Yes, Voles
As I was digging potatoes this week, I came upon this:
A vole tunnel running through the potato bed
Yes, it is a vole tunnel. It ran mostly parallel to the rows of potatoes, but crossed through them at one point, as well. The voles weren’t quite smart enough to dig their tunnel right under the potato plants, but once in a while, the tunnel did hit on a potato and this is what happened:
The voles got to these potatoes before I did.
Luckily, they I found a lot more potatoes than they did.
Fall
Sunflowers keep blooming into fall.
According to the tv news meteorologists, fall begins at 2:18 pm today. Besides the official announcements by the weather forecasters, I have other ways to tell that fall is coming, like cool mornings with lots of dew. Or days that when you work in the sun you get hot, but if you work in the shade you are cold. Here are a few pictures from around the garden that let me know that fall is here:
Sunrise is coming around 7 am now.
Lots of morning dew.
Hubbard squash are just about ready.
So are the Rouge Vif D'Etampes pumpkins. (I love that name.)
We just got a load of wood for the winter.
The Dominique on the left is starting to molt. I'll take more pictures when she looks worse.
There was morning dew on this tomato plant. Ends up you can't see it, but I like the picture anyway.
Still More to Plant
The fifth planing of lettuce is in the ground.
I am still planting at June’s Corner Garden. Late last week, I planted the fifth round of lettuce out in the garden. The sixth round still needs to be potted up, so it can get a little bigger before it goes out. I even started a seventh round today. I don’t know how far it will get…it may end up being some late winter/early spring lettuce for me and Steven.
I also planted cabbage and Brussels sprouts starts. It is too late for them and I don’t expect that I will get anything, but I had the starts, I had some space, and what is the harm in trying? They got started on time this year (back in mid-June), got potted up once, but then our niece, Paige, left. She helped out a lot with starting seeds and potting up starts (she worked on these ones). I didn’t get to potting them up again and didn’t have the space until now to get them out in the garden. But, who knows how the fall weather will turn out? Maybe I will be surprised.
I have a few other starts that have a good chance for fall production: kale, escarole and endive. I just have to clean out a space in the garden for them.
Today was the last day for starting seeds this season. As I just mentioned, I started one more round of lettuce, as well as some cool weather greens: bok choi, spinach, arugula, a few different mustards, miners lettuce and corn salad (aka mache or vit). If all goes well (not too many slugs or other pests), these could show up on the list of produce in November.
Loading up the Kabota with the coop straw to take down to the compost pile.
Steven helped with a big task on Saturday: a thorough cleaning of the chicken coop. We took all the straw and nest box bedding out to the compost pile. (It will decompose in the compost pile for 6 months to a year before we put it out in the garden.) Then we scrubbed it down, let it dry, and put new bedding in. The girls were a little hesitant when they went in last night, but they realized that even though it smelled a little different, it was still their coop.
First night in the clean coop.
Stocking Up
The last month or so, I have spent a little time away from June’s Corner Garden. Not far away, just a step in the door and into the kitchen, preserving produce for winter. Some vegetables have done so well (like beans and zucchini) I’ve had plenty of extra to can and freeze. Sometimes, I choose not to sell something (like raspberries and pears), so I can preserve it for us to eat later. If I don’t grow something (or enough of something), I head out to a neighboring farm to get some. I try to pick the rainy days to preserve, when I would want to work inside, but sometimes, the produce is ready and you have to do something with it now.
Here are a few of the things I have preserved this summer:
I canned peaches from Sauvie Island Farms.
I tried out that zucchini relish recipe in The Oregonian's FOODday.
I canned Dilly Beans for the first time. Those jars were big.
Today, it is zucchini pickles. Later this week, it will be pears. I like stocking up for winter.
I think I missed these zucchinis for more than one day…
How can zucchinis hide when they get this big?
I’ll try not to write about zucchini too many more times, but I just couldn’t believe it when I found these zucchinis. I didn’t find them all on the same day, but within maybe two days. How could I have missed three in such a short time?
