This week really felt like fall. The leaves are changing, the weather is cool, and the heater has been turned on. But warm weather is on the horizon! We are looking at above-average temperatures, it’s supposed to be in the 80s, which my plants are loving. Production has definitely slowed down, but there is still produce coming in. In the garden, the pests have arrived.
I spent a lot of time mowing and tilling the market garden, prepping it for cover crop planting. Exactly 50 days ago I planted Provider Green Beans. They are a 50-day maturity crop that I planted with the hope I’d get at least one good harvest before my first expected frost date on October 7th. Today I harvested 3 perfect green beans with so many more on the plants! Unfortunately, while checking the plants on a few of the plants, I found a bunch of Mexican Bean Beetles. I spent quite a bit of time picking off all the larvae and caught one adult. I’m hoping that I caught it early enough that I won’t be overrun. We are expecting cold weather after this week-long warmup so hopefully there isn’t time left for it to become a real issue. I also found a tomato hornworm that had been killed by parasitic wasps which is pretty cool. It’s a big reason I do not spray anything, even organic, in my garden. Nature has its own checks and balances and to see it is pretty neat.
Next up in the garden is getting my raised beds cleared out for my garlic to be planted. I’m not doing any overwinter planting in the market garden this winter. After getting my soil test back, I’m focused on getting my soil quality up.
This week I got a double batch of cowboy candy. I go through a pint every 10 days, so it’s a big one I try to stock up on. Next, I dehydrated celery, corn, and okra. I almost have enough tomatoes to do another batch in the roaster. I still need more pasta sauce and sloppy joe sauce. Next week I have to pick up my apples from our local Amish shop. I ordered a bushel of Honeycrisp and a bushel of Gala. I make them into applesauce, apple pie filling, and apple juice. I’m also going to attempt to make apple scrap vinegar. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.
This year we had a Generac installed through Costco. Because of the installation, we got a pretty big rewards check back. The closest Costco to us is about an hour and a half, one way, away… Or, at least until last week, it was. I got on to look for directions and Google Maps said there was a Costco 30 minutes away?!?! So I took the kiddo to her first Costco trip. Did you know Costco has organic flour now? And it’s $0.85 a pound! I opened my last small bag of emergency flour last week so I specifically went in for flour and couldn’t believe the price. The next cheapest price I could find was through Azure for @$1.27 per pound. I’m still going to get my Einkorn flour through Azure but now I’ll pick up my all-purpose flour from Costco. I ended up getting 60 lbs of flour so now I need to get one more 5-gallon bucket and gamma lid to store it.
