Tagged backyard gardening

Live from the late summer garden: a quick veggie patch tour

What have I been doing all season?

Working backyard veggie patches, picking friendly orchard fruit, digging rocks on mountainsides, crafting small business web copy, perusing new poetry, and doing my best to stay informed on this wide wild world of ours.

Take a quick tour of my 2013 Pacific Northwest veggie garden:

I’m finally learning to use a pressure canner, and there’s been a lotta apple cake in my house this season. Next, I’ll try to make my first batch of apple cider vinegar. Less than 10 days till autumn! Time to sow winter crops and split firewood.

Poetry book review comin’ your way in a few days!

 

A iron-crusted Indiana Jade reaches into a quartz pocket

 

 

Runaway Pumpkins

After growing pumpkins in Pennsylvania, things don’t feel quite like home without a big, sprawling, crazy pumpkin patch in the front yard.

These sugar pies are giving a much stronger showing this year (as are all the vegetables), and I hope to be making fresh pumpkin pies as early as October.

As of last week, the plants have cleared the fence. They use their tendrils to walk wherever they want. The faster they grow, the faster they grow.

Did you know that you can actually hear pumpkins laughing?

The ring of fence you see in the foreground is the perimeter for a new garden bed I’m working on. Dogs out, compost in. The pumpkins are eager pioneers.

Squash blossoms are stunning. They open with the rising sun. Got any yummy squash blossom recipes to share? Tell us in the comments.

For every pumpkin I find, there are probably three more I cannot see. Got a guess for how many pumpkins I’ll have by October 31st?

They’re heading for the forest now… In fact, I hear that pumpkins like to grow in trees.