Nursing along last few tomatoes.....

[bvar22]

"Seasons change with their scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
Look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky
Is a Hazy Shade of Winter
Look around
Leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground"---Paul Simon





Fall is coming, the evenings are cool, and most of the garden has called it quits.



We have been busy cleaning out beds, and getting ready for Fall plantings.
Broccoli, Radishes, Sweet Peas, Lettuce, Leeks, Garlic, and maybe some Cabbage and Cauliflower are on the Fall menu.

I haven't given up on the last tomatoes, though it is getting difficult.
We didn't have a bird problem for most of the Summer, but lately they have been targeting the tomatoes, and getting anything that shows signs of ripening.
We covered this Cherokee Purple with netting, and that seems to have helped.


We ate a ripe Purple today, and hopefully, there will be a few more.

A bigger problem has been the appearance of Bacterial and Fungal problems with the remaining plants. Some we have pulled up, but there are a few that have some tomatoes that are worth fighting for. We're dealing with it by pruning any branch or leaf that shows signs of infection.

Naked Tomatoes....not very pretty, but I'm still hoping for some tomatoes. This plant (Arkansas Traveler) gave us some very tasty tomatoes this year...one of my favorites.

Lately, this particular plant has also had a night time visitor who has picked and carried off the ripest tomato for his own feast. Last night, I wrapped a near ripe tomato in a Rubik's Cube of netting hoping to pick it myself today. The nightly visitor was able to solve the netting puzzle and remove the tomato with very little disturbance to the netting. Its like the tomato just vanished from inside layers of netting.

We suspect a coon, and Starkraven is whipping up a powerful potion of Haberno Pepper sauce that we are going to put around the plant tonight. My eyes are burning from the fumes coming from the kitchen. I hope our little villain get a snout full of this stuff.
:evilgrin:

We've been letting the chickens graze in the Garden for the last couple of weeks. They get all excited when they see me headed for the garden, and come running across the yard like little kids to the Pied Piper.





This is Elvis, our rooster.

He's a Pretty Boy, and Lord and Master of the yard.
We are hoping that Elvis and his Girls will decimate any Squash Bugs that are planning to overwinter in the garden.
Our birds seem to be doing a very thorough job.





http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x7979

[hippywife]

1. Your chickens

are so beautiful! They make me wish we had gotten a few other kinds besides the black giants and the buffs.

Our girls have been roaming the garden for weeks now and they have pretty well decimated the squash box. I'm still hoping for tomatoes, too. We never got them earlier and now there are a mess of green slicers and plums out there, still small but doing well. Hopefully, they're getting enough sun to ripen sometime this month. I have no idea which varieties they are since they got all mixed up. LOL

We did get a handful of nice pumpkins and I've already made pumpkin bread twice. :9

Not sure now if we'll be planting anything for fall. I'm thinking I should have planted some seed before now and have seedlings ready for planting. I haven't been well so I haven't wanted to do anything so it'll probably end up waiting for next spring. Will see how things end up with my health.

Ike blew over Rosie but I have a whole new outfit for her that I got at the salvation army store. A nice blouse and a denim jumper. I think she'll enjoy them. She needs a new hat, too.

Hope you and K. are doing well over there. :hi:

[bvar22]

2. We did end up with a colorful flock.

Someone bought their chicks from the same place as we did in March (Parks & Hansons).
They got 24, and all of theirs survived. Now they have too many, and were looking for someone to take some off ther hands. We wound up with 2 Barred Rocks, 2 New Hampshire Reds, One Brown Leghorn to add to our 3 Austrolorp hens and Austrolorpe (?) rooster. They all seem to get along well, and, of course, Elvis is in pimp heaven.

No telling what the next generation is going to look like. :)

Eight hens and Elvis seems about right for us.
We are getting 6 - 7 delicious eggs per day, and loving it.

We got the remains of Gustav and Ike, but it only amounted to a few inches of rain each time which we needed. The winds came from a direction that we are protected from by a ridge.

We are doing OK, hope you are too.

:hi:

[pengillian101]

3. You and hippywife post the best pics and thanks to you both!

You both have beautiful lifestyles - I enjoy living vicariously, lol. Thanks for posting pics!

My recent gardening has been reduced. But we still always do tomatoes. At the last minute, we had an excess after making lots of salsa and marinara sauce and freezing that. I took a chance on something new after reading the article below Q&A.

NOTE: I used a vacuum sealer bag system and left the stem flower on. It worked great - the tomato kept perfect shape! Why didn't I ever try this sooner? No muss, no fuss. I haven't thawed one out yet, however, but that's the fun part of testing a new idea.

I've frozen all kinds of peppers raw w/stems at that works great, so I am hopeful.

:hi:

++++++++++

Q Is there an easy way to can tomatoes without the mess?

A There is -- and the technique is: Don't. As in, don't can; instead, freeze. If you have the space, you can pack in a mess of fruit, keep all the lively, fresh complexity of a great tomato because you don't sully it with heat, and barely mess up a counter.

Here is how to do it. Buy only big-flavored, assertive tomatoes with high acid/high sugar for best flavor in freezing or canning. Rinse them, remove their cores, but do not skin or seed (much of a tomato's character and goodness are in the seeds and the gel around them). Pack them into heavy-duty plastic freezer bags, press out air, seal and freeze. To use, just drop the frozen fruit into whatever you are cooking (skins will slip away quickly), or defrost and use tomatoes raw in salsas or whatever. They lose their shape and mush up a little, but every bit of their character will still sing out.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper hosts "The Splendid Table," American Public Media's national radio food show, splendidtable.org.

[bvar22]

4. Hi, Iron Range!

Starkraven and I are Minnesota ex-pats.
We moved here (Arkansas) from St Paul in 2006.
I made several touring & photo trips through the Iron Range and the Arrowhead during the Summer of 2006. I wasn't going to leave Minnesota before experiencing that area.
Very cool history, geography, and culture.


PS: We miss the snow & stark beauty of Minnesota Winters.

We had the honor of working on a Wellstone campaign.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[pengillian101]

5. Hia!

I have followed your gorgeous pics here and knew you left MN. The beauty is always here any season for your visit. The place you moved to is absolutely divine!

I was involved with Paul Wellstone because he was the very best friend a Veteran could have. He did SO much for vets. I had the privilege of printing up flyers for his campaign.



"PS: We miss the snow & stark beauty of Minnesota Winters."
Like I'm gonna believe that one, LOL. Come and shovel, willya?

:hi:

[grasswire]

8. that picture made me cry

Can you imagine an Obama Wellstone ticket?

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

6. No pics, but IKE wiped ours out. There were just a few small ones.

[Blue Gardener]

7. I love the chickens!

We always had chickens when I was growing up. If we could have them where I live, I'd be putting up a chicken coop tomorrow.