Autumn Garden Decor

Today we cut the cornstalks out of the raised beds and I made some corn shocks so I could continue to enjoy them.

It is Autumn weather here now.  One of those days where it is bright and sunny one minute and then dramatically stormy looking the next.  The key to keeping a shock of corn standing on a blustery day like today is to drive a T-post or place a shepherd's hook in the middle and tie the stalks around it with garden twine.

I have begun cutting the pumpkin vines and bringing out the pumpkins that have cured.

I still have three similar pumpkins in the garden in the process of turning orange on the vine.

I have also brought out some of my ornamental pepper plants that I grew from seed specifically to bring out in the autumn.

This Black Pearl pepper plant is very dramatic with its deep purple leaves contrasting with the bright green new growth.

It has very shiny black peppers on it that will ripen to bright red.

Black Pearl

I have kept the pepper plants in the garden or on the potting bench where I can enjoy them each day.

I grew three varieties in total.

Hot Pops

Acapulco

The Dahlia beds are looking nice.

Last of the Sweet Corn

 Today I picked the last of our Sweet Corn.  Out of two raised beds, 50 stalks each, we have been eating Sweet Corn for three weeks.  That's pretty good.  We've shared with the neighbors, and frozen for winter and had as much as we wanted to eat.  I planted Solstice and Gotta Have It.  Solstice is a 70 day corn, and Gotta Have it is a 78 day corn and I planted them a week apart.  The Solstice produced 40 ears and the other produced 50.

This week I got tired of one of my Dwarf tomatoes spreading blight so I hacked it out.  It was the Kookaburra Cackle which wasn't a bad tomato but both plants picked up blight early on and spread it to the Adelaide and the Summertime Gold and those plants resisted quite well so I don't think they would have had a problem on their own.  Kookaburra was also dropping green tomatoes left and right.  I have plenty of tomatoes without having to deal with that sort of hassle  

I then removed all of the diseased leaves off of the remaining plants.  Just look what heavy producers these plants are.  I have already picked half a dozen or more off each one.

Adelaide Festival

Summertime Gold

Because I removed so much foliage, I threw a 30% shade cloth over them so they wouldn't sun scald.

They will be just fine like this for the remainder of the season.  I am getting some really gorgeous slicing tomatoes out of the other bed with almost no blight or disease problems at all.

Clockwise from upper left:  Pike Co, Barlow, another Pike Co. Carbon and another Barlow

Tonight I made a jar of my sweet/hot pickled peppers.

Instructions in this past Blog: Of Pickled Peppers

First Tomato and August Update

 I picked the first slicing Tomato today.  It is my PaPaw's Tomato.  Not a surprise.  It is often the first to ripen.  All of the Tomato plants are covered in fruit so soon I will be giving them away.  But tomorrow, this will be my lunch!

Right now it is all about Corn and Beans!  We are finishing up the early Solstice Corn which has been awesome, and by next weekend we will be starting on the larger Gotta Have It variety.

Gotta Have It

Seychelles

I am having to make water choices now.  I am half way through my water tank and just a 50/50 chance of a thunderstorm mid-week.  The late Corn and the Beans get as much water as they need, and after that it gets rationed to the containers with Sweet Potatoes, Peppers and Eggplants.  The Tomatoes are fine without and the Cucumbers are wrapping up.

I fully expected to pull the Pickling Cucumber vines first.

But today the Gateway slicer vines went over the hill so those came out.  They were showing the first hint of wilt, and since they had no babies coming along, rather than let the wilt get worse I just pulled them out.

Zucchini with Dahlias in the background

Dahlias and English Cucumbers

I have Chelsea Prize English Cucumbers blooming now.  They are obviously not bred for disease resistance because they are a greenhouse Cucumber and usually greenhouses are much more protected environment.

Chelsea Prize English Cucumbers

Last year I did not water the Compost Volunteer Cantaloupes even once, so I am taking the same route this year.  The Pumpkins don't get water because they are just for fun, but the Pumpkins are gaining size anyway.

Cantaloupe and Pumpkins

Last year I religiously watered the Belstar Broccoli and got an exceptional second crop.  But then I did not have Sweet Corn hogging the water.  This year I am watering sparingly and they are still putting out new branches.  You can see the fresh, bluish foliage below.

The Tomatoes and Bell Peppers are disease free and producing.  I would say that the plants are not as thick as they were last year and that is probably due to them stalling out in early June from the weather.  But I also have one less Tomato plant in the row than I did last year.  So far I think that the fruit production is going to be comparable.

