Weekend Update--a long overdue Trailer Park Homestead Update

I know I've been slacking lately!  I'm sorry.  Bad, bad, bad blogger.  No cookie for me.  Okay, I haven't exactly been slacking, since I've still been busy as heck with working out, kids' sports and activities, getting my garden in, homeschooling the herd, and who knows what else, but I haven't been blogging nearly enough.  I'm working on improving that, but in the meantime, here is the product of some of my hard work:  my entire garden is IN!  These pictures are actually from a couple days ago, but they are pretty much the same as what's out there now, so the time delay on getting them up is more or less irrelevant. 

This is the front of our house.  The flowers in the front look like they are going to actually do something this year to make my landscaping look a little more "normal".  The middle area has snap peas and cabbage, the barn wood facade (hiding the bright orange buckets the park manager hated so much last year) area has alternating tomato and zucchini plants.  It looks like the berry bushes (left corner) will have an actual crop this year as well!

This picture, taken from the driveway, shows my entire front yard!  In addition to what you could see in the last picture, the "herb garden", which also contains carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, and onions is also visible, as is the front garden box area.

 In the front garden bed, I have onions, cauliflower, carrots (probably ready for harvest, since they overwintered there), beans, tomato, and I planted cantaloupe, but it hasn't come up yet, so I may give up soon and stick something else in that spot.  In the containers surrounding the box, I have spinach, snap peas, lettuce, onions, and another tomato.

In the front stairwell/patio area, I have snap peas and strawberries on the stairs themselves and tomatoes poised to use the stair's rails as supports.  Off to the side, I have ground cherries planted, but they are doing really badly this year, so I may need to replant or move them until they get bigger so the rain coming off the roof doesn't keep killing them.

Okay, this isn't food (although it could be if we were hungry enough, I suppose), but this is a really cool homeschool science experiment going on directly behind the front stairs.  Our sand and water table got a little flooded, so we stuck some tadpoles I got from the Broccoli Lady in there so the kids could watch them develop in something pretty close to a natural habitat.  I probably should replace the sand in there and sanitize the whole things once they've grown up and hopped out though.

If I had a FAQ page, one of the things on there would probably be "if pretty much your whole yard is garden, where do the kids play?"  This would be part of the answer.  Positioned right outside the back door, this play area for the littles is also popular with older kids as well.  It didn't cost a fortune to put together either, since the sandbox and picnic table are both Freecycle finds from a few years ago and the slide/tent thing was an early birthday present for my youngest.

I haven't put much in the driveway, but I figured I could at least stick out this planter I got for the banana tree that I'll eventually (hopefully) be growing.  The seeds haven't even germinated yet (I've mentioned that could take months, right?  I'm still considering contacting the company I got them from for a replacement since it seems like they ought have done something by now!), so, for now, I have a tomato plant and a few cantaloupes in there.  I figure a 30-gallon pot ought to be able to support that much, since each of those plants "only" needs a 5-gallon container.

In what I was calling the "St. Patty's bed" last year (because I planted it on St. Patrick's Day last year), I have winter squash (I need to get a trellis for that to grow up on!), broccoli, onions, and carrots.  I also have a cute little lawn ornament that I was able to get almost for free with coupons.  Woohoo!  A little past here, between the AC unit and the back door, I have a mini bed just of different kinds of peppers (cayenne, bell, and jalapeno), but that is too weedy to show right now.  I also have a small container of beans poised to grow up the back stairs railing.

Finally, in the back of the house, I have my back garden bed, consisting of tomatoes, bell peppers, broccoli, beets, watermelon, and spinach, and a few new beds (last year's failed potato condo has been reincarnated) containing watermelon and the last of the mini-corn I had left over from last year.

The Good News and the Bad News--a Trailer Park Homestead Update

So which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  How about I make a news sandwich, since I have two goods and one bad.  The first good news is this:

Even though this home is going in two lots down from us, it looks like they are putting the stairs so they go onto the driveway of the next lot over, which means that the lot right next to ours will no longer have a driveway available to it, so I shouldn't have to worry about a home going in there and messing up my sunlight for the growing season.  Yay!

