This past week wasn’t terribly hot in Central Missouri but it was another dry one. With an official total of .07” of rainfall, August wound up the 3rd driest here since modern record keeping began. We got a few sprinkles yesterday and another light shower this morning but not enough to curtail the irrigation of plants/trees that I care about.
Spring plantings in the kitchen garden are starting to wind down. I harvested the last four spaghetti squash yesterday and yanked the vines. Picked the last lonely jumbo zuke and pulled those vines. The vines are starting to look rough but the Summer Dance cukes never got bitter/tough and are still setting new blossoms and producing well. That variety is the new slicer cuke of choice in my garden. Straight 8s have been relegated to the dustbin of history. The National Picklers are just about finished. Mrs. Augie decided that 32 quarts of lacto-fermented dill pickles will be enough to hold us until next summer so I’ll pull those vines in the next couple or three days.
Peppers are still rocking. Tomato plants are a mixed bag but still producing like crazy. I gifted away ~35lbs last week and expect to have at least that many to share again this week. All of my Cherokee Purple plants had leaf curl this time. I pulled one plant yesterday. 2 of the 3 that remain are about done.
The Blue Lake pole beans that I planted in mid July finally got hold of the ground and took off. We ate the first picking of those for supper last night.
I finished juicing the apples I picked last week and bottled 12 quarts of cider. The bottom fell out of one jar when I put it into the water bath. Seems like that only happens with the newer (<15 years old-ish) jars. They just aren’t as durable as the old school jars. The cider turned out great. I think I’m going to make another batch before I put the canning equipment away.
Yesterday I cored another five gallon bucket full of apples and boiled those until they started to fall apart. After work today I’ll run that mixture through the food processer then season it up and transfer it to the slow roaster to cook down into apple butter.
Saturday I picked a bunch of red-ripe cayenne, jalapeno, and serrano peppers. Washed them, removed the stems, did a coarse chop, then put them into a saltwater brine to ferment. That filled a 2 gallon bucket about halfway up. I’m going to let that mixture ferment for a couple or three months then I’ll puree and bottle it. It should turn out to be a nice and spicy table sauce.
Priority tasks for this week include picking more apples to slice/freeze for pie filling over the winter, turning/adding/amending the soil in the raised bed where I grew Mrs. Augie’s spring kale and sowing more for a fall/winter crop, and catching 50 or so smallish bluegills out of the pond to use for catfish bait on Sunday.
‘Summer Dance Cucumber’ has been in my rotation for ages. However, since I’m up to my elbows in PICKLES this year, I will NOT be planting cukes next season!
You got a LOT accomplished this week! I’m coming up behind you on the apple processing. They need about a week yet - I sampled a few yesterday.
Do you have a homemade cider press, or did you buy one? I would REALLY like to get one for Beau because he keeps ‘talking’ about it, but then nothing materializes! Also, he’s always gone bear hunting when the apples are ready for cider, so guess WHO will be doing the bulk of that work too?
Anyhow, any cider press advice would be appreciated!
And, we need a ‘Howard Update!’ :)
Dang, you’ve been BUSY! And you’ll be even busier if those 50 little bluegill “pan out” into a good catch of catfish!
We are very dry here too, with a 30% chance of light rain early tomorrow morning, but, radar looks like the stuff holding together will miss us.
Generally, my garden is really liking this cooler weather, as long as I can keep up with the watering. A couple of the late transplanted tomato plants are not doing so well, but the rest are: I’m up to 7 fruits growing on the “big” Mortgage Lifter plant that took forever to fruit. If this thing produces tomatoes the size claimed, I’ll have more tomato than we need, and I have 3 other ML plants going. There’s a “free veggies” stand on the way to our nearest small town — I may donate or swap a few tomatoes to them.