There were a number of frost advisories, so we harvested the tomatoes (red and green), corn (fully grown corn and anything else that was on the stalks), and last cucumbers.
Frost Harvest
Tag: 2022 Garden
Corn Harvest
We picked a few ears of corn today — Hickory King fresh from the stalk:
Calendula Bloom
The calendulas that Anya planted in the raised bed blocks are blooming — beautiful, large flowers:
Corn Silk
The silk on the Hickory King corn is really pretty
Really Big Tomato
While these Mortgage Lifter tomatoes grow really large … they have a lot of bits that need to be trimmed. Seems like a tomato bred by turkeys and chickens (who get to enjoy all of the trimmed off bits).
Corn
The corn is getting really tall — no cobs yet, but the stalks are about as tall as they’re meant to get.
First Ripe Tomato
It finally cooled down enough for the tomatoes to start ripening …
Buckwheat
Our buckwheat is starting to form seeds!
Fall Seed Starting
I got the seeds started for our fall harvested vegetables. We bought these little seed starting trays on Amazon — a tray, a 12-cell insert, and a humidity dome with an adjustable vent. The kit came with plant markers … but it seemed silly to write something permanent on the marker. So I turned them into reusable markers by adding some of the blue tape you use for painting a room (because that’s what we’ve got & pen works OK on it). First I put three of the markers in a line on the tape.
A couple of quick slices with an Exacto knife, and I can change the label as needed.
I started the normal fall veggies — broccoli, broccolini, chard, and lots of cabbages. But I also started a sweet tomato that’s meant to produce in 60 days and a watermelon that’s supposed to produce in just 75 days. That’ll be the end of September so maybe we’ll get some watermelon this year!
Raised Bed Herb Planters
When we decided to use some old cinder blocks to build raised beds, the idea was to fill all of the blocks with dirt and use the spaces as bonus planting spaces for small plants like flowers and herbs. Functional and aesthetically pleasing. I never got far in that project — filled some blocks with dirt and lots of weeds. But no ring of herbs around the bed.
This year, I’m doing it! It’s a time consuming process to clear out the existing plant growth. I’m adding about two inches of rocks (we’ve got a lot of rock-covered beds that we want to de-rock), and filling up with soil. Anya started a bunch of herb plants, so she has been transplanting her seedlings into the blocks and adding some wood mulch (I expect these small blocks will warm up and dry out rather quickly otherwise).
