run the tiller or I'll turn my soil into dust, so I'll till once the rains start and wait to plant grains till spring. Maybe I'll do a test patch of barley. I've dug one hole for next year's as-yet-unordered apple trees, and I'll try and at least half-dig the holes for all of them, so when they arrive in the thick of spring planting I can just bang them in the holes and be done. The freeze/thaw will loosen the soil at the edge of the holes and help prevent circling roots in my clay, too, and I won't have to remeasure my circles of protection.
I do still have a couple roses to put in the ground, and the garlic that isn't yet arrived, too. But still, hoses and nurturing and watching and trying to guess what'll happen-- that's over. I have a half-dozen dairy crates of corn drying in the woodstove room. There is another dairy crate of corn (saskatoon white) waiting to be shucked, and a crate of melons (none ripened on the vine, but I'm going to let them ripen as far as they can and take seeds from those that have fully formed seeds), and maybe 4 flats of green tomatoes (many of which ripened in the last couple days, gotta get on that). I have two shelves of squash, and outside there is half a bucket of beans and a bucket of cucumbers that need to be pickled.
The barley crop is in, a fact that needs its own post to describe how much of a joy and a relief it is. I don't grow barley but the farmers one town over do; that's why I mostly fed my pigs until this year's shortage. Straw is available, $55 per large bale (that's the 3 x 3 x 8' bales) and I'll be getting some the week Josh comes up and we'll figure out how to unload (normally it's tying the bale to a tree and driving the pickup away from the tree, but I'd like to stack them two deep).
With straw comes the ability to lay in my king stropheria mushroom bed for next spring. I need to put it in the shade, somewhere that doesn't flood. Problem is, the shade is what stays frozen till late in the year, I might split the block and try two places.
With the barley harvest comes barley. Rolled barley, or barley and oat chop, is $450/ton this year. The bagged feed I've been using is $1100/ton, and in the last month I went through a ton and a half of feed. So, just financially, this is a relief. I've been running a negative balance on my credit card the last couple months, just absorbing the higher feed costs, because I can't not feed the animals and I couldn't butcher while it was hot.
It's also a relief to have the barley, and soon the barley and oats, because feed makes a big difference to the texture of the animals' fat. Barley and oats make a firmer fat, while the bagged feed make a softer fat. I prefer the firmer fat. I've read a bunch on this, I guess feeding on acorns makes a softer fat which folks like more in prosciutto but which is not so great in bacon, for instance. Acorns also supply tannins, which keep the fat from going rancid as quickly (smoke does the same thing, which is why so much rustically-preserved pork is smoked). Soft fat is hard to manage for slicing thinly, it's hard to butcher with, and I'm not as fond of the texture for eating. I'm of half a mind to give the pigs a full month on barley before I butcher so the fat can convert a little, rather than get the butcher in as soon as possible. Honestly I may not be able to get the butcher up sooner anyhow, it's a busy season. And my mind may change once it starts freezing enough to put the hoses away and I need to carry water by hand for over a dozen pigs.
I also have four little uncastratated suckling pigs I need to slaughter as suckling pigs shortly. Three of the four are living in the lean-to greenhouse and associated enclosure in a life of luxury as of yesterday; I need to catch the last one and put him in there. I do hate catching piglets, they scream at just the wrong frequency for my nervous system and then the whole herd of pigs starts barking and grunting menacingly and following me around trying to rescue the babies. I understand why the bears stay away. I wouldif I could, my heart is always pounding by the end of it and it takes awhile for the adrenaline to dissipate.
I always tell myself I'll set up a big carrier with feed in it just outside the main pigpen so the escapee piglets get used to it, and then I can just close them in and carry them away. Maybe I'll actually do that this time? There is a new set of piglets this week, and one mama sow I'm very impressed with, she'll be a keeper.
So I suppose this is the season where my attention is turning from garden to animals, from harvest to slaughter, and then from there to seed sorting once the seeds are dried.
I'm also feeling the pull towards sewing, towards warm snuggly clothing. It's still a fairly recent revelation that clothing doesn't have to hurt my body as long as it's made of the right materials and tailored right, and I'm looking forward to playing around with that this winter. The gears are in motion for me to approach that activity in a seamless transition, nosing around at patterns, clearing a table for a sewing table, cutting out patterns, making a mock-up for loose leggings and one for a short sweater or wrap dress to wear over leggings, just a little bit of something every week as the snow comes and everything else subsides.
Meanwhile Tucker is here. I had wanted to do a bonfire with him, as I've intended to do every year for the last five or so, but the burning ban is still on despite the frost -- did I mention it's dry out? -- so maybe we'll try to just arrange the pile for his next visit. In the meantime I get snuggles and doubtless a shared brunch of two, which are much-needed.
