Funny - when I thought of how to describe this summer, that Bananarama song "Cruel Summer" suddenly started playing in my head. :-)
Seriously, it has been the weirdest summer ever weather-wise, with buckets of rain and nearly daily flooding up through June, and then barely any rain at all for the last couple of months. Needless to say, the garden season has been quite challenging.
Several of my new raspberry plants drowned and died early on, many tomatoes rotted on the vine before they were even ripe, and we also had problems with rot with the garlic and onions. August and September have been so hot and dry that it has been a challenge just keeping the garden alive, but somehow I have managed for the most part...
Personally, it has also been a busier summer than usual, with two separate vacations plus a weekend road trip, as well as the roofing project which took up our driveway for all of June and July, delaying our yearly delivery of wood chips until nearly September. The abundance of rain coupled with the lack of mulch meant that I spent much more of my summer weeding than I would have liked, and didn't get to many of the projects that I had intended.
However, the new metal roof is done and the recent rain we got last week sounded AMAZING! I am looking forward to (hopefully) doing the barn roof in metal at some point, as I have read some negative things about watering the garden with water off of an asphalt roof.
Our new patio doors should (finally) be installed at some point in the next week or two, and we have replaced the siding on two sections of the back of the house ourselves this summer (hot and tiring work, but kind of fun and rewarding, too).
Below are pictures plus a few more updates from the homestead this summer, including a couple of new food preservation experiments that we've tried recently...
Seriously, it has been the weirdest summer ever weather-wise, with buckets of rain and nearly daily flooding up through June, and then barely any rain at all for the last couple of months. Needless to say, the garden season has been quite challenging.
Several of my new raspberry plants drowned and died early on, many tomatoes rotted on the vine before they were even ripe, and we also had problems with rot with the garlic and onions. August and September have been so hot and dry that it has been a challenge just keeping the garden alive, but somehow I have managed for the most part...
Personally, it has also been a busier summer than usual, with two separate vacations plus a weekend road trip, as well as the roofing project which took up our driveway for all of June and July, delaying our yearly delivery of wood chips until nearly September. The abundance of rain coupled with the lack of mulch meant that I spent much more of my summer weeding than I would have liked, and didn't get to many of the projects that I had intended.
However, the new metal roof is done and the recent rain we got last week sounded AMAZING! I am looking forward to (hopefully) doing the barn roof in metal at some point, as I have read some negative things about watering the garden with water off of an asphalt roof.
Our new patio doors should (finally) be installed at some point in the next week or two, and we have replaced the siding on two sections of the back of the house ourselves this summer (hot and tiring work, but kind of fun and rewarding, too).
Below are pictures plus a few more updates from the homestead this summer, including a couple of new food preservation experiments that we've tried recently...
Home Improvements
While my husband has been working on and off on a chicken house this summer (hopefully next year we will FINALLY have chickens??), we've also tackled a few different items that have been severely in need of repair on our own house:
1. The patio doors (which are falling to pieces, barely close, and have jagged pieces of metal sticking out everywhere),
2. Siding on the back of the house (we had a few walls professionally installed last year, but it was very costly, and we decided to do the lower, "easy" parts of the house ourselves),
3. And of course, our sagging, leaky roof!!
The patio doors have been ordered and should be installed shortly, thank goodness - I don't think I could go through another winter with those drafty old ones!
We have replaced 2 of the 3 sections of siding on the back of the house so far, at a small fraction of the cost of what we would have spent to have it professionally done.
And the roof is DONE - after 3 months of waiting, and 5 weeks of slooowwww actual work time!! Would we have chosen a standing-seam metal roof if we had known it would take so long and cause so much stress and anxiety? Who knows, but at least it is done now - and it looks beautiful!
While my husband has been working on and off on a chicken house this summer (hopefully next year we will FINALLY have chickens??), we've also tackled a few different items that have been severely in need of repair on our own house:
1. The patio doors (which are falling to pieces, barely close, and have jagged pieces of metal sticking out everywhere),
2. Siding on the back of the house (we had a few walls professionally installed last year, but it was very costly, and we decided to do the lower, "easy" parts of the house ourselves),
3. And of course, our sagging, leaky roof!!
The patio doors have been ordered and should be installed shortly, thank goodness - I don't think I could go through another winter with those drafty old ones!
We have replaced 2 of the 3 sections of siding on the back of the house so far, at a small fraction of the cost of what we would have spent to have it professionally done.
And the roof is DONE - after 3 months of waiting, and 5 weeks of slooowwww actual work time!! Would we have chosen a standing-seam metal roof if we had known it would take so long and cause so much stress and anxiety? Who knows, but at least it is done now - and it looks beautiful!
Garden Produce
The garden harvest has been a little spotty this year as I mentioned above. We got a good crop of potatoes, and the onions sized up nicely, although with a fair amount of rot. Tomatoes and beans have been lighter than usual this year, with a couple of tomato plants succumbing to early blight, and other tomatoes rotting on the plants before ripening. Oddly, the warm weather and lack of rain seems to have spurred the tomatoes on to a late-season crop, so even our Cherokee Purples and cherry tomatoes (which are usually done by now) are now producing again.
The okra and peppers are loving the hot weather and continuing warmth, so we are swimming in okra, and peppers are just starting to really come on strong after an early but light start. The corn wasn't terribly productive this year, although I managed to harvest it all before they got over-mature this time! It was tasty, but the ears were small and many were poorly pollinated.
I grew broccoli for the first time this year and it was lackluster as well. The plants got huge, but heads were disappointingly small and sparse. The broccoli raab (brocolini), on the other hand, was amazing, and I will definitely grow that again next spring! It was our earliest-maturing spring crop, and was delicious and vigorous, producing loads of tasty leaves as well as buds.
