PNW: November 2014

Well, if October was fall-maybe in the PNW, November is fall-for-sure.  Snow isn't quite here yet, but days that don't rise out of the 40's until noon hint that nights well into the mid 30's or lower are soon to be the norm.

Lots of stuff is still thriving, but our rains were making so many of my tomatoes crack that I decided to pull all but a few up.




Plenty of room now for more leaf crops in there.  I still have some swiss chard transplants surviving, so I'll put them where the tomatoes were.

Made about a gallon of green tomato/green apple chutney.  It's cooling off on the stovetop now.  That hardly made a dent in my green tomatoes, and I've been putting lots of tomatillos in there too, so I am going to have one heck of a lot of chutney this year!  I've got several one-gallon freezer bags of tomatillos to use, too.  That's cool, though.  It came out great last year and freezes well.  But this is going to be a bizarre amount of chutney!

This makes me really excited for next spring when I can try tomatoes again, also tomatillos.  Don't know if you remember that I put 2 tomatillos in both of the large pots.  In each pot, one was dominant with the other barely producing flowers.  Next year it will be one per large pot and I will find a full sun area for them.  As far as the tomatoes, I will not rush to get them started.  I don't know why I had curly leaf-infected leaf hoppers, but it was down right embarrassing to live in Fresno and not have tomatoes.

I remember your tomatillos doubled up in pots! They are such thirsty plants and can develop big roots. I grew mine in five-gallon-buckets this year, and when I tried to pull them out of the pots, on two of them I had to lift up all the soil with them because the roots suffused every inch of it. They came out a perfect cylinder. I hope you at least got something good out of the dominant plants. I thought you would be in for some trouble with those guys.

Re your leafhoppers -- I think I'm probably bringing in fresh bugs every year when I get plants at the nursery. It only takes one. I really need to grow more of my own seedlings. Could you have brought yours in too?

We've had a couple half-hearted wind storms already.  It was a good reminder to get things battened down, and the generator test run, before the serious winds show up towards the end of the month.  It's always a treat to get through Thanksgiving dinner before the power goes out.

I had some unusually big broccoli plants this fall planting.   They're big, but showing no sign of heading up.  Don't know why.   They were side by side with more typically sized plants (same variety) that I already harvested, so I don't think it was excess nitrogen.



Got my second greenhouse nearly ready to use.  I've been having fun just daydreaming about how to best fill up the space.  Unfortunately, a &$%&(&^%^$  mole has already paid a visit.  



The last of the fall snow peas.



Carrots stored for winter.



My gardens are so sad looking this time of year that it's hard to find nice looking pictures to post!

boffer wrote:
Got my second greenhouse nearly ready to use.  I've been having fun just daydreaming about how to best fill up the space.  Unfortunately, a &$%&(&^%^$  mole has already paid a visit.  

The photo says everything.  What will you have to do?  hardware cloth?

It's quiet in the PNW!

We've been getting lots and lots of rain here. I've barely looked at my garden, though I see the red giant mustards that didn't bolt are still doing quite nicely. The heavy rains, or something anyway -- seem to be making them milder than they were in the summer. I like them mild or spicy, though. The color is so cool in a salad.

I haven't checked out my plants at the neighbors' place for quite a while. I'm curious how those red kale plants are doing -- they were beauties last I saw them. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of them got blown over or even snapped off by some of our winds.

Been very busy doing some business writing for some friends and interning for a publishing company. And some fall clean-up chores around the house and yard. Tomorrow I'll be busy delivering Thanksgiving meals for charity and then making appetizers for a Thanksgiving party at a friend's place.

I'm going through the last of the summer tomatoes. Made fried green tomatoes today, mixing them in with scrambled eggs. I have a few peppers left, a few green and half-ripe tomatoes. Almost everything else, besides a bunch of tomatillos, got turned into chutney.

Hope you folks are all doing well, either gardening or taking a welcome vacation from gardening after the long hot summer!

I can't believe I've missed this whole thread. 

Nice tomatoes and tomatillos, Marc! there sure are a lot of them.  How many tomato plants in all?

Boffer, beautiful photos.  Do you eat the broccoli leaves? And how's it going with the new greenhouse in the mole? How do you make it stand up to your high winds?

I need to get some more pictures of my broccoli.  They're not looking so good after temps into the teens a couple weeks ago.

Stuffed broccoli leaves

I also juice and freeze them to add to juicing concoctions throughout winter.

I've had mole hills under the weedcloth in my first greenhouse for two years.   I just let them be; haven't twisted an ankle yet!

I have them anchored with 24 inch steel stakes.  Fortunately, so far, so good.  Anything more than that, like posts set in concrete, my tax assessor said he'd hit me up for more taxes for building a 'permanent structure'.  

CapeCoddess wrote:I can't believe I've missed this whole thread. 

Nice tomatoes and tomatillos, Marc! there sure are a lot of them.  How many tomato plants in all?

Boffer, beautiful photos.  Do you eat the broccoli leaves? And how's it going with the new greenhouse in the mole? How do you make it stand up to your high winds?

Almost all of them from three tomato plants. The many others I had in buckets gave me some, but were planted late, and I got no tomatoes from anything until the end of August anyway. The ones in the best raised bed I had, only three, did really well once it cooled down. But eventually it cooled down so much that I had a whole lot of green tomatoes after it was too late for any more red ones.

I think I would have gotten pretty much the same results if I had planted seeds at the end of July or beginning of August, since all I grew till the end of August was flowers anyway. And the flowers all dropped off. I just spent an extra two or three months watering like crazy for a lot of plants that weren't going to produce for months anyway. At two to three hours watering daily, I probably wasted somewhere between 50 and 100 hours out in that hot sun for nothing. Next year I will likely do it differently, succession planting more spring plants or even planting a cover crop instead of making way for summer too early.

Now that it's raining so much, I hardly pay attention to the garden anymore. I did pick a nice bunch of mustard leaves yesterday though. I've really come to love red giant mustards. So beautiful and productive, and I don't mind it when the flavor gets sharper than usual, either.

boffer wrote:

I have them anchored with 24 inch steel stakes.  Fortunately, so far, so good.

You mean like 24" rebar? Do you have any photos of this anchoring?

Steel Stakes

I happen to have  a box of these.  I don't do much concrete work anymore so I figured I might as well use them for gardening.  It's hard to see in the picture, but the stake has a bunch of holes drilled in it for nails or screws to go through.

Re-bar would work, but my native soil is pretty rocky so the pointed end and ¾ inch diameter is a big  advantage.