Fall crops

Things are definitely winding down.  This week the sweet potatoes and the last of the winter squash came out.  Well I should have gotten the sweet potatoes out two weeks ago, before the rains. The sweet potatoes were planted in one half of this bed, the other half got a summer squash.  One end also got a single row of pole beans.  Between those three crops this bed has produced an estimated 65 pounds of vegetables.

Well the sweet potatoes look pretty funky.  A lot of them are split and otherwise damaged.

Closer up:

I kept about half of them and put them in the mobile greenhouse to cure. The redder roots - these are Georgia Jets - are from vines that put down secondary roots.  They haven't been in the ground as long.  I'll try another variety next year.

The winter squash gave better results.  The Teksukabotu vines trailed well over 30 ft from where they were seeded.  They put down new roots along the vine.

It was quite a pile of foliage.

The sweet potato and squash remains all went into the compost bin.  It took some machete work to chop them up so they would all go in, as the vorpal blade went snicker snack.

These Teksukabotu squash are very productive.  The first harvest already gave me 23 lbs of squash from just two plants.  The greenish squash is certainly not ripe.  After the first week of September any newly formed squash were removed since they had no chance of ripening before the first frost.  Looks like I missed this one.  The others have had close to two months on the vine, and with a little curing in the sun should be fine.

With the squash out I removed the trellises and mowed the grass, or weeds.  They really weren't that bad as the squash leaves made dense shade.  The former squash bed is that brown patch in the background.

The landscape timbers in the two beds in the foreground are rotting and will have to be removed soon.  I'm thinking about making an open bed in this area and rotating potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash through the area.  The ground slopes away to the right and even an open bed will need some kind of terracing at the point where the slope becomes severe, basically following the outline of the present beds.  I'm thinking of felling some small trees in the woodlot to make the terrace.  

Monday October 20

It's Monday, time to show what I got this week.  Well I got nothing, nada, zippo.  That's not to say it's all over, but most of the green vegetables are done.  It was the extended overcast weather that did them in, not surprising this time of year.  I took down the bean trellis.  The beans climbed jute twine, which is biodegradable, that is not synthetic.  Taking them down I just cut the twine and tossed the whole mass in the compost bin.

I still haven't gotten those sweet potatoes out.  The soil is still very wet.  At least the bean trellis is out of the way.

There's probably no chance I'll get another summer squash.  The two on the plant have been that size for nearly a week.  Nevertheless a stretch of sunny weather is in store and I can't bring myself to take up the plant just yet.

And why is it that parsley always looks the best this time of year, just before winter?  All summer long it looked anemic, and now this.  Guess I'll have to dry some of it.

There is one last fresh vegetable that will give me a nice harvest - the peppers.  Some of the sweet pepper plants are just loaded with green peppers, like the Marconi on the left.  By the end of the week the Ancho, New Mexico and Mole peppers will provide enough ripe chilis to dry for more chili
powder.

 

Relief at last

It seems strange, but things are actually drying out.  This weekend I got outdoors and jumped on some chores like a dog on a ham bone.  Actually there was one other day with the same opportunities, last Sunday.  That day I raked leaves, mowed grass and seeded four rows of spinach for overwintering.  The bed was first spaded over.

I'm still trying to figure out why there are so many roots in this bed.  They must come from the hop hornbeam tree but that tree is about 20 feet away, and it's a small tree.  Anyway the bed was spaded, amended with some compost, tilled and seeded.

The compost bin has some nearly finished compost in it.  It should be rich compost.  After the fish kill in the spring I added a bucket of dead fish to the compost, and later the entrails from the rabbit litter.  It's been working all summer.

I  decided to split the compost between the two oldest beds.  Next year these beds will get tomatoes, peppers, eggplant - Solanacae.  The back bed did very poorly this summer and needs amending so I added about 2/3 of the compost to that bed.

Instead of digging the compost in I am trying a no till approach with these beds.  The compost was spread out evenly and a weed fabric was pinned in over the compost.  Since these beds will be planted with seedlings started indoors the soil won't need to be a fine tilth.  The fabric will allow the passage of air and water.

There were leaves to rake this weekend, mostly from the ash trees.  The leaves were shredded and put on top of the fabric.  I'd like to add a few more inches of leaves before winter, but this is a start.  The shredded leaves will provide a nice layer of insulation for the winter.   I like to keep the worms happy.

