Vegetable Garden Round-Up- Labour Day Weekend.
- themarigoldgc
- Sep 2, 2023
- 5 min read
The harvest season is really upon us! I know, I know, everyone says that summer is over and gardening is done for the year. It's not over here, not by a long shot! This is when everything is coming in hot and heavy.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be canning, baking, dehydrating, and freezing all sorts of foods to fill the pantry and the cold room. Is such a wonderful, though busy, time of year. Just think... in 3 or 4 weeks, all of these beds will be empty. Eek!
The first thing I am trying to do is take lots of notes and tons of pics. What I love, don't love, but mostly, what I going to move where next year. I will do up a garden review at the end of the year, a report card of sorts, and fill you in better about all the things I have noticed.
But for now... here is the vegetable garden recap for the end of August.
I topped all my tomatoes and removed much of the extra foliage to help them ripen up. Topping them (taking off a few inches of the top growth) puts energy into ripening the tomatoes already on the vine rather than continuing to grow and make new blossoms this late in the season. This is most important for indeterminates, but also helps your determinates if they are not ripening. I have done it to all my tomatoes, including the Martino's Roma in the picture above.
Another thing to do to help them ripen faster is to water less often. I have gone from watering every 4th day to just once a week. You can even stop watering altogether.
Mine are just starting to blush so still need a couple of nice weather weeks. This is super scary for me! For the past decade, I have been harvesting my first batch of tomatoes in mid-August, second batch a week or two later, and the third and final one in early to mid-September. Looks like just one crop this year, maybe two if I am extremely lucky with weather.
The tomatoes growing under the hail guard are all indeterminates have been topped, too, with much of the extra foliage snapped off to help these beauties ripen up.
These sunflowers were planted on the other side of the hail guard but those June rains must have moved them migrate over to this area. The baby spaghetti squash are planted in the tomato bed to the left of the picture but climbing up the sunflowers. In wanting to grow 'all the things' in this backyard plot, I have created this fun jungle of food crops.
I have three Howden pumpkins, that I know of, growing for my grandies to carve at Hallowe'en. I hope to find a few more hiding amongst the leaves when I start pruning and tidying up the vines. They are taking over the yard but sure have been fun to grow. My task this weekend is to remove all the extra leaves and nip off the tops of the vines so they stop growing, concentrate on ripening.
You know fall is coming when the squash and cucumbers start to get powdery mildew. They will going along fine and then a few days of cool weather come along with a heavy dewpoint and boom... you get powdery mildew.
It is not a big deal. They are almost done for the year. Take off the worst of the leaves, leave your pumpkins/squash to finish ripening and then remove the whole kit and caboodle when done. There will be no stopping the mildew once this time of year hits, absolutely no point in spraying.
These beds are jampacked...
Determinate tomatoes and a lone spaghetti squash in the left bed.
Onions, beets, carrots in the middle
Zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, beets, and carrots in the right hand bed.
I have cut back on watering to just once a week now.
The onions are starting to fold over so will be harvested over the upcoming week sometime. They will be hung to dry and cure before being braided for storage. Do not braid your onions while the stems are green and fresh, they are too damp and may rot.
We have been harvesting beets, carrots, onions, potatoes and zukes on the regular. Our dogs also get lots of veggies daily. We make them a 'stew' of carrots, zukes, and ground meat to put on top of their kibble every meal. I read somewhere (years ago) that if you feed them green and orange vegetables, they are 70% less apt to get cancer. Seems like an easy and yummy thing to do for my babies.
Our beets and cucumbers are amazing this year. We have pickled a batch of each so far, 9 litres of beets and 3 half litres of refrigerator pickled gherkins. So many more to come. the fridge pickles are so good! Recipe to come this week!
Check out the beets! We grew foot long Deep Cylinders and softball sized Lutz Green Leaf beets. Some are for roasting but will make one more batch of pickled beets, too.
I pulled some of the medium sized onions from in between the big ones, allowing the big ones to get even bigger. They will go into the cold room to use throughout the winter.
My Tall Utah celery are so nice! Big fat stalks, juicy and crisp. We will use a lot of it for making ketchup and salsa. Watered twice a week, in case you are curious. I do not blanche mine but you can pop a 2 litre milk carton over top when the plant is little to keep the stalks white and tender.
If you are growing these on the island, a zone 7 or above, just harvest the stalks but leave the plants in the ground. They will keep growing until frost takes them down and then then will start growing new stalks from the center in February-ish again. Remove the plants in late spring, plant new ones.
The second bed of potatoes is starting to die off... slowly but surely. Some people will keep watering while the tops die back but I rarely do. Just letting them do their thing. You know me, thrifty with water.
When the tops have fully died back, I lift the potatoes and lay them out to dry/cure for a few days, and get a good thick skin. Then they can just be tossed into a cardboard box and stored in a heated garage or a cold room that stays just a bit above freezing.
I will do up an end of year recap with a report card of sorts for all the veggies and flowers that I grew in a few week's time. Some things are amazing while others will not be make it onto the grow list again.
Anyway... hey, what about that sunflower, eh? See you all real soon. Things change so much in the garden each week that I have all sorts of new things to tell you about already!
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