The beets and spring salad crops did quite well as well (and we had our best strawberry harvest yet), and we have a larger fall garden planted than usual - including kale, collards, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, lettuce, arugula, carrots, parsnips, and 2 kinds of radishes. The arugula doesn't care for this late heat, but everything else is looking just beautiful!
The garden harvest has been a little spotty this year as I mentioned above. We got a good crop of potatoes, and the onions sized up nicely, although with a fair amount of rot. Tomatoes and beans have been lighter than usual this year, with a couple of tomato plants succumbing to early blight, and other tomatoes rotting on the plants before ripening. Oddly, the warm weather and lack of rain seems to have spurred the tomatoes on to a late-season crop, so even our Cherokee Purples and cherry tomatoes (which are usually done by now) are now producing again.
The okra and peppers are loving the hot weather and continuing warmth, so we are swimming in okra, and peppers are just starting to really come on strong after an early but light start. The corn wasn't terribly productive this year, although I managed to harvest it all before they got over-mature this time! It was tasty, but the ears were small and many were poorly pollinated.
I grew broccoli for the first time this year and it was lackluster as well. The plants got huge, but heads were disappointingly small and sparse. The broccoli raab (brocolini), on the other hand, was amazing, and I will definitely grow that again next spring! It was our earliest-maturing spring crop, and was delicious and vigorous, producing loads of tasty leaves as well as buds.
The beets and spring salad crops did quite well as well (and we had our best strawberry harvest yet), and we have a larger fall garden planted than usual - including kale, collards, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, lettuce, arugula, carrots, parsnips, and 2 kinds of radishes. The arugula doesn't care for this late heat, but everything else is looking just beautiful!
Preserving the Harvest
Our food preservation efforts have a been a bit lacking this year, partly due to the lackluster garden production. However, I did purposefully scale back on tomatoes this year, since we still had 2 dozen quarts of canned tomatoes in the basement from last summer! We only canned one small batch of tomatoes this year, and I froze a few as well. Otherwise, I have only frozen a few quarts of green beans and some tomatilloes. We should have plenty of peppers to freeze - both hot and sweet, and probably some okra as well.
I grew a different variety of celery this year, and whether due to the weather or the type, it has not done nearly as well as usual, so we won't have our usual bumper crop to freeze. The plants just never got that big, and the stalks are still somewhat spindly, so I'm thinking they won't size up much more before frost...
I have canned just a few jars of ground cherry jam (hopefully another batch to come soon), and also made a few jars of pickled peppers for my husband, who loves pickled banana peppers on sandwiches. I plan to pickle some hot peppers as well, plus some okra, which we both enjoy.
I have also made some naturally fermented green beans as well as a couple of jars of kimchi with the summer cabbage that I grew this year. This week, I plan to try out these naturally fermented okra pickles, which sound amazing!
I also had the interesting idea of drying ground cherries in the dehydrator, so I tried that a few weeks ago. It was a bit challenging (they shrunk a lot while drying, so most of them ended up falling through the grates of the dehydrator trays!), but they turned out quite tasty, and take up MUCH less room than frozen. They are kind of like crunchy little golden raisins with a slight pineapple flavor. (I call them "graisins".) :-) I can't wait to try using them in place of raisins in cookies this winter!
Our food preservation efforts have a been a bit lacking this year, partly due to the lackluster garden production. However, I did purposefully scale back on tomatoes this year, since we still had 2 dozen quarts of canned tomatoes in the basement from last summer! We only canned one small batch of tomatoes this year, and I froze a few as well. Otherwise, I have only frozen a few quarts of green beans and some tomatilloes. We should have plenty of peppers to freeze - both hot and sweet, and probably some okra as well.
I grew a different variety of celery this year, and whether due to the weather or the type, it has not done nearly as well as usual, so we won't have our usual bumper crop to freeze. The plants just never got that big, and the stalks are still somewhat spindly, so I'm thinking they won't size up much more before frost...
I have canned just a few jars of ground cherry jam (hopefully another batch to come soon), and also made a few jars of pickled peppers for my husband, who loves pickled banana peppers on sandwiches. I plan to pickle some hot peppers as well, plus some okra, which we both enjoy.
I have also made some naturally fermented green beans as well as a couple of jars of kimchi with the summer cabbage that I grew this year. This week, I plan to try out these naturally fermented okra pickles, which sound amazing!
I also had the interesting idea of drying ground cherries in the dehydrator, so I tried that a few weeks ago. It was a bit challenging (they shrunk a lot while drying, so most of them ended up falling through the grates of the dehydrator trays!), but they turned out quite tasty, and take up MUCH less room than frozen. They are kind of like crunchy little golden raisins with a slight pineapple flavor. (I call them "graisins".) :-) I can't wait to try using them in place of raisins in cookies this winter!
Overall, while the garden wasn't quite as productive this year, and I had to do more weeding and watering than I would have liked, it has been a great summer, and I can't believe that it's about to be October! It seems like the whole summer went by in a flash, even though we did accomplish so much.
The warm weather makes it hard to believe that winter is on its way, but I know we shall soon be feeling the first frosts of fall. It looks, smells, and sounds like fall everywhere I go.
I'm just hoping for a few more weeks of warmth so the rest of the garden crops can finish up. Then, it will be time for a few months of blessed rest! :-)
Enjoy what's left of the season!
Rose.
The warm weather makes it hard to believe that winter is on its way, but I know we shall soon be feeling the first frosts of fall. It looks, smells, and sounds like fall everywhere I go.
I'm just hoping for a few more weeks of warmth so the rest of the garden crops can finish up. Then, it will be time for a few months of blessed rest! :-)
Enjoy what's left of the season!
Rose.
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