The bad news is that I've been very depressed lately, and that's why I haven't been blogging very much lately.

The other good news is that I may have a new venue for you to view my blog on soon.  There would be a small fee if you choose to go that route to view it, but that will motivate me to blog more, if people are paying specifically to read it.  Anyhoo, hopefully that will be finalized and I'll have an actual real announcement about it in a couple days.

As for what else is growing on at the Trailer Park Homestead, it is largely SSDD:

More or less the same...

More or less the same...

I think I saw a sign of life on the zombie pineapple (it didn't fall over when the plant light cord knocked it, indicating the possibility of a root system developing) and that crazy spinach thing is reaching its tentacles beyond the confines of my kitchen counter garden and occasionally attacking me as I go by (which is pretty freaky when it is dark and sends thoughts of zombies that are not pineapples into my head).

Speaking of monsters, my tomato plants look like they'd all like to be transplanted.  Checking the 10 day forecast, at this moment, it looks like it might be maybe possible to send them outside to play as early as next week!  The last frost is usually mid- to late May here though, so I'm not going to count on it.  I'll just have to keep checking the forecast to see.

My apologies to those that abhor the consumption of meat, but this is an update on the mushrooms from last week's post.  I didn't get around to eating them in a salad with spinach from the garden, sooooooo, I sauteed them with this here venison steak that we ate last night and, boy, they were yummy!  My husband had had oyster mushrooms previously when I got some from a farmers market a couple years ago and didn't care for them, but, with the steak, he said they were "pretty good", which is his highest praise!  I'll probably turn the mushroom kit over and start growing them on the other side within a few days, so I can have that more or less done when my free replacement bag of mushroom spores and growing medium arrives.  That's right:  FREE!  Back to the Roots has a promotion going on that, when you post a picture of yourself (or your kids, whatever) and your mature mushroom kit on their Facebook page, they will send the classroom of your choice a free mushroom kit.  However, they also give you the option of getting a free replacement bag for yourself instead.  Since we homeschool, my kitchen is the classroom of my choice, so I asked for the replacement bag and was informed yesterday that it will be shipped within a few days.  Getting two bags for the price of one definitely makes one of those nifty keen mushroom kits a better deal!  Once I'm done growing in the bags, I plan on seeing if I can learn how to keep the mushrooms growing on my own, without any further purchases or, if all else fails, I've heard the stuff left in the bags after the mushrooms are done makes a fantastic soil amendment, so that should make my plants happy as well.

This Week's Pretty Uneventful Trailer Park Homestead Update

Of course, uneventful is a relative term. The new trailer a couple doors down is almost all the way in so we will possibly be having new neighbors in a matter of weeks (days?), the mushroom kit produced mushrooms, and an "oops" by the kids may produce a lot more broccoli than I'd planned, but I'm still longing for the later days of summer when I have harvesting and/or canning to do nearly daily (which reminds me, I probably should can some venison soon....).  Anyhoo, here's what's going on in pictures:

I think the new neighbor's house won't even interfere with my garden's sunlight.  Yay!

Defintely should think about getting that spinach out of there and eating it or freezing it!  Either way, it is getting pretty big!

Strawberry flowers in mid-April?  Really?  The lilac blooms are starting as well.  It certainly has been a weird spring!

Only about three of the original broccoli plants I started in the back box as still there, but I started more last week in some of the spots and then this week I found this....

Apparently, when I gave my son and his friend a little garden area and some seeds to play with, they had a little "oops" and spilled broccoli (?) seeds in the former potato bin (which is currently just a soil holder).  They neglected to mention it to me when it happened, so I can only make an educated guess about which seed packet spilled.  Regardless, it is something we'll eat, so I figure I should try to find someplace to stick these were they can grow rather than killing them off and letting them go to waste!

