This morning we awoke to quite chilly temperatures. I never checked the temps this morning but the low tonight is supposed to be 54º. What a very welcome change from the 105º we had yesterday. Both of us headed straight to the garden.
Vince began by pulling up the okra. It could have stayed longer but I have all I want and it was so full of ants and I’m ready to have an all new garden. Speaking of having all I wanted, Vince said ‘Too bad the okra didn’t make enough to put any in the freezer!” OMG! I’m going to use that tone again! I put up 24 pints of okra and tomatoes in jars, 14 quarts and 12 pints of plain okra in jars and probably 6 pints in the freezer. Hmmm, I didn’t know that . . he says! I threw some away, I gave some to neighbors. I had so much okra . . and he never even noticed!
In the picture above, he’s crushing a grasshopper! Will those things ever go away? By the way, with 7 chickens running around all the time and 2 more escapees who are spending too much time running around, there’s no obvious reduction in the grasshopper population. A friend told me he has 28 chickens running around and grasshoppers at his house are as bad as they are here.
There go all the okra stalks. Vince is sure there’s something constructive he can do with them. That man cannot throw anything away.
Vince will till it all up again and I’ll be ready to start planting. And . . the planting, weeding, harvesting, canning starts all over again! And I love every minute of it!
Gwen says
Since okra produces until frost it could have been around for a while! It makes me itch and I don’t like it any way so none grown here much. 3-4 plants is enough for DH.
Regina says
Looks wonderful – I am hoping to sneak in a few things here in NY before our killing frosts hit, and I have a small hoop house to stretch it out a wee bit. Lucky for us we also have a wonderful farmer’s market that has been helping supplement and my freezer is filling fast! LOVE this time of year!
Amy (NW WI) says
I still find myself shaking my head in disbelief about the extreme differences in the growing seasons between Texas and Wisconsin. We are nearing the end of our growing season and then we try to put EVERYTHING away before September is over; you never know when the first snow will fall!
I’m glad to hear the temps dropped a bit! Hopefully, the day-time temps stayed tolerable too.
Denise :) says
I love freshly tilled earth … it’s like a blank canvas, just waiting for the artist (gardener) to create!! 🙂
Leslie says
Tell Vince the okra would be constructive in the compost. 🙂
JudyL says
Those stalks are so big and so thick, I think they would need to be shredded or put through a chipper before going into the compost pile so I doubt he messes with that. They’re very woody at this point.
pdudgeon says
that’s exactly what i was thinking! glad you’ve got a chipper/shredder.
carolyn says
do you compost too?
Suzanne says
With a cooler evening temp maybe the okra stalks would be good bonfire material and you could make s’mores.
Cindy B. says
We used to throw the woody stalks into the chicken run and let them clean them up before we chipped them.
Susan says
And what’s going in that fall garden?
Kristin says
And you wonder why your stash report isn’t very big! You need to go easy on yourself with that and remember all of the other things you’ve got going on. Soon there wont’ be much to do in the garde and you’ll be able to spend more time sewing. I think you should really try to quilt up those tops you found. That way you would have yardage to report (by using up the backing fabric) and it would be one less UFO hanging out there. Win-Win!!
Marilyn says
We too were plagued by grasshoppers in lower central B.C. I finally ended up spraying all my plants with soapy water and the grasshoppers all disappeared! We also have been lucky in that we get hundreds of tiny toads who eat a lot of the bugs. Our growing season is winding down too and our tomatoes did not do as well this year but we are up fairly high above sea level too.
Terri says
Mulch or compost for your stems and leaves leftovers – veggie peelings, too…. or start a worm ranch. You can feed your cuttings to worms.
Hugs