From loyal commentor Max:
First it was really dry for about two months (which finished off my regular basil) and then it got fairly dreary and wet, but we’re still going here. I was going to send a picture of these I took this morning but a bee popped in this afternoon and I had to get it.
These just keep going, even though it seems to have gotten too dry for them.
The bugs like to eat the petunias but one of them keeps thriving.
The peppers keep coming…
And the compost pile tomatoes (which started accidentally growing from seeds that survived the first composting) keep producing.
And here’s a slightly older pic…Which I turned into salsa for the pork tacos!
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Rainy, dank & windy here in New England (“but at least it’s not snow”). Gives me an excuse to delay the last mowing, and spend some time clearing shelves in the garage to put away the garden gear for next year…What’s going on in your gardens this week?
raven
Nice stuff Max! It’s below freezing so the kudzu should totally die. We haven’t had much in the way of color, I’ll be interested what my bride saw on her journey to Virginia this weekend. I covered a ton of her plants last night but, when she gets back, I’ll have to drag a bunch of them inside for the winter. The chinese tallow tree should start yielding the popcorn that she makes xmas wreaths from will be ready soon too.
PurpleGirl
Nice pictures Max. I especially love the purple roses and petunias. (Rather obvious, I guess.)
I’ve been up all night — can’t seem to sleep. Haven’t turned the clocks back yest, at least the computer reset itself and Time Warner Cable changed the clock on the cable box.
raven
@PurpleGirl: There are thousands of UGA fans who couldn’t sleep either.
JPL
Does anyone have Beth’s address for the calendar pictures?
Max, Beautiful pictures. Sunday mornings are so nice because the pictures give me hope for next season.
HeartlandLiberal
Cleared the garden here in South Central Indiana last week. Pulled the tomato cages, piled up tomatoes and peppers that had survived for composting, pulled the dozens of dead sunflower stalks up for same. It was a glorious year for sunflowers. The neighbor has piled his leaves on one area of the garden for me to mulch and till in, as he is kind enough to do every year.
It was a good year for some things, like tomatoes. We made the best spaghetti sauces with over a dozen varieties of tomatoes in it, best I have ever eaten, several batches, some still frozen for future use.
I plan to send off soil samples for analysis again, though. Some things did very poorly. Some areas may still be nitrogen deficient, and Ph balance wrong. In one area some greens just refused to grow well or at all. Strange.
Next year, the entire 2,000 square feet will be wild flowers and sunflowers. We are leaving the country for a 50th anniversary trip to Europe, by boat both ways, 18 days in Northern Germany and London. So be gone nearly 7 weeks. Let the garden rest next year.
I am going to dig up the strawberry patch. Fighting the weeds and rot and moles has worn me out. Next year, it will be a large, 15 x 8 foot herb garden. Easier to maintain, and we love growing our own basic supply of herbs. I have a dehydrator I use for herbs and peppers.
Mustang Bobby
Beautiful pictures, Max, especially the peppers and tomatoes.
I woke up to 48.2 F according to Weather Underground here in Miami. It’s a pleasant change, but I know it’s going to be back up in the 70’s by the noon. The orchids are doing fine.
OzarkHillbilly
Still cleaning it up. We had a killer frost last nite and nite before so all should be finished. Working today so I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to find out how the sweet potatoes have done.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: “A wacky season has taken another turn for the absurd. It’s suddenly not out of the question that Missouri (7-2, 4-1 SEC) returns to Atlanta for the SEC championship game.”
WereBear
@HeartlandLiberal: Sounds like marvy plans.
Ramalama
@HeartlandLiberal: I’m sorry, a 50th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY? And you’re still gardening and globe gliding? Good for you.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep, he’ll, the gators are alive.
Gindy51
@HeartlandLiberal: We did the same here in SE IN, Our raised beds are getting a total redo this winter. Complete turning, more top soil, peat moss, and composted soil. Our tomatoes did so-so, early blight was conquered with the help of Garden’s Alive products, but it still took a toll. Doing a soil analysis as well, before the redo so we know what to add.