Either way, gardening is pretty much over and I'm ok with that (!?!!!???? !! ? !). I have turnips, the last of the soup peas, and some beets to bring in. I have the favas to look over, and the beans to see if any pods ripened. It's been too dry for me to plant winter grains, I daren't run the tiller or I'll turn my soil into dust, so I'll till once the rains start and wait to plant grains till spring. Maybe I'll do a test patch of barley. I've dug one hole for next year's as-yet-unordered apple trees, and I'll try and at least half-dig the holes for all of them, so when they arrive in the thick of spring planting I can just bang them in the holes and be done. The freeze/thaw will loosen the soil at the edge of the holes and help prevent circling roots in my clay, too, and I won't have to remeasure my circles of protection.
I do still have a couple roses to put in the ground, and the garlic that isn't yet arrived, too. But still, hoses and nurturing and watching and trying to guess what'll happen-- that's over. I have a half-dozen dairy crates of corn drying in the woodstove room. There is another dairy crate of corn (saskatoon white) waiting to be shucked, and a crate of melons (none ripened on the vine, but I'm going to let them ripen as far as they can and take seeds from those that have fully formed seeds), and maybe 4 flats of green tomatoes (many of which ripened in the last couple days, gotta get on that). I have two shelves of squash, and outside there is half a bucket of beans and a bucket of cucumbers that need to be pickled.
The barley crop is in, a fact that needs its own post to describe how much of a joy and a relief it is. I don't grow barley but the farmers one town over do; that's why I mostly fed my pigs until this year's shortage. Straw is available, $55 per large bale (that's the 3 x 3 x 8' bales) and I'll be getting some the week Josh comes up and we'll figure out how to unload (normally it's tying the bale to a tree and driving the pickup away from the tree, but I'd like to stack them two deep).
With straw comes the ability to lay in my king stropheria mushroom bed for next spring. I need to put it in the shade, somewhere that doesn't flood. Problem is, the shade is what stays frozen till late in the year, I might split the block and try two places.
With the barley harvest comes barley. Rolled barley, or barley and oat chop, is $450/ton this year. The bagged feed I've been using is $1100/ton, and in the last month I went through a ton and a half of feed. So, just financially, this is a relief. I've been running a negative balance on my credit card the last couple months, just absorbing the higher feed costs, because I can't not feed the animals and I couldn't butcher while it was hot.
It's also a relief to have the barley, and soon the barley and oats, because feed makes a big difference to the texture of the animals' fat. Barley and oats make a firmer fat, while the bagged feed make a softer fat. I prefer the firmer fat. I've read a bunch on this, I guess feeding on acorns makes a softer fat which folks like more in prosciutto but which is not so great in bacon, for instance. Acorns also supply tannins, which keep the fat from going rancid as quickly (smoke does the same thing, which is why so much rustically-preserved pork is smoked). Soft fat is hard to manage for slicing thinly, it's hard to butcher with, and I'm not as fond of the texture for eating. I'm of half a mind to give the pigs a full month on barley before I butcher so the fat can convert a little, rather than get the butcher in as soon as possible. Honestly I may not be able to get the butcher up sooner anyhow, it's a busy season. And my mind may change once it starts freezing enough to put the hoses away and I need to carry water by hand for over a dozen pigs.
I also have four little uncastratated suckling pigs I need to slaughter as suckling pigs shortly. Three of the four are living in the lean-to greenhouse and associated enclosure in a life of luxury as of yesterday; I need to catch the last one and put him in there. I do hate catching piglets, they scream at just the wrong frequency for my nervous system and then the whole herd of pigs starts barking and grunting menacingly and following me around trying to rescue the babies. I understand why the bears stay away. I wouldif I could, my heart is always pounding by the end of it and it takes awhile for the adrenaline to dissipate.
I always tell myself I'll set up a big carrier with feed in it just outside the main pigpen so the escapee piglets get used to it, and then I can just close them in and carry them away. Maybe I'll actually do that this time? There is a new set of piglets this week, and one mama sow I'm very impressed with, she'll be a keeper.
So I suppose this is the season where my attention is turning from garden to animals, from harvest to slaughter, and then from there to seed sorting once the seeds are dried.
I'm also feeling the pull towards sewing, towards warm snuggly clothing. It's still a fairly recent revelation that clothing doesn't have to hurt my body as long as it's made of the right materials and tailored right, and I'm looking forward to playing around with that this winter. The gears are in motion for me to approach that activity in a seamless transition, nosing around at patterns, clearing a table for a sewing table, cutting out patterns, making a mock-up for loose leggings and one for a short sweater or wrap dress to wear over leggings, just a little bit of something every week as the snow comes and everything else subsides.