Next year after the potatoes have been planted these leaves will be taken up and put on the potato bed.  After the potatoes are dug up the leaves will go into the compost bin, at that point partly decomposed.  These leaves will get around.  I did this routine this year and it worked well.  Shredded leaves make excellent mulch for potatoes, blocking out most of the light.

Finally the compost bin can be consolidated into one stack.

The New Deck - Almost Finished

I was hoping to finish the stair railing before posting.  It has rained nearly every day for what seems like two weeks.  Thankfully there was enough dry weather last weekend to catch up on outside chores, rake leaves and mow the grass.  I wish I had dug up the sweet potatoes then because now it's a quagmire.  At least there are no frosts in sight.

This has turned out to be a bigger project than expected.  Originally I planned to add on to the existing deck, but after seeing the abysmal work on that deck I had to tear the whole thing out and start over.  Thus began the destruction phase. 

Then there was the damaged siding that had to be matched.  Here is the clean slate, the tabula rosa for the new deck, with the footers in place (digging and pouring footers is a significant portion of the work).

The substructure of posts, beams, ledger board and perimeter joists was put up:

The joist framework was built in stages.

And the deck floorboards were installed on the finished sections.

Fast forward to now.  The flooring is finished.  The posts have been cut and beveled, the handrails built. 

The stairs at the end still need some handrails but that is a relatively minor project.  It just needs to stop raining.  That's a handrail from the old stairs, which coincidentally fit almost perfectly.

And the view is great.  This will be a great place to grill or watch birds.

Does something seem missing?  Why yes there are no spindles.  That job will have to wait until next spring.  The treated wood needs to weather before staining and it will be much much easier to stain without the spindles attached.  I will set the spindles on a rack and stain them individually, then after the deck has sufficient coats of stain attach the spindles. Then it will be finished. 

Monday October 13

Things are definitely winding down.  Last week I picked two and a half pounds of pole beans and a summer squash.  This week there was only one harvest.  The weather has been persistently cloudy and rainy, and the lack of solar radiation has definitely taken its toll.  Still there was nearly a pound of beans and a nice squash to be had.  The carrots are small.  I don't know what the problem is with this bed but nothing has done well in it since the spinach and lettuce were harvested in the spring.  It definitely gets a heap of compost in a week or so.

That may be the last squash although there is one more on the plant that may or may not mature.  And I'll pick a nice batch of chilis in a few days, enough to dry for chili powder. 

Closing in on 300 pounds, a new record for me.  That will be a cinch, with parsnip, sweet potatoes and the second set of winter squash still to come. 

To see what other people pick this time of year, head on over to http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/

The New Deck - Stairs and finishing the floor

Work on the deck continues at it's plodding pace.  It was past time to build the stairs.  I was getting tired of stepping up to the deck from a milk crate. After setting the posts I calculated the dimensions of the stringers and built a test stringer using a piece of lumber from the old deck.  The dimensions were a little tricky since the ground slopes a little in front of the stairs.  I compromised by calculating the rise at the middle of the stairs.

With a few modifications the actual stringers were laid out and cut.  I used another piece of lumber from the old deck underneath the joists for attachment of the new stringers.   A third stringer was later set in the center.

Once the stair frame was built the floor boards went on fairly quickly.  This project took me over half a day - I haven't built stairs in a long time.  It sure is nice to have a civilized way to step up on the deck!

The next day I resumed work on the floor.  The last post showed the floor with both the new floor boards and a section of the floor using some of the boards from the old deck, which are dark from years of wood stain.  The more I saw of this the less I liked it.  The old boards were slightly different in dimension, not as thick or wide.   I decided to remove the old floor boards and buy new ones.  I think this will certainly be a positive whenever the house is put up for sale. 

 

The floor is nearly done but for two short boards at the end.  I'll pick those up at the lumberyard soon.   The railings are next.  It's very nice to finally be able to walk, or amble up the stairs onto a nearly finished floor.  I'm liking it a lot.

Since I have the use of a wood splitter for several days I was splitting wood today. I loaded the split logs into the garden tractor cart and stacked them on the new deck straightaway.  No point in moving the wood twice. 

If anything the deck is overbuilt.  This kind of weight should be no problem.