Speaking of seedlings, I haven't managed to kill off my tomatoes, peppers, and ground cherries I have started inside yet.  There have been a number of times that they've gotten pretty droopy from lack of watering though, so I'm hoping frosty nights are almost over (no more than a month, max, maybe considerably less with the weird weather we've been having).

And here is one of the reasons I'm not too worried about my current over abundance of seedlings.  I scored a bunch of cast off wood that used to be part of a chicken coop from Freecycle yesterday.  My husband thinks it was treated so is hesitant about using it for garden boxes, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't (you wouldn't use treated wood to build a chicken coop many, many years ago, would you?), so we are trying to figure out for sure.  Even if it is treated, and therefore unsuitable for planting edible plants in, I can still use it as a facade to conceal "unacceptable" gardening containers (according to trailer park management) like buckets.

And, finally, here are three of the world's cutest kids (I might be biased, but I doubt it) with the first mushrooms from our mushroom kit (ordering information to get your own awesome mushroom kit is on the sidebar----->)!

How Does My Garden Grow--a Trailer Park Homestead update

With my disappearance for nearly a month, the number one question in people's minds on my resurfacing seems to be what's growing on in the garden?  Well, the zombie garden isn't doing that great.  The celery seems to be mad about me sticking it outside for a while when we had some warm weather a couple years ago, the sweet potatoes and avocado haven't sprouted yet, and the pineapple looks like it is thinking about not rising from the dead after all, but I'm still trying!  The banana seeds haven't sprouted yet either, but apparently they can take several months to germinate (according to my mother, a Master Gardener), so I'm not too worried about them either.

My "normal" garden is going great though!  I have onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snap peas, carrots, lettuce, and spinach all above ground, planted outside.  There are also beets in the ground out there, but they haven't come up yet.  In the house, I have five varieties of tomatoes going, ranging from early to late, indeterminate and determinate varieties, so I should have tomatoes no later than the end of May or beginning of June and should keep having tomatoes all summer long!  Yay!  I miss tacos.  *sigh*  Tomatoes are one of those things that just don't seem right to buy off season (I've heard there are a ton of good reasons to not buy tomatoes in the book Tomatoland, but I haven't read it yet, so I'm not sure what all they are) and tacos just aren't the same without them! 

Here's what is currently growing on at the Trailer Park Homestead:

Much of the front garden area is growing on its own.  This rock lined area is primarily for herbs this year and has a great start with the perennials in there now: various mints, violets, and I think I even have seen some calendula coming up on its own.  I added a shelf to put more herbs or other small plants in to increase the vertical growing area.  All my berry bushes seem to have survived my neglect during the mild winter.

These are the carrots and spinach I planted last fall that didn't sprout in time for a fall harvest.  I covered this bed with plastic and they overwintered just fine!  Now there are additional onions and cauliflower growing in this bed too.  The back square foot gardening bed contains broccoli (some of which has been eaten up by a mysterious critter and needs to be replanted!) and the as-yet-unsprouted beet seeds.

Last year, this was my "St. Patrick's Day bed" but this year, I got the entire spring garden planted before St. Patrick's Day.

As much as I have growing outside, it still is very early in the growing season here in Michigan, so more tender plants like the five varieties of tomatoes and three varieties of peppers I have started all must stay indoors under fluorescent lights for now.

This Sh%# is BANANAS!

Image blatantly from Amazon, where you can buy these seeds

The USDA released a new, updated plant hardiness map this week, for the first time in years.  According to the new map, we are now in zone 6a instead of 5b!  For those in warmer climates, you might not understand how exciting this is in terms of the plants we can grow here (although not exactly thrilling because of the broader implications of climate change!).  I can't even count how many times through my relatively few years of gardening that I've wistfully looked at some plant or another in a seed catalog and wished I could grow it here, but it just wasn't possible, at least not outdoors.  When I saw this change in hardiness status, I had to see what I could add to my possibilities.