Meanwhile Tucker is here. I had wanted to do a bonfire with him, as I've intended to do every year for the last five or so, but the burning ban is still on despite the frost -- did I mention it's dry out? -- so maybe we'll try to just arrange the pile for his next visit. In the meantime I get snuggles and doubtless a shared brunch of two, which are much-needed.
Outdoor pepper update
Sep. 7th, 2022 03:18 pmI didn't get everything potted up, and didn't get anything into the ground. Still, this is what fruited best:
chimayo
sugar rush peach
my saved pepperoncini
matchbox, always
my matchbox/hungarian black f1
sarit gat
Shishito
The rocoto peppers fruited but were very slow, I'm interested to see how they do if I overwinter them and start them again
My doe hill were stunted, and early jalapeno didn't do much
Scorpions etc were very slow
Ks White Thai was not stabilized, I got weird stuff out of it
Sugar rush variegated is pretty but didn't make many fruits
For some reason I didn't plant any hungarian black this year and the one didn't wake up a second time this spring
I've moved a ton of pepper plants indoors for the winter and am working on getting lights up, etc.
chimayo
sugar rush peach
my saved pepperoncini
matchbox, always
my matchbox/hungarian black f1
sarit gat
Shishito
The rocoto peppers fruited but were very slow, I'm interested to see how they do if I overwinter them and start them again
My doe hill were stunted, and early jalapeno didn't do much
Scorpions etc were very slow
Ks White Thai was not stabilized, I got weird stuff out of it
Sugar rush variegated is pretty but didn't make many fruits
For some reason I didn't plant any hungarian black this year and the one didn't wake up a second time this spring
I've moved a ton of pepper plants indoors for the winter and am working on getting lights up, etc.
Summer is over
Sep. 6th, 2022 07:08 amWe might have technically hit first frost here last night, the lightest breath over heavy dew at 6am. We also might not. Nothing is obviously damaged, but then, frost doesn't show up as damage until things warm up anyhow. I hadn't brought much in; I think things will be ok but I will start bringing things in today. I may also light a bit of a fire since if I'm bringing things in I'm also bringing moisture in. Maybe I'll just turn on the electric heat.
Either way, this was a morning I got out of bed and put on, not an easy summer dress, but a wool long underwear set which is my chosen loungewear in winter. I have some apples to pump through the slow cooker, mexican cure vanilla bean out, madagascar bourbon (which is the "normal" vanilla bean) in, run the canner once, it's good.
Outside the geese are loud, they're flocking all together (this may be the first day they're all, all together this fall). They want breakfast but mostly they're just socializing, sorting out their interpersonal like the crush of kids all boiling around on the first day of school. Thea is standing bravely, not too close to the gate, but I see that no bears have been in through the fence last night. She's a very good dog.
Inside the cats are hangry or whatever it is that happens when it's cold out, I've just woken up, and their food dish is empty: Whiskey is leaping and spinning and clawing the stairs with his ears back, staring at the wall, and running back and forth. Every once in awhile he takes off to chase Demon, who mewls piteously and runs away.
I need to get the soap packed up and brought out to the storage container so I can start bringing in squash and seed cucumbers and green tomatoes on the shelving it occupies.
Edited to add: the thought of back-to-school is always accompanied by a particular scent memory, doesn't matter if I'm thinking about grade school or uni.
Either way, this was a morning I got out of bed and put on, not an easy summer dress, but a wool long underwear set which is my chosen loungewear in winter. I have some apples to pump through the slow cooker, mexican cure vanilla bean out, madagascar bourbon (which is the "normal" vanilla bean) in, run the canner once, it's good.
Outside the geese are loud, they're flocking all together (this may be the first day they're all, all together this fall). They want breakfast but mostly they're just socializing, sorting out their interpersonal like the crush of kids all boiling around on the first day of school. Thea is standing bravely, not too close to the gate, but I see that no bears have been in through the fence last night. She's a very good dog.
Inside the cats are hangry or whatever it is that happens when it's cold out, I've just woken up, and their food dish is empty: Whiskey is leaping and spinning and clawing the stairs with his ears back, staring at the wall, and running back and forth. Every once in awhile he takes off to chase Demon, who mewls piteously and runs away.
I need to get the soap packed up and brought out to the storage container so I can start bringing in squash and seed cucumbers and green tomatoes on the shelving it occupies.
Edited to add: the thought of back-to-school is always accompanied by a particular scent memory, doesn't matter if I'm thinking about grade school or uni.
Raspberries
Aug. 15th, 2022 06:32 pmI didn't have lunch today, but I did go out in the brief window after work and before the rainstorm and stuffed handfuls of raspberries into my mouth. I guess the raspberries are coming in, a week or two later than last year.
What's Going On?
Aug. 14th, 2022 09:49 pmThe painted mountain and magic manna (which is a selection out of painted mountain) look quite similar, as plants. They're silking and pollen dropping, for the most part.
