Moving from garden to firewood

My gardening season is over. There is one lone basil plant in the garden and I'm toying with the idea of putting it in the greenhouse to see how long it will go. The begonias will stay in their planters until a hard frost gets them. I'm content to let them go because the mother plants will tucked away all nice and cozy in the den this winter with a grow light. 

The Greenstalk has been moved to its new location by the patio. The daylilies have been repotted and the big pots are ready for next year. The year #1 buckets have new soil and are in the greenhouse waiting for spring. 

My best tip for anyone planning a container garden - woven ground cover from Grower's Solutions. It held up to foot traffic, stopped the grass and weeds, and is easy to keep tidy. I used the leaf blower to keep it free of debris. 

I feel really good about the 2023 season. I not only enjoyed having the garden and watching it grow and produce, but I gained more knowledge. My garden will never feed us for an entire year, but it puts a few fresh things on the table with some left over to preserve.  

Now it is time to move from gardening season to firewood season. I have a good supply of firewood for this year, and what we split now will be for the 2024-25 winter, and possibly beyond. I have a large maple that I've contracted with a service to take down, and an equally large cherry that I could drop but my cousin says he will do the honors. 

Before we get really into it, there is a small pile of cherry and oak to split and stacked that can be burned toward the end of this year if needed. Using the bucket on the John Deere, I'll bring some poplar up to the house and clear a spot to begin stacking for next year. We worked a lot harder before we got the tractor. 

Life in the country moves with the seasons. There's comfort in being in tune with nature. I may not have the biggest house or drive a brand-new car (by choice, mind you), but I am content to be where I am with what I have. And not only am I content, I am generally happy with my life and my country lifestyle. 

Yes, there is work to do. Daylight, I'm waiting on you!

The Lady of The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, firewood, gardening, rural living, being content, John Deere, country lifestyle, a writer's life, nature, cherry trees, grow bags, tomatoes, peppers, tree service

It's at the end for 2023

As much as I enjoy having a garden, I'm not sad that the 2023 garden is all but finished. By this time of the season, it's more work than fun, but even then it's not hard work. It's merely persistent work. 

All things considered, such as heat, smoke, and not a lot of rain, the plants produced. I was extremely disappointed in the tomatoes due to a screwing I got from Ferry Morse seeds - read about that here - but even cherry tomatoes can be used for sauce.  Any tomato can be used for sauce. The variant is in how long you need to simmer the fruit to cook the water out. The plan was to make ketchup, but I made pizza sauce instead. I think with this last harvest and what is in the freezer, I can make another batch of pizza sauce and be good on that for a few years. 

The cucumbers produced well. I ran a couple of batches through the Harvest Right freeze dryer to preserve them, and I canned one batch of cucumber-pepper relish. 

Cucumber pepper relish

This year, I planted green beans for the first time ever. My grandfather always planted a type of pole bean, or climbing runner bean, but I chose the Contender bush variety. They did well and we had fresh beans for our table. Next year, I hope to expand a bit.

Sugar snap peas. I love 'em! He hates them. I've used up all the seed so they're off the 2024 garden plan. So are watermelon and cantaloupe. The melons were a bust. The ONE watermelon that formed wasn't edible. 

I am, apparently, a good grower of cabbage. We love fresh coleslaw, so cabbage is on the list for 2024. I'll stagger starting the seeds so I hopefully get a staggered harvest, and I'll go for a smaller number of heads. Coleslaw is great, but not every day for a month. 

The green bell peppers were an afterthought. I found a few seeds and planted them late, but there are pepper strips in the freezer again. I'm not sure the Great Stuff variety is the one for my garden. 

The Brussels sprouts were about 80% bust. Sprouts formed on two out of seven plants. I do have some seeds left so I'll give it one last try in 2024. Brussels, and cauliflower which died at transplant, are likely going to end up being off the plan for good after 2024, but we'll see.

Only one thing remains - butternut squash. This is the first time I tried this one and the results surprised me. There are ten butternuts growing but not yet ready to harvest. I'm watching for the stems to turn brown to pick them. Once they're all in, I'll process them to use for soup and pie filling. Butternut squash makes a sweet "pumpkin" pie. Just puree it and use the same as pumpkin puree. The flavor isn't that different.

Over the course of the next week, all the tomato plants will come out except for an experiment I'm trying that I saw on a Living Traditions video. The basil needs to be harvested and dried, and the calendula seeds will be ready to store. 

The bees are still prolifically working the tall Cracker Jack marigolds which has made me reconsider them for next year. I'm gathering those seeds and will cast them about the property. What grows in 2024 will grow, and I'll harvest those seeds to spread again. Doing this should develop a strain of plant that thrives in my micro-climate to keep the bees happy. The more bees the merrier! I'll plant a much shorter variety of marigolds in the garden. 

The year 2024 will bring its own successes and failures. I can dream, plan, and implement, but in the end, the garden does what the garden does. 

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, bees, pollinators, vegetables, flowers, herbs, cabbage, butternut squash, saving seeds Great Stuff peppers, Straight Eight cucumbers, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life, home food preservation, freeze dryer

Tomato surprise!

I love living on the mountain and having nature all around me. I learn something every day, even more so now that I'm retired and home more.  

This past August, we had a bit of a heat wave. Our temps got up into the 90sF every day for about two weeks. It's not unusual for us to have 90F days, so don't go all climate change on me. But it is rare for us to have a long stretch like that. The last time it happened was back around 1992/93. 

But I digress...

Due to the heat, my tomatoes stopped putting out new flowers which meant no new tomatoes. I allowed what fruit was on the vines to mature, and then I cut off the plant and moved the grow bucket to the winter storage area. I had a good crop so it was fine with me. When you garden, you have to take a lot of things as they come. You can't fight it.

Yesterday, I noticed that several of the tomato plants had sent up new stalks. That was unexpected! There's not time enough for them to set new flowers and produce fruit, but it's a fascinating development. I'm going to move one bucket into the greenhouse just to see what happens. It's an experiment, a test, of both plant and greenhouse. It should be interesting - and a lot of fun! 

Here's the link to a short video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8eQhWIdOlU 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, tomato plants, nature, country living, gardening, greenhouse, rural lifestyle, green peppers, container garden, grow buckets