PNW: October 2014

Okay, we're a week in, so if nobody is going to make the thread, I'll do it.

Pulled up about half my tomato plants that are in the five-gallon buckets, and all three tomatillos. I'm letting bush beans dry out on the vine so I have some to plant for next year. Our first frost date isn't too far away, and even the few flowers I'm getting on any of those plants won't have enough time to mature any fruit. Same thing with my in-ground squash; flowers at last on a big bed of them, but it's too little too late. The summer was just too hot for any plant in less than ideal conditions to thrive, no matter how much I watered. Greenery, sure, on most. But that's not the same as fruiting.

Sure am glad I had the occasional winners in good condition to even it out.

The broccoli raab has been a fantastic crop. Huge leaves and plenty of them have been making for very flavorful side dishes, with some for the freezer for later. I now wish I had grown them under a row cover, as recommended. But I had never seen aphids here before, and these were all grown from seed, so I didn't think I was bringing any in. Who knows where they came from. Anyway, I want to grow lots of them next year too. I hope they keep producing for a while, but I don't think they're supposed to be especially winter-hardy.

Seedling kales and chards germinated very nicely, but a night of stiff winds broke and killed many off while they were still very small. Started over, and the growth is slower. The two that were already planted in their permanent place are doing very well though. Mustard greens have slowed down dramatically because of the aphid attacks, which concentrate on their newest, youngest leaves before they have half a chance to grow properly. But a little is still coming.

Overall, I've loved my luck with greens this fall/late summer. Never had any luck with them before. I'm enjoying them just as much as anything else I've ever grown. And the summer stuff ... is starting to shut down. Soon some of the cool-weather crops will take their place in the same beds and buckets.

I do have a few tomatoes that are still producing, which is very nice. But their days are numbered, if not by the cold, then by the late blight decimating their greenery.

And the malabar spinach? Produced a decent amount of leaves, but stayed very squat and short even in very good soil with plenty of watering and sun all day long. Odd plant, but I'll grow it again if I can. Not many greens actually prefer to grow during the summer! And these are never the least bit bitter.

Marc  for starting our PNW OCT thread


We are just now transitioning over from our summer crops to our Fall....we are still in amazement on the weather we had this summer....really it was in creditable!

Here is the last of the tomatoes that we got before we pulled all the plants out....This year with our tomatoes we were able to get a QT of dehydrated ground tomato powder, 12 pint jars of Tomato pasta sauce and several homemade spaghetti dinners!.....& countless munching as well..... right in the garden!



harvested all of our sunflowers....they are hanging and drying in the green house....



hubby hung some sunflower heads up for the hens....and they LOVE them...sunflower piñatas! These sure will be a treat for them this winter!



we had so many wonderful highlights in the gardens this year I would be here all night posting the pictures

we were blessed with 3 watermelons from one plant that were FANTASTIC!....we cut open the second one last night  almost 15 pounds!





Fall crops are doing well.....

Broccoli bed



Cauliflower bed



brossel sprouts, mustard greens, bok choi, radishes, sugar snap peas, kale



Happy gardening
rose

Cool looking chicken. Do they crack the sunflower seeds, or just swallow them whole?

Your greens and cauliflower beds look good too. And I'm jealous of your watermelons!

What a shame to have to finally lose the tomatoes, eh? But all good things come to an end. I hope you're doing something worthwhile with the green ones.

Marc the chickens eat them whole and the green tomatoes are making some good compost!.....LOL....we don't care much for the green ones....and...there wasn't that many left either....most ripen up

happy gardening
rose

Compost! Bah! Oh well.

our chickens don't eat the sunflower seeds! crazy chickens! They'll eat watermelon seeds tho. We have a big old watermelon just about ripe too! We are eating them just about daily now, but can't wait for "the big one" . congrats on your nice garden Rose!!

FG, Very nice!

Picked a nice bowl of tomatoes today. They're ripening in very different sizes, but I guess that's okay. They're still tomatoes! I'm taking a lot of late blight-struck branches off the tomatoes every time I check them. A lot of those tomatoes are going to have to ripen without any leaves sending them sugar.

I got a second flush of roma tomatoes on one of my bucket plants. They're all small though, and some are pointed at the bottom. I'm guessing they may have been incompletely fertilized. I had lots of basil for the bees to feast on, but that was on the opposite end of the garden. Still, tomatoes are supposed to be self-fertilizing. They just look odd, almost like peppers.

Speaking of pepper plants, they're still slowly ripening their fruits, and one even has flowers. My tomato plants are still flowering too, but I can't imagine that will come to much. Not with the snow coming and all the leaves crisping up/branches falling off due to late blight.

The malabar spinaches are just sitting there. They look happy, but they have been slow growers all season. First frost is soon, and they haven't even flowered yet, much less put out any seeds, so chances are good that if I want to grow them again next year, I'll have to find new seeds somewhere. Dang it!

Broccoli raab still doing well. Sending up a lot more heads now. The leaves are so voluminous that I'm starting to take more and more of them just so they don't shade out their neighbors. I filled up a three gallon bucket with the leaves and small heads from the last few days and cooked them all down tonight; steamed them, plopped them in ice water, then put them in the fridge. When I want to eat some, I'll probably leave them at room temperature for an hour, then quickly sautee them with some onions and garlic.

Kale is doing really nicely.

News on the brussel sprout front: Nothing.

Welp, my beloved broccoli raab are starting to get a lot of yellow leaves and send out fewer nice crisp green ones, so I think I'll pull up all but one or two. The little mini-heads are turning into micro heads too, so I think the plants have largely run their course.

