Garden – Page 23 – Beautiful Chaos

We had the first night frost

O no. I was not prepared for this yet.

The first frost gave an amazing view and everything looks so pretty coated with a thin layer of white crystals.

The only thing is that I have not harvested everything that is sensitive for frost. So the first thing we did, after it became a bit warmer outside, is harvest all of the pumpkins we could find. Our kid’s helped me with that and brought all of our pumpkins to our barn.

**The pumpkins are definitely damaged by the frost**

We gave the pumpkins a nice bed of straw in some boxes. We put them in the best place we have to ripen. We put them in our barn in front of the windows (facing west, the only side with windows in this barn). Unfortunately we have only 10 – 12°C in our barn. The pumpkins would like temperatures of around 20°C to ripen better, but that is something I can not offer. I hope this will do and try to process them before they turn bad. We have 15 pcs of Hokkaido Solor from only 2 plants and 30 pcs of Sweet Dumpling also from only 2 plants. Not all pumpkins are ready to eat yet, but we can give them some time. Or they will ripen enough to eat, or they turn bad and will land on the compost.

Beside the pumpkins I also have a lot of red beets in a bed and harvested only half to process. All at once would have been to many to process. The easiest thing was to make a big batch of soup. I filled these in smaller jars, since the kid’s do not always want to eat this and put these in the freezer. Of course we also eat from the freshly made soup.

Other than that I cooked a big batch of red beets in my instand pot and pickled these. Since the red beets where fully done I keep these pickled red beets in the fridge. Canning this is not an option any more, since I do not like squishy beets.

**Only a part of the red beets needing to be processed** **(with a pumpkin pie in the back)**

**The first batch of red beets done in the instand pot and ready to be peeled**

After this one night frost the wetter turned very nice again and I left the rest of the beets in the ground, since we have other things to do. One of those things was taking down our greenhouse roof which gave a nice free space to plant lots of cabbages next year.

Making rosehip pulp

My son absolutely wanted to make rosehip pulp. He loves it on a slice of bread.

So I told him if he wants that he has to make it himself. I remember very well how unsatisfying it was from doing that the first time last year. Obviously we all assisted him with picking and he washed and cleaned the rosehips.

With stirring while cooking the rosehips he was still enthusiastic, but then the rosehips had to be pressed and strained. This is heavy and for a 6 year old almost undoable. Of course I finished this for him, but I did need some pauses in between. There must be a better way of doing this.

The yield is small compared to the waist.

The pulp was very thick, so I added some water and heated it up again to fill it up in glasses. After the rosehip pulp cooled again I keep it in the refrigerator.

Garden update, planting my birthday tree and fall is beautiful

What is going on in the garden? Finally found some time to plant the tree I got for my birthday. Lots of colors and fruits in the fall.

I got a Kiri climate tree for my birthday and I had a hard time deciding where to plant it. Finally I made up my mind and planted it in a bed that needed some work anyway. With cleaning this bed I found some marigolds I replanted here.

Going trough the garden, there is still a lot going on. We did not have a night frost yet, so most of the plants are still looking good. I even found a volunteer tomato with a flower.

The leeks grew to a nice size, but the celery looks nice only when I harvest one the root is ratter small. Hopefully they will grow better next year.

The cabbages are finally forming some heads, but it is too late in the season for them to grow much anymore. On the other hand did the kale well this year. I let some broccoli flower, which are pretty.

Surprisingly the beans grow on and on. I even harvested some more, but am also leaving them for seed. From this colorful variety I have enough. The other two varieties I find taste better, so I harvested them longer. Hopefully with these the seed will ripen on time before the wetter turns.

It is amazing, but there are still strawberry’s and raspberry’s ripening. Although most strawberry’s get eaten by ants before they are fully ripe it is very nice to still be able to snack from the garden.

I was a bit late with sowing some spinach and lamb’ lettuce, but they are finally visible and growing. Before the spinach there where peas and apparently I had overseen some. New peas started to grow.

The runner strawberry’s I had planted out have settled in nicely. Also we planted some perennials in the garden beds. Hydrangea, grapes and peony. With the peony I like to pick varieties that are good for bees although I also love the once with filled flowers.

The cover crops I had sown are doing well.

The greenhouse roof is mostly cleared. I found a small zucchini although most of the plant is gone. The pumpkins are still ripening. The greenhouse roof is in need of new roofing and, shortly in the growing season, I had noticed that the tomato plants where curling over there leafs. After some research I found that this could mean that there are too much nutrients in the soil. Therefore I decided to take away the greenhouse roof and I will be growing cabbage here next year. Hopefully I will have more success with this crop then.