Our cucumbers were spectacular but the zucchini was just nothing. Maybe got 4 or 5 usable pieces off of 5 plants. We’ll try again next year. Sunflowers went nuts all over down here, huge flowers tons of seeds, birds are gobbling them up as I hung the plants over the fence. Next year they get their own garden, as they bring in pollinators like crazy.
Our best plants were the chipmunk poop tomatoes, the little monsters grabbed some out of the garden and “planted” the seeds for me by the house, lamest soil on the planet – clay and never watered. I had more tomatoes off those two plants than the whole rest of the garden (24 plants). Amazingly sweet and very juicy. I think I need to hire them to do the whole damned garden next year.
Southern Beale
Unrelated but anyone else having problems with the iPhone since upgrading to the new OS? My touch-screen is all fubar’d
jeffreyw
Flowers are nice and all but the taco spread really caught my eye. LOL
Mobile RoonieRoo
I love purple flowers. I love volunteer tomatoes even more. Friday was my birthday so I’ve been having a “birthday weekend” which means friends, nice meals, playing games and not much work. The only “have to” is cleaning up my frost blankets for the garden. We haven’t had our first one yet but it could hit anyday and the carrots and beets are still to small. Broccoli is massive and I should start seeing heads forming very soon.
Y’all our motivating me to work on the non vegetable part of the garden.
JPL
@Mobile RoonieRoo: Happy Birthday weekend.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@JPL: It’s in Anne Laurie’s First Call for Photos.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who wonders if our Sophie will make it this year…)
Gene108
@Mobile RoonieRoo:
Happy Birthday weekend!!!!
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My favorite weekend of the year is when we go back from daylight savings time to standard time.
The extra hour is just luxurious.
Violet
I wasn’t paying attention to the weather forecast. Knew we had a cold front coming but no idea it was going to be in the lower 40s. Don’t think I prepared my plants for that. Oh well. The hardy ones will make it.
Hoping to get out in the garden this afternoon and continue with repairing the raised beds, adding compost, putting in brassica transplants. Weather is supposed to warm up by afternoon. We’ll see.
Scout211
Great pics! The peppers are so beautiful.
We still have three tomato plants that are still producing a few tomatoes. My winter garden is producing broccoli in abundance and cabbage but the brussel sprouts are slow to produce.
Our current project is expanding my garden to double the size. Now that we are both retired (Yay!) I will have time to tend to a larger garden.
My 6 new boxes arrived this week and we are now in the process of setting them up and adding gopher wire. Then we will install the deer/rabbit fencing, with a gate this time.
We had .75 of an inch of rain this weekend here in our corner of NorCal. It was a a good start to (hopefully) a wet season.
raven
@Southern Beale: My video camera on my 5s doesn’t want to stop.
Joel Hanes
[Homer]
Mmmmm. Carnitas.
[/Homer]
and that’s some xlnt lookin’ taco fixin’s.
Here in Silicon Valley we’ve finally had a couple light rains, adding up to almost an inch of rain since 1 July.
That’s 85% of normal.
schrodinger's cat
Wet and windy in western Mass. Its going to warm up later during the week. I am not a huge fan of this time of the year, with the short days and hardly any sun. At least after the winter solstice the days begin to get longer, even though it is cold.
max
Ok, if I respond to everybody it’s gonna eat my comment. Thanks for compliments on the pictures guys!
@Mobile RoonieRoo: I love purple flowers. I love volunteer tomatoes even more. Friday was my birthday so I’ve been having a “birthday weekend” which means friends, nice meals, playing games and not much work.
I have all these damn volunteer tomatoes plants (some romas, some weird cluster tomatoes, and some Cherokee purples that just started growing, and now they’ve just running everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s also caterpillar heaven back there, so a bunch of got eaten. But they were ‘free’ anyways.
