August in the Garden
Winter squash. Photo by Tenley Nelson
Tenley Nelson - Wood Frog Farm
Anyone else feeling a little over-saturated these days? August rain, August harvests and August weeds! My Grundens bibs sure have come in handy this past month for staying dry while working in the garden. But most plants are happy with all the rain and the mushroom walks my daughter and I have gone on in the woods have never been better.
The green beans peaked in early August, and the ones not consumed fresh became canned dilly beans. The fall spinach I planted in mid-July started producing baby leaves by August 10 and is still producing more leaves than we can keep up with now that my restaurant sales are done for the season.
Fall Spinach. Photo by Tenley Nelson
The cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and romanesco were all planted later than usual this year due to the late spring. The green storage cabbages are still heading up. Romanesco and cauliflower have been steadily producing beautiful heads to eat. The red cabbages made heads before everything else this year, which is unusual. I sold most of my August broccoli and am hopeful the succession planting will produce for our freezer in mid-September.
I planted multispecies cover crops in 20 50-foot beds on July 9 that are now waist high and beginning to flower. I need to crimp them in the next week and cover them with silage tarps to start the prep for using this half of the garden as the veggie beds next year. The cats have enjoyed the tall meadow-like habitat for vole hunting.
Covercrops. Photo by Tenley Nelson
My summer squash produced zucchini for months and has just recently started to slow down. I discovered this year that if the temps are above 40°, it is better to leave the low tunnels open during the cool, rainy weather. In past years, I have closed the tunnels up against the rain and the lack of airflow created a good environment for the plants to start molding.
This season, I also removed the lower leaves of the zucchini plants and picked off all the spent flowers. The old flowers often mold wherever they land. I have the healthiest and the latest-producing plants I have ever had with these improvements.
The winter squash was ignored other than some hand pollination and grew into a twining jungle. I just harvested this past week and was very pleased to have 76 pounds of mature acorn, buttercup, kuri, and kabocha squash. There are still a few immature fruits out there that I am hoping to keep on the vine as long as possible.
I am playing chicken with mother nature and the first frost, whenever that might be. It is already later than usual which makes sense with all the cloud cover keeping nighttime temperatures higher. Fingers crossed it holds off a while longer!
Fall mustard greens. Photo by Tenley Nelson
The greenhouse is still producing peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers but I am having to start a fire regularly to dry it out and keep it above 50° at night. We have gallons of fermented pickles in the fridge and bags of roasted cherry tomatoes in the freezer.
The field tomatoes have been frozen whole to turn into sauce when I have more time. I missed picking for a few days and many fruits over matured and split, a good reminder that it was also time to save seeds from my open pollinated varieties.
I scooped the tomato guts into mason jars, let them sit at room temperature for three days, and then rinsed them in cool water by filling the container repeatedly and pouring off any of the mold, gel, tomato bits, and unviable floating seeds. The clean remaining seeds that stayed on the bottom were drained in a colander and then set to dry on paper towels before being packed into labeled bags to wait for spring.
Fermenting tomato seeds for seed saving. Photo by Tenley Nelson
Fall greens started in soil blocks at the beginning of July were finally planted out in August (a little later than desired) to provide mid-September fresh eating. Mizuna and mustards, bok choy and tatsoi, napa cabbage and radishes are all cold hardy and should survive into October with protection over the top. I have some currently under frost blankets and I plan on moving some of the plastic covered low tunnels over the others once I have finished harvesting the warm season crops.
I picked the last of the raspberries on September 4. While the plants produced beautifully this year, I had a lot of berry drop and molding due to all the rain. But there are several gallons in the freezer and many more in our bellies. I have also been trying to find time to harvest the bumper crop of black currants before it is too late.
Black currants. Photo by Tenley Nelson
It is a busy season with crops to process for winter and fall bed prep projects. I have been ever so grateful for the few days of dry weather and warm sunshine this past week. I just want to laze about in the fall sunshine while it lasts but there is too much work to be done! It is not an unwelcome problem to be so inundated with fall produce, even if at times it feels overwhelming. I hope your gardens are overflowing as well.
From my garden to yours, I hope your autumn harvests are plentiful! And may we all be so lucky to have more dry September weather in the days to come.
Thanks also to Tenley for the mushroom photo in our banner this week.
