Gardening – Page 12 – Beautiful Chaos

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.

While strolling over the property looking for some more beautiful things to show we got accompanied by one of our cats.

I just love all of the colors to be found in the fall.

A water drub on a Nasturtium

Harvesting my Chili’s

We almost had a night frost and I lost the nerves to wait any longer, so I harvested al of my Chili’s

I was so happy seeing that the chili’s finally started to turn red and I wanted to wait as long as possible with harvesting them. I personally find that peppers general taste better when they have had the time to ripen. But middle October it definitely is fall and the temperature is going down. Mostly we still had around 8°C at night, but all of a sudden it was only 2°C and I asked my husband and children to go and harvest the chili’s. It would be a shame to lose them to a night frost.

Last year I had fermented the chili’s and we loved that on a pizza. This year I also want to make a chili sauce, but I don’t have the time right now. So I have filled a glass to ferment and I will freeze the rest for making the chili sauce an other time. To ferment I removed the tops and the insides and most of the seeds and cut the chili’s in small pieces. I had prepared salt water on forehand ( one tablespoon of salt with 400 ml boiled water, cooled down ) to poor onto the chili’s so they will be covered.

The rest of the chili’s I only cut in half to remove the insides, but I did not remove all of the seeds. I put this in a storage box into the freezer for later use. I have a general idea on how I want to make the chili sauce, but I do not know the ratios for the different ingredients, so I will be looking for a recipe.