Around The House And Gardens

The citrus is ripening and we've already picked all the fruit from the early ripening satsuma tree.  Seleste single handedly ate most of them!  She would run out to the tree before or after school, pick a satsuma and drop peelings all the way back to the house.  I began to call her Gretel.  She could just follow her trail back to the tree and home again!  The satsumas are first and now the Paige Mandarins and Meyers Lemons.  The navel oranges are huge!  They should be ripe in December.  I also have Louisiana sweets, pink grapefruit, and blood oranges.  The blood orange trees are new this year so no fruit. 

Everyone should be a little Johnny Appleseed and plant a fruit bearing tree where ever they live no matter how long they plan to stay.  Think of all the joy you'll give yourself and someone else.  Plant a fruit tree this year!

The carrots are doing well.  They seem to have been tiny then all of sudden large!  Maybe I've just been distracted and not in the garden as much.  I usually go out to the garden 4 or 5 times a day.  Not possible lately.

The tennis ball lettuce seed I bought at the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Festival is getting large too!  See the onions poking up?  The onion seed I planted didn't do very well.  Only one variety had a good germination rate.  The fact that one variety did come up so well makes me wonder about the quality of the other seed.  Hmmmmm

I planted some early maturing pie pumpkins late in the season.  They are large and starting to mature.  I pushed the envelope this year and planted a lot of varieties I might not have this late in the season.  Unless we have a very early frost I think they'll do well.  If one is predicted I plan to construct a poly tunnel over them in hopes to preserve them. 

I believe with a little effort in our zone we could grow tender vegetables almost all year long.  The hardest months would be December, January and maybe February.  I plant my corn at the end of February.  If I wait any later it doesn't do as well.  Whew, it takes years of experience to work out the micro climate nuances of your land and the weather loves to throw a lot of unpredictability in there to keep you scrambling.  Lots of fun!

Cauliflower and more lettuce!

And here is something I've been working on for a while!  Thai winged beans!  I planted this variety in the spring and it did nothing.  The plants grew and grew over our hot summer without a blossom to be seen.  I allowed it to take up my precious bed.  Now in the beginning of November....Winged Beans!  I wonder if this is something to do with the Asian varieties.  If you look back the same thing happened with my Chinese Asparagus long beans.  They must need an extremely long growing season or perfect 70's and 80's weather with cooler nights!?  If this bean doesn't taste wonderfully awsome...I'm not sure if I'm willing to give up a precious bed for that long again.  Maybe it'll be banished to the fence line.

Here's the beginning of one of it's beautiful blue green blossoms!

The green bean patch is giving me basketfuls of sweet yummy green beans.  Yesterday I put this batch in the crock pot (you can use your sun oven too...I didn't because I had too big a batch for my sun oven pot....I need a larger one).  I cooked down an onion and some sausage in a little sunflower oil and threw that in the crock pot with a little salt and pepper and crocked it all day....yummmmm......Oh I Love My Garden!