One lesson I learned: I like the leaves and tender young stems easily as much as the little heads. Next time I will harvest the leaves much more aggressively. The plants did incredibly well, but I feel I wasted a lot of their productivity by waiting for the little heads. By the time they came -- not that they took a long time or anything -- many beautiful leaves had come and gone, turning yellow or even simply shading each other out because they got so huge. Next time: lots of leaves, young and tender, and whatever heads come, will come, and I'll be fine with that.

Still lots of tomatoes, even though we're having nights in the mid 40's now and sometimes the high is only in the mid-60's. Very little splitting so far, thank goodness. But there's enough rain that some of them are falling to the ground maybe a little early, when orange rather than deep red. I stepped on one by accident --D'oh! Still lots of branches withered by late blight to pick off every visit.

Germination isn't up to par on my kales; they like cool weather for growing better than they like it for germinating, I guess. I'm not going to have all that much kale this winter/fall. Oh well. There's always spring.

  WHAAAT?

7 Day Forecast for our PNW Familygardens 

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Yeah we're having a burst of heat too ... The Weather Channel says 80 degrees. We were supposed to have seen the last of that about three weeks ago.

Plenty of rain coming up, though. I notice it is making some of my lettuce leaves rot.

ooops not sure why the words I wrote are so huge

we are getting a ton of rain.....last night and today....

Rain forecast for the next three days, and more next week.

I picked almost 40 tomatoes today. There are still maybe two or three times that many still on my three main vines. They're not giants, but hey, they're nice. These are getting bigger than the ones that had started to ripen in the heat of the summer, which is good too.

Oddly enough, the second round of plum tomatoes, planted in a five-gallon bucket, are all quite small. I have added compost a couple of times during the season as the soil settled.

The Better Bush tomatoes once again seem to like the cooler weather. Their second and third flush of tomatoes is staying green without ripening for a long time, but the tomatoes are bigger.

Also tore up all but two of the broccoli raab, which I'll try to collect some seeds from. I really enjoyed growing it for the first time this year.

Here in Central Oregon, we had an unusual amount of humidity this summer.  To me, that means there is excess moisture in the air, to fall as snow or rain.

This new avatar shows me at my cousin's Christmas tree farm in Oregon City, while in the process of tagging this year's tree.  They charge very little and really know how to shape and maintain the trees.

donnainzone10 wrote:Here in Central Oregon, we had an unusual amount of humidity this summer.  To me, that means there is excess moisture in the air, to fall as snow or rain.

It seems most of the West is dying for water. Hope we get lots of snow this winter.

A local nursery was having a blow-out sale on ornamental kales, $1.25 each. I got four. Two redbor, which they say can get six feet tall, that are about two feet tall now and are a deep, dusky purple with curly-edged leaves. Also two of another type, I'll have to check the name again, that have narrow, frilly leaves that are violet and purple inside and green outside and are about a foot and a half tall. They should go well together and be a nice bit of winter color in the garden when everything else has died off.

This is usually a great time of year to tour the local nurseries and department stores to get end-of-season clearance items. Even our local supermarkets sometimes have racks of heavily-discounted compost and wood chip mulch outside.

Huge winds today are really throwing the tops of trees around. We put a tarp over our canopy, and tied it around the posts and to itself with plenty of zip ties around the poles and through the holes.

Zip ties all broke and tarp is curled up against the house, barely holding on. I guess I need to get thicker zip ties.

I'm kinda surprised, as the tarp had its longest side put up against the wind almost to the ground. I guess the wind somehow snuck up inside?

I'd better check the tomatoes today. I bet a lot of them got scattered to the ground. Hope the kale and etc. didn't snap off.

I hear you, Marc. I lost most all my sugar snap peas to a storm that blew through here and just finished up last night. Only one green tomato on the ground though out of about two dzn left on the vines.

Good luck!
CC

Thanks CC!

Saw lots of branches bent weird ways, but nothing dying. Picked maybe five or six dozen tomatoes the last couple outtings in the garden, including ones that had split. When even the occasional green one is splitting, that's a lot of rain!

But even the the plants are bent double now over their supports, they're still producing -- even flowering.

The basil doesn't seem intimidated by this rainy cold weather at all. But I'm sure it will be soon.

Kale sure does seem to be loving it. Wish I had planted more.

What kind of kale are you growing?  I picked up several Ripbor kale plants that I hope will winter over and give me seeds next year as I just found out that I love the flavor of it.  Also, I think that if it stays under tunnel it won't get tough.  Not crazy about the Russian or the Siberian even though they are soooo pretty.

CC

For eating, dinosaur and one that I think is called winterbor. A local nursery had one-gallon kales on sale for $1.25 so I got a couple of two different purple types just as ornamentals. One was redbor and I forget the name of the other, which is one of those that has lots of very thin leaves which branch off of their individual leaf stems.

My understanding is that Winterbor (the first kale I ever grew) and Ripbor are the same except Ripbor is a bit smaller and the lower leaves don't yellow as quickly.  Those and Dino have the best flavors, IMO, yet they are quite different.

Your thin leaved ones sound like the Russian. Any photos? 
 How do you like them?

CC

No pics yet. I'm not eating the ornamental ones; they're just for looks.

The one growing in the school garden looks like the broad-leafed one I'm actually eating, but its leaves were a bit aromatic and sweet. I'd really like seeds of those. I like dino too.

Do you let them grow to full size, or do you like them better smaller?