Some, like avocados and lemons were decidedly long shots and, as expected, it is still much too cold here (give it 50 years or so) to grow these in Michigan.  I did have one super exciting discovery of something I could grow here: bananas!  That's right: it is possible to grow bananas in Michigan.  Not all varieties, mind you, but there are one or two edible varieties that will put up with the cold temperatures and possibly (with a much increased chance, now that we are considered zone 6!) of actually bearing fruit.  After doing a big of research, I decided I wanted to grow Darjeeling bananas.  From what I've read, it is hardy up to zone 5, but is unlikely to produce fruit in anything lower than a 6 or 7.  Sounds like a worthwhile gamble to me (especially since a reader of this blog was generous enough to fund this project)!

Pretty, too!

Here's a minor hitch though: according to the lease, I can't plant trees, bushes, or shrubs (notice: nothing in the lease says I can't have a garden, like some people who stop by this blog from time to time seem to have trouble wrapping around their brains) without management approval and I don't know that banana trees are part of their vision for the trailer park.   However, containers are allowed.  That's why there isn't an issue with my blueberry and raspberry bushes, because they are in planters.  So, I'll be growing bananas in planters.  Yes, it is possible.  Apparently, a 15-gallon or larger planter is a suitable home for these banana-beasts.  That will also give me more options for winter storage.  I can either mulch the heck out of it (building an insulated box around the base or something to keep the roots warm too) or move it into a warmer location, like inside an out building like a garage or barn.  Plus, when we move, assuming I (or the cold) haven't killed it off, we can take it with us!  How's that for bananas?

I do have one confession though.  I don't like bananas.  I don't see that as a problem with this project though, since A) everyone else in my family loves bananas, B) these are not the same variety as store bought bananas, so I'm sure they would taste different, and C) if you'd only ever had a store-bought tomato, could you actually say that you didn't like tomatoes?

One last thought, further proof I've gone bananas:  I'm also going to grow pineapples this year, but more about that in a future post.

2012 Garden Plan

Discovering my seeds were moldy when going to plant some lettuce in the house the other day prompted me to finally (by many people's standards) figure out my garden for the year.  I decided, since it is such a depressing topic to think about right now, not consider the driveway as a place to grow anything.  I will instead focus on the rest of the lot, do what I can with it, and maybe if I can scrounge up the resources to do something with it, add the driveway as a container garden area later.

When looking over what I wanted to plant this year, I discovered that the loss of the driveway area as planting ground wasn't as bad as I first thought.  I decided not to do corn this year (unless I can find some free blue jade corn seeds somewhere) since I've never had much luck growing full sized corn in containers.  I also decided not to grow sunflowers, since we haven't been eating very many of the seeds like I thought we would.  I also decided not to grow pumpkins, since I'm unlikely to be able to grow anything as big as my husband and the kids would like to carve and I'm hoping we'll be moving before Halloween anyway (anything that won't be done by the time our lease is up will be grown in containers).  With the ground behind the house already torn up from the tree that was back there and everything else they were doing back there, it would make sense to use that as ground for planting this year as well.  As such, I decided I have room to plant a few potatoes (maybe experiment with sweet potatoes?) in containers, have a watermelon patch behind the house, grow peppers (bell and jalapeno), and grow spinach, carrots, onions, rutabaga, beets, and tomatoes in "official" garden areas, the beds along side the house and my garden box.

In the front yard, I'll be growing spinach, snap peas, more tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, various herbs (I haven't decided what all will be grown for herbs, but I have an area in mind to dedicate toward them!), cucumbers, more watermelon, beets, onions, rutabaga, lettuce, cantaloupe, blueberries, raspberries, and zucchini.

In my patio area, not diagrammed because there is no point (most things will be going where they were last year), I'll be growing my pole beans in containers up the stair rails (both front and back doors), ground cherries, tomatoes, green peppers, and jalapeno peppers.  I decided to put the peppers in a row right in front of where the tomatoes were on the patio last year, since peppers like heat better than tomatoes, so they will absorb more of the radiant heat from the patio and let the tomatoes be happier.

