Tag: Tomatoes

Fall Harvest and Market visits – long & picture heavy post

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

It has snowed over the last three days, so I guess that our fall harvest season is officially over.

Our Garden this year was planted a bit late – like a month and a half, due to me having hip surgery and the complete rework of the back yard. Consequently, our sweet corn never fully ripened, but the hot weather and sunshine this summer made for great tomatoes, peppers, and squash. To add to our bounty: our grass is Ireland-green and we are set up great for next year 🙂

The yard – old and new:

 

 

 

 

We got real figs for the first time ever from a small fig tree on our south fence line. It has been in the ground for 5 years and this was the first year that it really produced fruit, which we enjoyed with breakfast. Our two cherry trees were not as productive as last year, but some of that had to do with the weeks-long battle we had each evening with the snails and slugs climbing the trees and the ants that came later.

 

 

 

 

The apple trees produced fairly heavily as well, though no thanks to an “arborist” that screwed up the pruning and set our yard on fire with an errant cigarette butt – seriously.

The apple trees:

 

 

 

 

Squash and Veggies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lapin and Stella Cherries:

 

 

 

 

Stamps-With-Foot really came into her own this year with the flowers she planted and cultivated! The houses next door and across the street were for sale at the same time and we had a couple of people comment on our “beautiful” yard and our “amazing flowers.” It made me proud of her, and of the front yard for the first time in years.

A few of the flowers:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next year my bride has spectacular plans for more tulips, lots of lilies, dahlias everywhere, more lavender, and other bee-attracting flowers. We will also plant the garden earlier, with starts that have been hot-housed, have a 3’X4′ plot of garlic, lots of carrots, parsnips, and some more roma tomatoes. We are going to bag the apples to keep the apple-moth at bay and can/bake/press/ferment them next fall. A row of blueberries will go on the south-side fence where the firewood used to be. Raspberries will go in in a sunny spot and I am builting in 2 more garden boxes (pending Stamps-With-Foots approval) along the garage. Until then, we are blessed with a year-round farmer’s market in our neighborhood. It is full of local fruit, veggies, pasta, bread, honey, berries, cheese, fish, and meat. The offerings are seasonal and we have gotten to know some of the folks that grow our food, which is awesome.

Scenes from the West Seattle market:

Stamps-With-Foot’s Garden

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Seattle has suffered through a weeks of freezing fog, stagnant air, flu season, and intermittent rain. The weather has me longing for long September evenings in our back yard….

2012 was a great year for us outside and in the yard. Stamps-With-Foot had her greening thumb put to work and our garden was crazy plentiful, in part because of her planting of mutant green squash and her nightly wine sipping/watering regimen. She moved dirt, turned the compost, picked berries, planted, harvested, pruned, cut bushes, dug in the dirt, and even removed a slug or two. I was very proud of her!

That hard work and spent energy was put to good use and we traded our bounty of veggies with the neighbors, she froze raspberries and blackberries that we both toiled over and my sweet wife made countless spinach and arugula salads from plants that we grew. To top it all off, she turned some of our tomatoes into chutney that was canned to make Christmas gifts. She is turning into quite the little homesteader.

A fruitful season

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I am sitting in our breakfast nook, drinking coffee and getting mentally prepped for my J-O-B. As I sip my needed and delicious cup o’ joe, I can see the winter sunrise reflecting off the tips of the frost covered grass in the front yard. It has me ruminating on the intensity, goals, minor failures, and harvest from this years garden and yard work.

I spent our very cold spring getting our raised boxes ready for a bumper crop: perfect soil mix, irrigation lines, compost, etc… The tomatoes were planted a little early and they got an early blight that stunted them for a time, but they came back in force and we had more tomatoes than we new what to do with this year. I didn’t get the onions in the ground soon enough or plant garlic at all, so e ultimately gathered 2 medium white onions and I left the rest of the shoots in the ground this fall, planted winter garlic and covered them with straw so the we will have a summer crop next year.

We feel our biggest success was with our greens. Planted spinach, butter lettuce, and chard that fed us all summer. There was an unfortunate incident with the broccoli (bugs, microwave, crunchy dinner…), but on the whole our bed of greens was were most of the bang for our buck came from.

Fall hurt a little. I was away a good bit traveling for work and the garden was neglected. My very first apple was stolen by a squirrel, the slugs went NUTS on the last of the tomato crop. Fvcking slugs… There will be a battle next year and I am planning on a plan of full slug eradication. There was some definite success though: we gathered almost 2 gallons of raspberries, made mint mojitos and mint juleps from the 6 types of mint I have growing in containers. There were probably 3 bushels of tomatoes that came out of one 3×7 raised bed – really. We had our first lemon, first fig, cherries, huckleberries, strawberries (also hurt by the squirrels though), a full cup of blue berries, beets, greens, and lot of knowledge gained through screwing up.

Thoughts for this winter and next year:

Death to all slugs!!
Need more bees early in the season for fruit trees – hang some mason bees in a warm area.
Grow starts in basement and do not plant too early.
Mulch raspberries and roses.
Cut all blackberries out.
Need more drip irrigation hose.
Raise kitchen herb planters up another foot off the ground.
Raise strawberry pots up as well.
Prune tomato flowers so that crop is smaller and fruit larger.
Use apple bags to keep apple pests at bay.
Spray fruit trees early!
Spray roses with anti-rust/fungal early and monthly.
Spend more time in garden.