Fall harvest

September came and went nearly without me noticing! I have been on "back to school" mode after a fantastic summer in the garden. The program I am taking (bachelor degree in social education) is very interesting. It is also challenging and demanding, but I still manage to spend a few hours outside every now and then. It's really good for the head after reading pages of theory. ;)

Fall is so beautiful and cosy in its own special way. Some trees and plants take on beautiful vibrant colours. Other plants just fade and wilt away. Many will sprout again next year with the next warm season.
The air is becoming cool and brisk, and warm blankets are just cosier and cosier. The land is getting ready for the cold season, but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening in the garden. Here's a few examples of what's been going on...

My chili plants gave a LOT of chilies (and still do!) so I made some chili oil (not shown on picture) and chose to hang some chilies to dry. (I also have a basket full apart from those shown here)

Chilies hanging to dry

One of my favorite part about Fall is winter squash harvest! They are just so pretty, delicious and healthy! My pumpkin plant gave 7 pumpkins and my hokkaido plant gave 3. I have been turning some of them into delicious Fall cream soup. There is a recipe *here*. I would also like to make one or two pumpkin pies, using my grandmother's recipe, which I was so lucky to have sent to me a couple of weeks ago!! :)

Pepo pumpkins (what I call "Halloween" pumpkin),  and small Hokkaido squash (also called Red Kuri squash)

Our apple tree was not very productive this year, but I was allowed to pick apples at my friends garden and came home with 7 kilos of huge delicious ones!

7 kilos of apples. A huge thanks to my friends :)

So on a nice Saturday afternoon, I set out to work peeling all this lot. 

I sat in the greenhouse to peel the apples. It was so comfortable out there. 

I then turned all this into yummy pies. I used the same recipe as I did last year. If you're curious, you can find it by clicking *here*.

yum!

Last year, I managed to bake 4 pies out of the apples from our apple tree. This year, the 7 kilos of apples allowed me to bake 8 pies!

Apple pie production 2013: 8!

The tomato plants in the greenhouse are currently maturing the few last fruits of the year. Despite some issues earlier in the season, where the tomatoes would rot before having time to mature, I harvested many delicious and healthy tomatoes and enjoyed many tomatoe-basil salads. 

I have also been clearing things out from the vegetable patch. Some things unfortunately were attacked by meldew, others were just done and ready to get cleared out. I however left some of the beans on the plant with the idea to let them dry. I will then harvest and keep the beans / seeds for use next year. Some of them I simply picked up and hung in the greenhouse to dry, as I was afraid they would rot before time if they were left outside. With the empty soil space, I followed my friend's advice and put down some plants I had that were still in pots. They will be better off spending the winter with their feet in full soil, and I can move them early next year before the patch is needed again for vegetables. 

The season is coming to an end, and I am already looking forward to the next season! Thankfully, it's only a few months of waiting, as the first sowing can happen indoor in february with chili plants!

Hmm, but until then, I'll have to take up my winter hobbies! :)

Crops

Not everything is working out as I would like in the greenhouse and garden, but we still get to enjoy some really yummy things. Here are a few examples:

I have two kinds of chilies. The one shown on the picture is only called "capsicum annuum" on the seed envelope. From what I understand, this is the common name to many sorts of chilies, so I am not sure which one this is. It does look like jalapeno tho, and is also quite strong. I also have smaller chilies (Apache), which are even stronger. So chilies have it good in the greenhouse! Next year, I want more sorts!

Strong chili

I sowed green and yellow beans out in the garden this year as I had last year. In addition, I received from a good friend, early in the season, seeds for 3 other kinds of beans. I unfortunately don't know their names in English. (And Google is a bit confused itself, it seems).  In any case, they are growing great and we have eaten quite a few of them in the past few weeks! Beans are also staying on the plan for next year!

3 kinds of beans, which I don't know name of in English
(Pralbønner, Borlotti bønner, Lilla bønner)

My corn last year didn't give any decent crop. I only had 3 surviving plants and the conditions were not ideal. This year, I started my plants differently and had better success. These are some of the first cobs we harvested. They are not perfect looking, but they tasted good enough! :) Another one going back on the list for next year.

Green and yellow beans. Sweet corn.