So that brings me to what seeds I need, since like I said, a lot of my seeds went moldy, despite being in a sealed container in the fridge with desiccant packets.  Not all those seeds will need to be replaced, like the corn, and I'll be growing some things I haven't grown before this year, like beets and jalapenos.  That brings me to my seed needs.  I'm looking for heirlooms only of tomatoes (both determinate and indeterminate varieties), peppers, winter squash, cucumbers, and cantaloupe, since I know I'm going to be able to and want to save the seeds on those.  I'm also looking for carrots, beets, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower (another thing I've never grown), onions, since I doubt I'll have an opportunity to save seeds from those this year.  Where I won't be doing a fall garden, I want to get as much food out of the spring planting of the annual veggies there and some things on that list, like carrots don't produce seeds until their second year and I'm not planning on being here next year if possible.

Anyone have some seeds for me?  I can offer trades of Aunt Molly's ground cherries and Rostov sunflowers, maybe even some stars and moon watermelons (but not too many of those), since those were spared the great mold incident, since they were kept in sealed plastic bags (something I'll be doing for all my seeds in the future!).  I'm generally not too picky about varieties, except where I noted I'm looking for heirlooms, but whatever I get needs to work for zone 5b.

For Those That Like the Weekly Photo Updates, This Ought to Sum It Up....

I think the garden is officially beyond saving for the year.

I CAN Can....And Freeze--Trailer Park Homestead 2011 totals

I finished up canning my venison stock last night, thereby ending my planned canning this year.  I say planned because if my husband uses all his deer tags, I may end up needing to can some venison too, since I'm about out of freezer space, but we'll have to wait and see what happens with that. 

As of right now, I have 257 jars of food I canned in the house.  Yay me!  Not bad for my first year of fairly serious canning effort, wouldn't you say?

Here's what I have (totals may not actually add up to 257, since these tallies were done a couple days ago when the pictures were taken) and I'm pretty sure we've used some since then):

apple-tomato salsa (14 1/2 pints, 16 pints, 5 quarts)
tomato salsa (1 quart)
applesauce (16 1/2 pints, 43 pints, 8 quarts)
peaches (19 pints, 8 quarts)
pears (5 pints, 14 quarts)
pearsauce (8 pints)
diced tomatoes (8 pints, 12 quarts)
tomato sauce (4 1/2 pints, 31 pints)
dill pickles (3 pints, 9 quarts)
chicken stock (2 pints, 5 quarts)
venison stock (11 pints, 4 quarts)
ground cherry jam (8 1/2 pints)
raspberry jam (3 1/2 pints, 1 pint)
blueberry jam (2 1/2 pints, 6 pints)
peach honey (1 pint)

In addition to the canned stuff, I managed to fill the freezer this year too.  Our small chest freezer currently contains nothing that was in there prior to June of this year.  I didn't bother with quantities on the freezer stuff since the hodge-podge of bags and freezer containers doesn't lend itself well to standard sizing.

venison (soon to be added to, since my husband got another deer on Monday and hopefully will be getting more)
chicken (see When Zombie Chickens Attack)
acorns waiting to be processed
blueberries
strawberries
strawberry freezer jam
raspberry freezer jam (just a couple jars.  I got my canner as raspberries were coming into season)
a little bit of tomato juice
a little bit of tomato sauce that didn't seal when canning
venison stock
cream of mushroom soup
broccoli
red food coloring (derived from beets, still untested but will try soon)
shredded zucchini
Harvard beets
carrots (both sliced and sticks)
snap beans (2 kinds)
peas
corn
pear fruit leather
apple fruit leather
green peppers

I'm pretty proud of what all I put up this year.  Of all this stuff, the only things that came from a store were the mushrooms for the mushroom soup, a few other ingredients in the mushroom soup, the sugar for jams, the pectin in some of the jams, lemon juice used in canning, some vinegar, a little salt in the stocks, and the dill pickle spices.  That's it.  For that whole long list of foods, that's all the grocery store had to contribute.  Everything else came from hunting, foraging, gleaning, the farmers market (bought with insanely little money thanks to the Double Up Food Bucks program), or from my tiny Trailer Park Homestead.

