walk with a walk that is measured and slow
SotY: Apples and Sidewalk.
OK, there are actually more things from the last two weeks. Mostly harvesting. I dug up several handfuls of potatoes. I didn't look very hard, so I suspect I missed a few. That's ok, that just means they'll grow more potato plants next year, right? I continue to harvest tomatoes, although a week without rain, then a day where we had our 6th wettest 24 hour period in Pittsburgh record-keeping history, then two days where temps dropped down pretty hard, was not great for them. Every one I brought in today was either split or had fallen (but still sufficient for salsa). Still several more ripening. Three pepper plants are producing, although one was crushed for a while under a fallen brussels sprout plant, and might not make it. I propped the brussels plant back upright this week, so now it's got a few funny curves in the stalk.
After getting this week's CSA box from Penn's Corner, I determined that the unknown mystery squash in my gardens is probably tiny striped spaghetti squash. I haven't tried cooking one yet (the one I accidentally picked turned out to have been rotted due to lying on the ground too long), but I predict experiments in the future. I'm happy to keep ignoring all the squashes for now, though, while I deal with more imminent stuff, like apples.
Apples actually have turned out to be a huge disappointment this year. We've got a huge amount dropping, but the vast majority are smaller than usual and not actually good enough to eat. I'm glad I didn't make plans with anybody to pick our apples, because I'd be embarrassed by the poor quality. My compost pile is overflowing from unusable apples. I have definite records from several years ago at about this time of much larger quantities of edible apples, so I assume it's just this year's weather. Oh well. Before you feel too sorry for me, though, I still got about 15 lbs of good apples from the past couple weeks of windfall, most of which has gone into sauce. I should probably get the boys up in the tree to pick the rest of them soon.
Things I have done:
OK, there are actually more things from the last two weeks. Mostly harvesting. I dug up several handfuls of potatoes. I didn't look very hard, so I suspect I missed a few. That's ok, that just means they'll grow more potato plants next year, right? I continue to harvest tomatoes, although a week without rain, then a day where we had our 6th wettest 24 hour period in Pittsburgh record-keeping history, then two days where temps dropped down pretty hard, was not great for them. Every one I brought in today was either split or had fallen (but still sufficient for salsa). Still several more ripening. Three pepper plants are producing, although one was crushed for a while under a fallen brussels sprout plant, and might not make it. I propped the brussels plant back upright this week, so now it's got a few funny curves in the stalk.
After getting this week's CSA box from Penn's Corner, I determined that the unknown mystery squash in my gardens is probably tiny striped spaghetti squash. I haven't tried cooking one yet (the one I accidentally picked turned out to have been rotted due to lying on the ground too long), but I predict experiments in the future. I'm happy to keep ignoring all the squashes for now, though, while I deal with more imminent stuff, like apples.
Apples actually have turned out to be a huge disappointment this year. We've got a huge amount dropping, but the vast majority are smaller than usual and not actually good enough to eat. I'm glad I didn't make plans with anybody to pick our apples, because I'd be embarrassed by the poor quality. My compost pile is overflowing from unusable apples. I have definite records from several years ago at about this time of much larger quantities of edible apples, so I assume it's just this year's weather. Oh well. Before you feel too sorry for me, though, I still got about 15 lbs of good apples from the past couple weeks of windfall, most of which has gone into sauce. I should probably get the boys up in the tree to pick the rest of them soon.
Things I have done:
- Weeded and mowed. I started just doing a bit of the garden, and that turned into the entire garden plus strawberries plus herb garden plus some random baby trees throughout the yard and bushes while Xuth did some edging with the weedwacker. Everything looks much nicer now.
- Apples. Sadly, most of this was picking them up and tossing them instead of making tasty things.
- Sidewalk. The sidewalk project is actually progressing, although it's taking a lot longer than I'd hoped/planned/expected/wanted. I spent most of a couple weeks spending all my daylight hours painting stuff, and that part is all done. We'd made some progress on the digging, but ditch digging is hard and not at all fun AND it's been raining an awful lot, so there's still more to do. I really want this to be done. It will be finished this month.
- Moar apples. It's probably about time to send up the boys to the treetops and try to actually get the rest down.
- Moar sidewalk. Um. Next weekend? I hope? Maybe? There will be pictures, I promise.
- Pot herbs. I have this grand idea of transplanting some of my garden herbs to pots and then bringing them inside to overwinter so they don't die.
- Trim bushes. Raspberry and blueberry, specifically.
- Trim apple trees. It's been a long time and they're overhanging the neighbor's yard and touching the house and being overall too big. I'm nervous because last time I got them trimmed, the company I called at random just came by and severely topped them, which completely took out fruit production for the next several years, and then the re-growth basically exploded out from the ends. So I'd like to get them trimmed more properly but I'm not sure how.
- Harvest/Eat some of the brassica plants in my gardens because I've been ignoring them all summer. Maybe try planting that winter kale again and see if it takes.
- Are we done yet? I want to be done.