And this past week, this guy keeps showing up on the same leaf whenever I go out to harvest zucchini:
He's been out every day for the past week or so, in the exact same spot.
Hmmm…there must be something good in that zucchini patch.
Just for Fun
I pulled these carrots the other day.
I pulled these carrots the other day…they came out just like the picture, half eaten. What ate my carrots? The first person who correctly answers this question (or, I should say, tells what I think has eaten them) will get a pound of carrots in their next order, free.
Catching Up
Today I feel like I am this close to catching up on all the big jobs around the garden. I planted a few more things and potted up more starts the past few weeks. The main progress, however, was in the job that Steven did this weekend: pruning grapes. This is what a few of the grape vines looked like at the end of May, with the leaves just coming out:
A couple grape vines in May
Here are a few pictures after Steven pruned them. I wish I had take a before photo. Looking at the second picture, you have to imagine vines crisscrossing the open space, so thick you can’t walk down the row. These plants are incredible. So far the grapes are looking great. If the weather cooperates, we should have a good harvest again this year.
These grapes have been pruned back.
Now we can walk through the rows and see the grape clusters.
Here are a few other pictures from around the garden:
The spaghetti squash are loving it in the hoop house.
A spaghetti squash coming this fall.
The next batch of lettuce, coming soon.
The kale got cleaned up last week.
Hot
I don’t have to tell you: it was a hot week. On Tuesday at our house, we hit a high of 112 degrees. Okay, I do have to tell you that the reading was taken in direct sun, above a concrete patio. Take it as you will. The goal for the week was to survive.
I got the hoses down to water the last four beds with a sprinkler.
The plants in the garden did very well in the heat. The only problem arose when one zone of the irrigation system went out on Tuesday. It happened to be for the vegetable beds farthest from the house, so I was hooking together hoses and dragging them down to water those beds with a sprinkler. It all worked out fine, but it sure made me appreciate the automated, underground drip irrigation system all the more. It was repaired by Friday afternoon.
I had a bit harder time in the heat. I worked outside in the morning, trying to keep in the shade even then. I tried even harder to stay inside in the afternoons: starting new lettuce seeds, potting up some starts, ordering more seeds and garlic, and working on the books. It wasn’t completely possible, though; there was extra watering to do and chickens to check on. I was moving slowly.
A Dominique panting to stay cool.
The girls did pretty well. They were hot, no doubt about it, panting and holding out their wings to cool off. I put out extra water and a sprinkler in their run. I gave them frozen watermelon rinds to eat. I think we’ll all be feeling a bit better in the next few days when (if?) the temperatures get back to normal.
A Quiet Week
Paige left her work shoes behind.
It was kind of quiet around June’s Corner Garden last week. Paige spent Tuesday, her last day in Portland, with her grandparents and cousins and flew back to Colorado early Wednesday morning. The five weeks she was here went by fast. Steven and I really enjoyed our time with her, getting to know her better, since she has always lived a state or two away from us. And I was certainly happy to have her help around the garden. She really did help a lot. We invited her back for next summer, but we’ll have to wait to see what happens. A year is a long time when you are seventeen.
Before: Yes, there are cranberries under those weeds.
The rest of the week was filled with the usual: harvesting, planting and weeding. I got the next batch of lettuce into the ground; much later than I hoped, but they are pretty far along. I weeded out the beans and celery. Not much longer for the beans! Then I got to the cranberries: the experiment I won’t give up on.
After: I love how the cranberries look now.
I planted cranberries several years ago and have not had a harvest yet. Though you always hear cranberries grow in a bog, they don’t have to. They do need a lot of water and flooding with water makes harvesting easier, but you don’t have to flood them. My cranberry bed does get a lot of weeds. This is the second time I have weeded this season and I hope it will hold out until harvest. This year I want homegrown cranberries for Thanksgiving.
There even are a few cranberries on the plants.
Watch the Zucchini
I like to harvest zucchini when they are between 6 inches and 8 inches long. To make sure I get them at that size, I harvest zucchini every day. This is what happens when I miss a zucchini:
Can you tell which zucchini I missed yesterday?
Bethel Springs Farm 