Interview with @YourGardenShow & My Greatest Challenge

Earlier in the week, an interview with me appeared on YourGardenShow.com's blog.  Obviously, this interview took place before the destruction of my primary gardening area to put down this driveway:

Now, the question "What's your greatest challenge food gardening?" would be answered with something like:  "My greatest challenge is overcoming the continued obstacles the trailer park management keeps putting in my path.  Before we ever signed a lease here, we asked extensive questions about whether gardening was allowed, to what extent, and specifically about my ideas for the yard.  I was told all of that would be fine.  Before signing, I read the lease carefully to make sure there was nothing in there that would present any problems.  I found nothing.  However, when the trailer park manager saw what I was doing, she started to try to change the rules on me.  I will not give up and continue to do what I must to feed my family, operating within the confines of our lease agreement and the geographic limitations.  I don't know whether it is intentional or not, but a recent decision by management, to create a crushed asphalt driveway where the part of my garden the manager expressed the greatest personal displeasure with, dealt a crushing blow to my garden.  I will not be defeated though.  Instead, I see this as a new opportunity.  I no longer have to deal with worrying about how much of the grass is torn up in this area, since management made the decision to cover the whole area!  Instead, I can create more garden in the same limited area, since now my paths can be more narrow and I will have more opportunities for vertical growing."

The full interview, including my original answer to that question and a picture of what the trailer park manager found so terrible that she gave me a written notice on Augest 5 to "please remove garden & restore grass area" (and then this week was covered by crushed asphalt.  See why I'm suspicious that it was done specifically to thwart me?) can be found by clicking here.

(There is a giant hint about some of my plans for next year's garden in the forefront of the picture on the interview as well.)

Totally Devastated--a Trailer Park Homestead update update

 So to update this mornings Trailer Park Homestead update, in which I mentioned they were going to put a new floor down on the garage, they not only put down a floor in the garage, they put down an awful "crushed asphalt" driveway that covers almost the entire area my garden was. So where this summer it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

That is not just mud.  That is an actual driveway.  Obviously, I'm not going to let this stop me from gardening, especially since I suspect (but have no proof of) that is the purpose of the driveway, since that was not mentioned when I was talking to the contractor this spring.  It just means that all my hard work to dig out the garden plots that made the yard so pretty this year (unless you are the trailer park manager, in which apparently the picture from this summer is "unsightly" and the bottom picture is acceptable) is gone.  Utterly and completely devastated. 

So it looks like in the spring, I'll be needing to build some garden boxes and/or planters to set on this eyesore of a driveway to keep my garden growing.  Great.  Just what I need--another project that may cost money, especially when my husband, the sole breadwinner of the household, just lost his job on Monday.

Is it any wonder that this new development is leaving me totally devastated?

I Am DONE--a Trailer Park Homestead update

I'm done!  As of 3:48am on 11/8/11, when I finished blanching the last of the carrots I was going to freeze and pulled the last batch of fruit leather (apple) out of the dehydrator, cut it up, and stuck it in the freezer for later enjoyment.  I wanted to get that wrapped up Monday at all costs, hence the super late hour, because yesterday we needed to spend the day emptying the garage.  The contractor stayed true to his word and waited until the last possible time for the year to put the new floor in the garage and is supposed to do it today.  I was beginning to worry they weren't going to get around to it this year and we'd be dealing with flooding in the garage come spring again, as well as a possible threat to the garden next year, since I am at the mercy of the trailer park management when it comes to something like this--unless the contractor chooses to work around it.

Other than the garage floor getting done, not much is going on outside anymore:

I've been keeping this ground cherry plant alive in the garage.  Fortunately, the morning lows this morning were only in the low 50s, freakishly warm for this time of year in Michigan, but perfect for the circumstances.

