Our garden is almost done for the year. As I posted in another thread, we harvested potatoes today. Wife has been consumed with canning for two days. Yesterday she had every pot in the house dirty and had run the dishwasher three times and washed pot several times by hand. Poor woman is exhausted but she loves it! Today is apple day...sauce, butter, pie filling, conserves, etc. We have onions, garlic, sunflowers and potatoes dying in the garage. We harvested beets and carrots yesterday and many of the heads of cabbage. When October gets here, life slows to a crawl unless the ground isn't snow-covered. If the ground is bare, we can still do a number of outdoor projects.
Folks here are in the middle of their fall veggie planting. I was gonna get strawberries in but have not mustered the energy to clean out my garden area again and erect a second perimeter fence to keep the deer at bay.
I forgot to mention that we dug horseradish and wife picked blueberries and lingonberries as well. Good luck with the deer.
I wasn't too jealous, and then you had to mention horseradish. There is a small seafood shop up the road and the guy there makes fresh horseradish. It is sooo good. I take it you grate it, add vinegar, etc then can it? Or does it sit with all the other root veggies unprocessed until you need it? My garden is about 35' x 75' and I think I need to put a perimeter fence about 3 feet out from the existing one to keep the deer from jumping it. It would already be done but I want to lay down mulch in between them so I don't have to deal with trying get in there to maintain the grass...and I put the lowest wire on the existing 6' tall electric fence pretty low to the ground so that most critters (rabbits) won't be able to skinny underneath. You know what happens when the grass touches a conductor.
Garden is really done today. It was 16 F. this morning. There was a bull moose and cow in the yard when the dog went out. Wife thought it was a legal bull, but the antlers were nowhere close to being big enough. Wife has never been moose hunting. There are still a few cabbages out that are not quite mature, but they might be too frozen now. We will wait until the temps warm (if they do) to check and see if they are salvageable. As far a horseradish goes, I encourage everyone who likes it and has a little land to give it a try. It doesn't require real fertile soil, and will survive winters even here. You can but fresh roots on the grocery and just stick them into the ground in the fall or spring. You can also buy them online from reputable seed companies (don't ever buy garden veggies or seeds on Amazon). Be sure you plant it where you can mow around it or it can take over the world. And yes, we grind it and mix it with vinegar to store in the frig over winter. Some people grow it in large pots to make harvest and control easier, but you should probably cut the bottom out of the pot, as the roots go quite deep.
We cleaned out our "little greenhouse" this afternoon and turned off the heat. When I say "cleaned out", I mean we picked the produce. Most of the plants were left in in case we should get a warm spell and things continue to grow and ripen. With snow on the ground and such, though, I really don't expect that to happen. Our attached greenhouse is still going and that will stay above freezing for the entire winter unless everything dies. That is kept only warm enough to stay above freezing. I have a lot of hot peppers to process, so that will be tomorrow's project.
Energy? Whats that? Seems our get up and go has got up and went.I keep looking at it and thinking about how I neeed to clean it out.
I just ordered some horseradish roots for planting from a farm that sells on eBay, Called Country Creek Acres. They sell all kinds of seeds and plant starts, and are in Missouri, so not even too far away from here. Bobby and I both like horseradish, and it should make a nice showy green plant out in the front yard, as well as giving us some fresh horseradish to eat. Can you just go out and dig a little bit of the root anytime, like you can do with ginger, or do you have to wait until fall and then dig everything up at once, @Don Alaska ? Mine is going to be about a week to ship, so I have plenty of time for good youtube videos while I am waiting.
We dig ours all at once in the fall, and process it in a blender or food processor with vinegar to preserve the white color. It gets much hotter in the South than it does here. I would recommend processing it outside if you can in Alabama. We do ours inside, but in Pennsylvania my relatives always did it outside.
It looks like an asiatic lily of some kind, it is darker than my golden orange one, but otherwise looks almost identical.
I think you've got it, Yvonne. The foliage looks the same too. Thanks. I wonder how it got there unless it was in the wildflower mix I planted. I like it. I think this is my favorite time of year with things growing and blooming.
That is really sad that your growing season ends so soon. I just picked my first radishes! Wish you could run a pipeline down to Beth in Texas and could exchange some air. Talk about climate change I am heading out for some cattails for lunch. Need waders after the storms. I have talked about cutting 50 gallon barrels lengthwise for planters for the burdock. That stuff in annoying to dig. Might throw in some horse radish too.
@Mary Stetler You do realize that was a post from last fall, right? We are just getting into our roughly 3-month growing season and have just picked our first few cucumbers from the greenhouse. @Beth would probably appreciate the temperature pipeline at this time of year, but perhaps not in January.