What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Fair warning, there are some seeds in those pellets.

 

[littledog]

And those of you who make zucchini fritters (so yum), is it better to freeze the mixed batter, the cooked fritters, or the shredded zucchini (after salting and draining)? I love these so much and I want to have some this winter.

I've frozen both cooked fritters and batter. Both turned out good, but I had better results from freezing the batter - thawed out cooked fritters were not as crispy as belly-fried fritters from thawed batter.

here are my suggestions -

1. Make alliances with family, friends, and neighbors. Know who you can depend upon for what skills (cooking, sewing, mending or fixing things, medicine, etc), look for ways to barter locally,

Agree completely - and these are good practices in general, not just in a crisis situation! I like exchanging/donating/bartering with my neighbors, not only to foster good relations, but to keep as much of our hard-earned labor as possible as a benefit for our community, instead of most of it getting siphoned off to profit big ag and big banksters, multinational companies, taxes, etc.

The only problem is honey is often marked 'use by but it doesn't go bad...ever...unless contaminated or mixed with other things(butter is a common one)
Honey with "use by" is usually when (if real honey) it will crystallize.

Not sure about label laws in the EU and other places, but in the US all food products are required to have some expiration date, whether it makes sense or not. I'm laughing about this because just today I was cleaning/reorganizing my cupboards, and found some ancient things: a package of slivered almonds with a "sell-by" from 2013! I would have used them, except it had been opened, so I composted it. Also, some honey that was from 2006, nothing wrong with it except it had crystallized. Stirred it good and used it to make a marinade with olive oil, vinegar and tahini, for roasted veggie and shrimp kebabs. Delicious!
My garden seems to be stunted, even though I'm watering it 2-4 times/week for an hour or two at a time, due to no rain for the past two months. The plants are all alive and look healthy, but basil, squashes, cukes, melons, leeks and cabbage just stay tiny and don't grow. I don't get why, this year's heat wave is similar to last year's heat wave, when everything did really well.
Tomatoes, potatoes and beans are looking fine and maturing normally, at least I'll have some kind of harvest.

 

[WthrLady]

Not sure about label laws in the EU and other places, but in the US all food products are required to have some expiration date, whether it makes sense or not.

well, to be fair, almonds and nut meats do go rancid.

We have a color dot numeric system for our main pantry. I finally told DS he doesn't have to put codes on things that don't really expire- like the SALT. Being an ancient oceanic ROCK and all. LOL.

 

[Acre4Me]

@Acre4Me - would you mind sharing the names of the 2 that you grew that don't need pollination? I was considering skipping cukes next year, but I would think about doing those under netting. Did you like the taste of both of them? I so love the Suyo's...

& I can't believe you still have JB! We got swarmed all at once but they were gone quickly, quicker than I ever remember them going. But the new traps I bought worked really well too.

@igorsMistress I can't believe how far you've come with the garden. It was a barren desert when you started & now it's gorgeous & lush!

Here are the 4 packets. All Burpee - mostly bc these were looking like they might make it best. But, I do have a few other options that I might try next year. To my knowledge, this is the first time I've used any "does not need pollination" cucumbers. The two that did not need pollination are: "Sweet Success" hybrid - I really liked this one raw! and the "Merlin Hybrid" only has female flowers and does not require pollination.

The supremo Hybrid was the best little pickling cucumber Ive grown. But, not enough produced to pickle.

Interestingly, ALL 4 varieties had one or two plants that died from wilt fairly early....weird, bc the rest grew fine and produced.

We might grow under netting too - those #$%!* cucumber beetles are just irritating.

 

[Acre4Me]

Good morning gardeners. Watered a bit this morning. The xeriscape garden has grown so much since last year!
View attachment 3226015View attachment 3226016View attachment 3226017View attachment 3226018
Lemon tree and Arabian lilac
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Lemongrass
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Bells of fire and yellow bells next to the shade garden
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very nice! All your hard work is paying off!

 

[Acre4Me]

Have you ever tried using alfalfa pellets as an amendment? The horse food. I used it for the first time this year and I love the stuff!

Not yet, but I'm sure those would be good!

 

[Acre4Me]

Fair warning, there are some seeds in those pellets.

always seem to be the case. I used the chopped straw that is heat treated and still got a few sprouts from using it, but way less that usual straw, so its easy to believe that the hay pellets could also contain viable seeds.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

Clifford's final pupae phase is when they drop to the ground, burrow in, turn to goo and eventually turn to a moth. THey don't cocoon like a butterfly. So when he stops to go to ground. I'll put him back outside. We'll never see him turn, burrow out, and fly away.
DH wanted me to just chuck him.
I told him, "did you MISS the part where we NAMED HIM?!?!?"
Now he's a protected species!

You've come so far, how come you don't just give him a pot of dirt?

 

[WthrLady]

You've come so far, how come you don't just give him a pot of dirt?

LOL. I may just DO that. He can overwinter in the seed shed

 

[TJAnonymous]

I went down to the garden...in the rain...because I couldn't wait. Not bad! Sweet, blessed rain! This is the first rain we've had since the 5.5 inches over 3 weeks ago. We needed it really badly.


While I was down there, I saw this.... These are fall items I'm hoping to squeeze in before it gets too cold. Mostly green beans, spaghetti squash, a little watermelon, and some Sugar pie pumpkin. Carrots too but I haven't seen them sprout yet. Now I'm REALLY going to need to be diligent about the squash bugs...






I also noticed the chokeberries have changed color. This is a year old plant. Not sure when you are supposed to harvest them... I planted them as a backup to the blueberries since my plants all died last year except 1.




ETA - since we got all this rain, I'm DEFINITELY going to have to spray for fungus. I've been battling septoria leaf spot on EVERYTHING all year. It has nearly decimated my strawberries and raspberries.