Weirdly cascade ruby gold is starting to drop pollen but I see very few silks in it. The tallest tassel is 8' tall or something like that. Maybe it needs water?
Saskatoon white has two different flower colours but looks pretty uniform otherwise. It's had silks out for a couple days now.
Atomic orange is in full silk.
Saskatchewan rainbow has so so so many cobs on the plants, I can't wait to open them.
The first open oak party tassel is visible, it's definitely not going to make it. Likewise homestead yellow and early riser, though they are all huge plants.
There are a bunch of big green tomatoes in the promiscuous patch, I need to get in there and do some pruning. Likewise Mikado Black has a bunch of quite large tomatoes about ready to turn, and I suspect Minsk Early is about to give a bunch of smaller ones. Meanwhile the northern mixed row is variable, some plants have a bunch of nice-looking fruit and some really do not. There's a weird potato leaf plant that has tiny marble-sized fruit that don't look like they're getting any bigger. That might be a bee cross, and woth checking out the F2 on.
I should plant everything further apart for screening purposes, though planting it close together for pollination purposes was a legit idea. I'm likely to miss fruit in this jungle though.
A second melon has started, on a different plant, that looks similar in shape to the first melon. It would be hilarious if I got melons but not squash this year?
One particular squash has elongated football-shaped fruits on its female flowers, yellow with a green patch, and the three plants spread across my different plantings are super super vigorous both from seed and from transplant. I'm curious about which squash it is. Tons and tons of flowers on all the squash but not very many squashes growing. There are some, though, and lots of busy bees in the flowers.
Bees *love* arugula and I think are neglecting the rest of the garden for it.
The bouchard peas are sizing up nicely. They're such manageable little plants, I put them in with turnips and they're all the same height.
Lots of flowers on the beans but no baby beans. Um?
Some pods sizing o=up on the favas finally.
I need to plant the fall favas soon. And sort out my fall grain.
I've been cutting heads off the dango mugi barley on my deck as they hit hard dough stage, I don't want birds to get them. That is a very, very successful seed increase, I'll have something like two dozen heads from 5 seeds planted this spring at this rate.
Planted seed for dwarf, micro, and F1 tomatoes for the winter.
Transplanted a bunch of peppers into 1 gallon containers.
Bought a bunch of hydroponics stuff in prep for winter.
I'm really, really enjoying the garden right now. Even the raspberries, which I totally neglected, are being nice to me.
Weirdly cascade ruby gold is starting to drop pollen but I see very few silks in it. The tallest tassel is 8' tall or something like that. Maybe it needs water?
Saskatoon white has two different flower colours but looks pretty uniform otherwise. It's had silks out for a couple days now.
Atomic orange is in full silk.
Saskatchewan rainbow has so so so many cobs on the plants, I can't wait to open them.
The first open oak party tassel is visible, it's definitely not going to make it. Likewise homestead yellow and early riser, though they are all huge plants.
There are a bunch of big green tomatoes in the promiscuous patch, I need to get in there and do some pruning. Likewise Mikado Black has a bunch of quite large tomatoes about ready to turn, and I suspect Minsk Early is about to give a bunch of smaller ones. Meanwhile the northern mixed row is variable, some plants have a bunch of nice-looking fruit and some really do not. There's a weird potato leaf plant that has tiny marble-sized fruit that don't look like they're getting any bigger. That might be a bee cross, and woth checking out the F2 on.
I should plant everything further apart for screening purposes, though planting it close together for pollination purposes was a legit idea. I'm likely to miss fruit in this jungle though.
A second melon has started, on a different plant, that looks similar in shape to the first melon. It would be hilarious if I got melons but not squash this year?
One particular squash has elongated football-shaped fruits on its female flowers, yellow with a green patch, and the three plants spread across my different plantings are super super vigorous both from seed and from transplant. I'm curious about which squash it is. Tons and tons of flowers on all the squash but not very many squashes growing. There are some, though, and lots of busy bees in the flowers.
Bees *love* arugula and I think are neglecting the rest of the garden for it.
The bouchard peas are sizing up nicely. They're such manageable little plants, I put them in with turnips and they're all the same height.
Lots of flowers on the beans but no baby beans. Um?
Some pods sizing o=up on the favas finally.
I need to plant the fall favas soon. And sort out my fall grain.
I've been cutting heads off the dango mugi barley on my deck as they hit hard dough stage, I don't want birds to get them. That is a very, very successful seed increase, I'll have something like two dozen heads from 5 seeds planted this spring at this rate.
Planted seed for dwarf, micro, and F1 tomatoes for the winter.
Transplanted a bunch of peppers into 1 gallon containers.
Bought a bunch of hydroponics stuff in prep for winter.
I'm really, really enjoying the garden right now. Even the raspberries, which I totally neglected, are being nice to me.