I've had some issues with my tomatoes. A lot of them develop a problem known as "blossom-end rot", where the fruit rots at the bottom while still on the plant, and before it even has time to mature. This, I've now learned, is caused by a lack of nutrients. One of the problem is that I have too many plants per soil bag. I also did not feed the plants as I should have through the season. Learning comes with a cost. :(  However, since I started fertilizing my plants, I managed to save some of my crops. Lately, I enjoyed many lunch times with fresh and delicious tomatoes, mini-cucumber and basil from the greenhouse.

A few sorts of tomatoes, mini cucumber, red and green basil. 

Mmmmm now I'm hungry again!

Mother Nature's mood swings

I wish I was just about to share pictures of the progress with the new greenhouse, but apparently, the few comfortable sunny days we had last week were just a tease. Mother Nature decided to share her mood swings with us and paint everything white again for a little while. Temperatures dropped again just under freezing point, and our greenhouse project came to a temporary halt.

Winter is back

So that was a little bit disappointing and surprising. I do not remember ever seeing snow in March in Denmark! Oh well, I've waited this long to have my greenhouse, I'm sure I can wait a couple more weeks. ;)

In the meantime, nothing is stopping me from starting the season indoors by the windows. A few weeks ago, I sowed cape gooseberry and 3 kinds of chili peppers They need to be sowed early as they take a long time to get to maturity. Some of the chili sprouted about a week ago and are growing nicely. I'm always so excited to see the young plants in the early season!

Chili "apache" 10/03/2013

This weekend, I sowed a few kinds of tomato and 5 kinds of herbs: Green and red basil, thyme, oregano and parsley. According to the little packets, they can all be sowed at this time of the year. I just hope the seeds I had leftover from last year were still usable and will sprout. I am not 100% sure that they were kept in the best conditions. I guess I will know soon enough. If nothing comes up, I'll have learned something!

herb tray

For sowing my things, I use mostly small plastic pots that I've kept over time when buying small plants or whatnot. I place them into plastic trays that are recycled from the kitchen. Ground meat plastic packs, for exemple, make perfect trays, as long as they are very well cleaned. I'm also always very interested by any transparent packaging. My herbs are sowed into empty grape packs. I find them perfect, as they already have small openings both on the bottom and top, and I can close them to create mini greenhouses! I've used them last year and found that I got good results. They are placed into the bottom part of a mini greenhouse, which transparent top broke last year.

Next time I go into a sowing round, though, I will probably use paper pots made of newspaper, since I now have used all my plastic ones. However, I'm still trying to figure out where I will place them, as I am also running out of windowsill space! Oh well, it's part of the charm of very early Spring. :)

Preparing a Vegetable Garden

The month of May has arrived and given us some very lovely sunny days to do some more projects out in the yard. With my baby plants growing fairly well and the temperature getting better and better, I have been trying to plan where I would plant what.

Decorative squash, tomato

Basil and mini cucumbers. The cucumber plants suffered from the temperature fluctuations, so I took them back inside until the outside temperature gets more even.

Chili

Originally, I wanted to use the small beds around the new terrace for growing peas and cucumbers and what not. But I quickly realized that my ideas were too big for the size of these two small patches and a few flower pots. I also noticed that with leaves growing in the nearby trees, my "garden spot" is way too much in the shade!

However, THIS spot is perfectly located!

The future vegetable garden

It has sun all day, is on the side of the yard we use the least (so is out of the way) and is close to the compost corner, as well as being easily reachable with the water hose.

The only issue is that we have never touched this flower bed since we moved into the house, and as you can see, it is completely overtaken by weeds. A huge cleanup is in order! So my husband and I worked on this project yesterday and today. It is not done yet, but I should be able to finish the clean up during the week so that we can do the last details next weekend. This will be just in time to sow, as most of what I want to grow apparently needs to be sowed mid to late May if it is done directly outside in the garden.

Clearing weeds out

I'm still unsure of what we'll do with the small tree. It can't stay there, obviously, so I am hoping we can move it to a new location.

I am so excited about this project! I have never had a vegetable garden before. I am eager to see if anything good will come out of it! I sure hope so. My grandparents used to have a garden and I have such lovely memories of going there in the summer and eating freshly picked carrots or tomatoes. Mmmmm!  I wouldn't mind using my own home grown vegetables in my salads this summer.  

I'll be posting updates (hopefully very soon) about the new garden patch. :)