Happy Birthday!
The only “have to” is cleaning up my frost blankets for the garden. We haven’t had our first one yet but it could hit anyday
Yeah, as soon as I sent in those pictures (it was 91 on Monday!), I started getting forecasts for snow this weekend. Like Anne Laurie, I’m not getting the snow, but it’s dank, cold and dreary today (41!), and it’s going to freeze tonight so I gotta break out the blankets and trudge plants in and out. But just for one day. Then it’s back to the 60’s and 70’s by Tuesday. Gah. Then I get to mow up the leaves.
@PurpleGirl: Nice pictures Max. I especially love the purple roses and petunias. (Rather obvious, I guess.)
When I came here it was all the flowering trees – but the flowers are all pink and white. Which is pretty dreary looking when it’s overcase so I needed to offset a lot. So I have tons of purple (petunias, roses, mums, whatever the hell I was growing that died) and yellow/orange/red.
Hopefully the weird black flowers that I also got will come in the spring like they’re supposed to do. Then they can pair up with the purple roses and the blue flowering vine which is also taking a while to get established.
Then it’ll hopefully be the Goth rave (red/orange/yellow in front of the roses) flowerbed.
max
[‘I gotta clip some of that basil for tomato sauce too.’]
max
@jeffreyw: Flowers are nice and all but the taco spread really caught my eye. LOL
Pork carnitas southern Mexico style (onions, lettuce, cilantro, limes, soft corn tortillas) except I used the homemade red salsa instead of the green like I was supposed to. Tomatillos are bit hard to get here at times.
@JPL: Max, Beautiful pictures. Sunday mornings are so nice because the pictures give me hope for next season.
Thanks for asking for that address – I have ton of dog pictures.
It’s lookin’ pretty ragged at the moment, sadly. Gonna see what I can save.
max
[‘It’s not supposed to freeze until Thanksgiving, dammit!’]
shelley
Yup, cold, cold, cold here too. Gray clouds and windy. With the end of daylight savings time to remind us, I ain’t looking forward to this coming winter.
WereBear
@shelley: I do okay with winter right through January. February is a tough one, it picks up in March, and by mid-April I’m fine again.
And I live in a place routinely featured on the Weather Channel as the Coldest Spot :)
WereBear
Watching The Assets on Netflix while I catch up with a month of blog posts. Site went down because of huge traffic volume, which is a good thing, but moving a blog is not easy. Though it should be…
I am SOOOO impressed. This is a fantastic series with great writing and acting. And apparently it totally bombed on ABC earlier this year? I’m sure part of the problem is that some of it was scheduled on Sunday afternoons, when no one watches television, but I see it as a sign that broadcast television just doesn’t want to have the same kind of stuff that HBO & Showtime & Nextflix and so forth are so busy making hits out of.
Which is why we’ve dropped down to basic cable and gone completely internet with our watching. Lower cost and far fewer commercials is a no brainer for us, since we are going to have Internet in any case.
MomSense
My gardens are covered in icy snow. The wind is howling and I didn’t get all the leaves raked. Hopefully this first snow will melt and I can rake up the leaves before more snow falls.
caroln
First freeze of the season last night in SE Michigan, things look kind of sad. I had that purple rose years ago and it didn’t do very well, so I pulled it out. I’m still looking for one to put in it’s empty spot.
Tree With Water
A critter attacked my bonsai plant a few months ago. Bark was chewed through (or so I thought), and its moss bed was ripped open in chunks. I began to bring it in overnight, and that seemed to do true trick. But a few days ago it was attacked again. That is, the moss bed was torn up, but the bark was untouched this time. I then turned my back on the bonsai for a few minutes, came back, and it had been attacked again. It then dawned on me- it wasn’t a possum, or raccoon, or rat that was responsible, and the bark hadn’t been chewed at all. It was a woodpecker that had done the damage, the little bastard. I’m now on the lookout for a bird cage to cover the bonsai, and that will be that.