Nov 2012 New England

I thought I'd check things in my garden today. I was surprised to find 4 onions left behind which I harvested today and the first parsnip. I just wanted to check it for size and its fat and nice. I'm still awaiting a few frosty nights for sweetening before harvesting them.

I had to use my dandelion digger to get out the parsnip.

I also harvested these 2 sweet peppers that turned from yellow and green to red while hanging in my foyer. I pulled the plants a few weeks ago and just hung them up unripened. It proves that you can bring in your plants and let them ripen indoors if you give them some time.
My Swiss chard and Siberian Kale are doing just fine out there.
Anyone else getting things from their garden this late?

The garlic bed is doing well, too. I'm happy. Mother Nature is dropping leaves over my beds which is a good thing. I'll add more to the garlic bed after it freezes.

I ate some carrots and chard out of the garden the other night.
Still have cabbages, Brussels sprouts, kale, beets red and gold too. Oh and LEEKS! Loving my leeks.

I picked some blushing tomatoes today and ate the larger beans off the vines. Supposed to go down to 36 tomorrow nite and next week is just plain cold. I'll put up my plastics tomorrow to protect the kale, swiss chard, romaine, buttercrunch, red leaf, chives, sugar snap peas, kohlrabi, collards, cabbage & a few beets.

Outside of the plastics I'm leaving lots of beets, carrots, swiss chard, garlic, chives & scallions, along with collards, radicchio and a few herbs in the kitchen garden.

Since your peppers are proof positive, QB, I guess I'll bring in and hang the green tomatoes and my pepper plants even tho the green peppers are kinda tiny. Should I do that with the jalapenos, too?

I mowed and mixed up a ton of leaves today. The worms in the 'greens' pile were so amazing! They were crawling all over each other. I've never seen the likes! Who needs a Hilton when you can have a Mount Everest! I think it's the seaweed and will head to the beach tomorrow for more as I think it will have washed ashore from Sandy.

CC

CapeCoddess wrote: I think it's the seaweed and will head to the beach tomorrow for more as I think it will have washed ashore from Sandy.

CC

NICE! Have fun beach combing!

Any types tomato or pepper plant can ripen when the whole plant is hung upside down in a garage or workshop for a few weeks. As long as it doesn't drop below freezing in there.

Beautiful day today! We're at peak fall color on the Cape now and there's a crispness in the air.


Perfect weather for cooking & canning.


But 9 o'clo....er, I mean 8 o'clock??? comes early and it's time for bed??? I'M SO TIRED and it's not even EIGHT yet!!! I don't like this end of it.....

Nite nite, all.
CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Beautiful day today! We're at peak fall color on the Cape now and there's a crispness in the air.
...snip...

Oh, wow! That's some color you got there! I feel totally ripped off this fall; we had weeks upon weeks of rain followed by the winds of Sandy to finish the job of blowing all the leaves off the trees.

Today we had some brief sunlight and then it turned gray & raw...with snow on & off all day...and this afternoon DH made his first snowball of the season...

I think Old Man Winter is here.

P.S. Watcha got in the cans, CC?

How do you get the wunderground weather tag in your posts?

I would like to add that to my posts and pictures

This is what my one & only finished & planted (with garlic, YUM!) bed looked like this morning. The sun looks like he wants to show his face today so it'll probably all melt away, but there's more where that came from.

kbshark: go on the home page and click on the "how to do things on the forum" section and the third-ish thread down is "how to put a weather sticker on your posts".

Holy crow, Molly...is that ....sn...sn...you know...that 4 letter 's' word???

mollyhespra wrote:
P.S. Watcha got in the cans, CC?

Chickpeas w/ a 1 inch square of kombu to help keep the 'gassies' away. I eat alot of beans instead of meat and I read not so recently that the stuff that they coat the insides of cans with is really bad for us. I'm thru buying cans of beans. Next weekend I'm canning black beans. The weekend after that will be what ever bags of beans are on sale at the Stop & Shop.

I take a salad to work every day for lunch. Here's todays weekly salad harvest:

Not sure how long I'll be able to keep this up. The pickin's are getting slim out there. Next year I'll be sure to plant ALOT more greens!

CC


CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Holy crow, Molly...is that ....sn...sn...you know...that 4 letter 's' word???

LOL! Amazing what a couple of hundred miles' distance can do, huh? It hasn't gone above freezing today & we got some more of the unmentionable white stuff this afternoon, so the beds still have a good coating on them. I suppose I should start thinking of covering them up with straw soon...