These warm temperatures, as short lived as they are, only encourage things like this calendula as well as some spinach, snap peas, and broccoli family things (and the cabbage worms that love them) that are just too stubborn to die.  It's kind of funny:  there are snap peas that are doing fine mixed right in with snap peas that have died from the cold.  There is a delicate balance of life and death going on outside right now I guess. 

I still haven't managed to do too much with the indoor garden besides occasionally remembering to water it.  Hopefully before the week is over, I'll at least get a chance to stick some lettuce seeds in somewhere!  Despite my neglect, the rebel beans that started sprouting outside without permission are taking off, right into the light!  It probably won't be long until I have to move them someplace else!

Good Grief! How Am I Not Done YET?--a Trailer Park Homestead update

I was hoping that this week, I was going to just show you some pictures of my dead garden outside, maybe pile up all the food I've put up for visual effect, and show the start of my kitchen counter garden.  But, somehow, I'm not done yet! 

Here's what's still going on at the Trailer Park Homestead:

The tomato plants, and anything else at all cold sensitive are dead.  I'll need to clean that up soon, somehow finding a balance between getting things done in the house and waiting too lat until it is freezing cold and miserable during the day.

First to be planted, last to die off, it looks like (never mind a complete change in what this area held from St. Patrick's Day, when I first planted it).  Somehow, the cold weather hasn't been enough to kill off the calendula, broccoli, and spinach that currently inhabit this area.

The snap peas and cabbage still live in the back raised bed as well.  My 2 year old and 6 year old pulled all the carrots last week, prior to a sting of frosty/freezy nights

This is what I don't like about volunteer tomato plants in Michigan:  they never seem to live long enough to have any vine-ripened tomatoes.  I was able to pull a few green ones off there before the frosts got it, so it wasn't a complete waste that I didn't just pull it when I first noticed it.

I tacked this plastic in place over the rutabaga, carrots, and onions that were still way too young to harvest in the hopes that it will act as a mini-hoop house (I may add hoopiness to it later) so I can keep growing those cold resistant plants into the winter.

Some of my herbs still live, some don't.  The landscape is definitely changing again, especially as I pull out the dead peppers and tomatoes.

When we were harvesting everything we could last week, I brought in all the planters I had outside, plus the rouge bean plants that had sprouted without permission, a green pepper I transplanted in the hopes that the tiny peppers would grow big and tasty if given enough time, and a ground cherry plant I wasn't ready to give up on yet either, since my 2 year old loves them so much.  Right now, some of the planters have spinach and some have nothing.  The one in the front had a nice crop of carrots in it, but the boys got a little overexcited about harvesting and picked them too.  I did prove to myself that carrots can be grown in a container though, so I'll be planting some more carrots as well as lettuce and more spinach soon. (NOTE: This is almost my entire kitchen counter!  It will be worth it, if I can successfully keep us in fresh greens and more through the long, long cold winter. )

I'm just about done with canning.  I have 9 pint jars left, and I need those for venison stock as soon as I get a chance.  To the left is the last of the apple-tomato salsa for the year and to the right is some pearsauce. (This is the rest of the counter space in my kitchen.  Where the counter turns is where the refrigerator is and where the white towel is is the only accessible-for-doing-anything-counter space because of the fridge.)

Even though I'm about done canning, I still have more to put up!  Ironically, the box labeled vine ripe tomatoes contain green tomatoes in paper bags (in the boxes so I can stack them on my chest freezer).  The apples will be sliced and dehydrated or sauced and turned into fruit leathers.  The pears that were in the blue shopping bag met the same fate, but I'm supposed to go back to Broccoli Lady's house to get more pears today.  She says she probably still has another 3-4 bushels and I think my mom only wants about another bushel or two, so I'll probably have more pears to process!  I loved the dehydrated pears I tried today though, so this is not bad thing!  My mom also said something about bringing about 20 pounds of carrots from her garden for me, so I'll be busy freezing those too!   Nope, definitely not done yet!