Wall-O Tomat-O

The Sweet Potatoes and Carrots in containers are growing well.  The Carrot greens are beginning to get weary.  I haven't pulled a Carrot recently but I am sure they have reached the bottoms of the containers by now.  I also have a row of YaYa Carrots fending for themselves behind the Strawberry cages.  I pulled one yesterday for a snack and they are doing well.  I will leave those in the ground past frost to use for autumn cooking.

Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

Beans!  We have lots of Beans.  I have picked many meals from them a handful at a time and then made my Dilly Beans and tomorrow I will start picking to freeze.  We go through two gallons of frozen beans a year.  I water them well at least every other day.  They have Marigolds at their feet to keep the roots cool and shaded and I haven't had much trouble with them wilting in the hot afternoons.  We are pushing 90F now and they are very happy.  You have to be more careful when maintaining Bush Beans because if they wilt they stub the Beans against the ground and you get a lot of curly Beans.  Pole Beans are comparatively easy.  These look even better than last year.  Last year the yellow Monte Gusto variety had quite pale vines and I never got them to green up and look nice.  These are very happy.

Monte Gusto on the left and Seychelles to the right

The Dwarf Tomatoes and Onions are doing fine. but the Kookaburra Cackle and Summertime Gold varieties are showing quite a bit of disease.  It is not really passing to the Adelaide Festival plant at the head of the row.  Last year that one was very disease resistant.  

The Kookaburra Cackle Tomato will be the first Dwarf to ripen.  It is a brown Tomato descending from Cherokee Purple. We'll see if it is a keeper or not. 

I am down to just a handful of container plants.  A backup Zucchini plant, some Strawberry babies and ornamental purple Peppers.  

Once again I am fighting a losing battle against flea beetles on the Eggplant, but Little Prince does not seem to mind and is producing "an abundance" of fruit just as advertised.

Just look at all of those lousy beetles

The landscape is looking nice and not presenting any problems.  

I just have to keep my eyes open for the occasional weed! 

Turn your back just for a minute!

First Sweet Corn

 The maturity date on my Solstice Sweet Corn was July 30th but I gave it an extra three days.  It was so good!  It was sweet and tender and perfectly pollinated.  Last year I didn't grow corn and I only bought corn on the cob from the local farmstand once.  It was so disappointing that I didn't buy any more corn last year.  So this has been a long awaited delicacy.

Expectations

 This is about the time of year when you find out whether or not your garden will meet expectations.  Mine is doing better than average I would say.  Some things are missing the mark by a little bit, but most are meeting or exceeding my expectations.  Below is my favorite view of my garden.  I sit in a chair beside the Apple tree, under a striped umbrella if the sun has come 'round the tree and consider what needs to be done.  Everything here is neat and tidy with no incomplete jobs.  And just look at that Sweet Corn!

The Corn on the left is Gotta Have It.  I have grown it quite a few times and it has never gotten this tall.  It is only a couple of inches short of nine feet. Over the years I have decreased the number of rows I plant in a raised bed.  I know that "they" warn you that you cannot grow just a little bit of Corn in beds and to get proper pollination you are better off growing it in blocks than one long row.  Well... I've kept decreasing the number of rows in each bed.  I started with five, and the past few years I have decreased until now I am down to two.  Obviously the Corn is doing that much better with less competition for resources.  The Corn on the right is Solstice and is about seven feet tall.  According to the catalog, Solstice should be about six to six and a half feet tall and Gotta Have It only seven feet tall.

Over in the flower beds, the Dahlias are starting to shape up to my vision.  The bed below is a color scheme of dark red, white, deep pink, and some light creamy pink.  Almost every variety is blooming and they look great together.

The Marigolds and Celosia on the edge are not doing what I want.  The Marigold variety turned out too tall so I've pruned it back hard to keep it from overtaking the Dahlias and the Celosia was proving difficult to get through the spring (not unusual) so I replaced it with a different store bought variety.  It's in there... but you can only see one in the picture.

I Photoshopped the photo to show what my vision was.  I'll get it right next year.

Across the walkway is the Orange/Peach/Copper selection.  Less than half of the varieties are blooming but they are looking great together.  It is fun looking forward to each new color.

Bloomquist Pleasing

Bloomquist Pumpkin

Summer's End

Ice Tea