CapeCoddess wrote:Chickpeas w/ a 1 inch square of kombu to help keep the 'gassies' away.

How does that work? Does Kelp act like "Beano"? But wouldn't it also flavor your chickpeas?

CapeCoddess wrote:I eat alot of beans instead of meat and I read not so recently that the stuff that they coat the insides of cans with is really bad for us. I'm thru buying cans of beans.

EW! I didn't know that! Let me just add one more thing to the list of things I'm avoiding...what's in the coating? BPA? I have noticed a whiteish coating on the inside of some cans, but I can't remember on which...is it on bean cans in particular or only high-acid foods like tomato & such?

mollyhespra wrote:

This is what my one & only finished & planted (with garlic, YUM!) bed looked like this morning.

:Lookin' good!
How many cloves did you plant and how close did you plant them? Hard neck or soft neck?

camprn wrote::Lookin' good!
How many cloves did you plant and how close did you plant them? Hard neck or soft neck?

Thanks, Camp!

I planted 5 to a square--some of the cloves were pretty big & some weren't, so I'm doing a little 'speriment: for the softnecks (about 85 cloves planted) I divided the cloves into big, medium & then those small slivers you get in the middle of a head of garlic BUT I gave them all the same amount of space to grow in. I dunno if it's going to make one iota of a difference, but it was fun to do.

For the hardnecks (5 varieties), I just planted 5 to a square (11 squares total) except that I put the smaller cloves in the middle.

Now it's just a waiting game & try to stay warm by the woodstove...

mollyhespra wrote:

CapeCoddess wrote:I eat alot of beans instead of meat and I read not so recently that the stuff that they coat the insides of cans with is really bad for us. I'm thru buying cans of beans.

EW! I didn't know that! Let me just add one more thing to the list of things I'm avoiding...what's in the coating? BPA? I have noticed a whiteish coating on the inside of some cans, but I can't remember on which...is it on bean cans in particular or only high-acid foods like tomato & such?

Yes, BPA. I thought back when I first heard about it that they mentioned tomatoes as the worst, but this more recent article doesn't differentiate:
http://www.ehow.com/info_8147954_hazards-aluminum-can-lining.html

The Kombu seems to help, but not completely , and doesn't add any flavor that *I* can detect.

CC

Epazote is a plant you can grow and add to beans to make them reduce gas. I haven't tried it but was reading about it. It can be grown in one's garden. I tried to start some 2 yrs ago and it didn't grow and then forgot about it so haven't tried again.

We had a frost last nite, into the 20s, and expecting the same the next 2 nites. I should be able to harvest my parsnips soon since they will have concentrated their sugars for better flavor. If I'm lucky, we'll have them for Thanksgiving dinner.

A friend of mine in Jaffrey, NH posted this photo today. It was 18*F this morning.

I have done my civic duty, now I want a hot dog, a slice of apple pie with cheese and a beer.

Here we go again...nor'easter on the way for tomorrow. I'm not even going to cover my garden with the plastic. It'll just blow away.

But, for today, we can still enjoy the beauty :

CC

You have a lovely garden, CC. I hope the weather spares it.

SO pretty!

Blowin' like a bad boy here! No rain to speak of for us though, but that's not unusual. There always seems to be a rain sucking vortex over the elbow of the Cape.

FYI: This wind seems to be more violent than what we got with Sandy. Fasten your seat belts, New England!

CC

Still blowing and raining here, but less and less by the hour. Haven't been able to see my SFG yet to see if anything survived or not. Maybe by tomorrow morning. Suppose to be beautiful for the next few days - 50's!

How's everyone else doing?

CC

It looks like one of those snow globes outside but otherwise nothing remarkable. No accumulation to speak of and not much wind. We were supposed to get sleet & snow & maybe some freezing rain, but so far, bupkus (for which I am thankful).

Our forecast calls for cloudiness for the weekend, and milder temps in the 40's. It's been in the teens at night most of the week. Maybe we'll get a chance to fill up another SF bed with MM this weekend and I really wanted to get a Wiggler Hilton going before the worms all froze but I may be too late for that.

How's everyone else?

P.S. I've got my green thumbs crossed for your garden CC.

It's been rainy today and spittin' snow on occasion. The weather is going to change and be nice for a few days so I hired a fella to come redo half my roof. It will be a relief to have that done.

I still have beets, carrots and leeks to get out this weekend before the ground freezes solid.

We got an inch of snow overnite and then it rained during the day. I'm glad that one is behind us now.

The tall stalks on the left are what's left of the Monarda. The bees loved it all summer.