nax's Journal

Snow

Learning to harvest seeds

Tomato: volunteer Early Girl Adventures in seed saving

Got one fruit off the volunteer tomato, which turned out not to be an Early Girl, but rather the wonderful heirloom Black. Following advice from Ceae and others, went through the fermentation proc...

Autumn

The garden has become a color study. Primarily golden brown and bright, rich green, there’s the occasional shock of bright. The Berberis Concorde with its purple foliage and neon under colo...

Experimental Now it's about the soil

I was going to go ahead and harvest the beets, but the soil is still so warm and friable that I decided to leave them. I’ve got about 30 plants going; I’ll make Thanksgiving (11/28) my...

Pineapple sage Dormant: Not quite ready to give up

The entire plant is clearly dead, except about 6 branches simply refuse to acknowledge it.

Bindweed Dormant: Photo update

Alyssum Sprouting: Thousands and thousands of these

This is what happens when you select the strongest, bloomingest self-seeders for twenty years running. Maybe all the seeds will sprout in our warm autumn and I won’t spend all of next summer...

Wild onions Sprouting: Can you say "invasive?"

I pulled these from under the Moonbeam coreopsis. I would say that given two seasons of neglect, there would be nothing growing in this garden except chikahgou.

Late summer beans Dying: These are ex-bean plants

Late summer beans Harvesting: November (!) Harvest

Hard to see the scale, but they’re very small. The largest of the beans is about 2" long; I don’t think this beet is the largest I’ve got, but I didn’t pull these unti...

Weed IDd?

It’s wild persicaria, or Ladysthumb. I couldn’t remember who was asking, slogged through a bunch of journals, but no luck. Links: Google images University of Missouri Dammit. Or maybe ...

Late summer Turnips Pruning: Babies

Well, really “thinning” but there’s no thinning event. Pulled up these two that were looking a little crowded. yay! They look like turnips. Greens are large and firm, and have...

Late summer Swiss chard Harvesting: Quiche with winter harvest (formerly Winter quiche)

Harvested about a quart of the Swiss Chard (there’s an equal amount left, if it survives the cold). I’ll make this tonight, but using the chard instead of olives.

Winter

All the pots and furniture are inside. It always makes me sad, the day when you finally have to concede to the weather. It’s gotten later and later. This year summer ran into Indian Summer...

Today

Broken finger forced me to wait one week too long to transplant the fountain grass out of the pot and into the ground. We’ll see how it does— the ground was quite cold but still loose ...

We grew something amazing in Chicago

The weather was spectacular. I really wanted to get out and fix a couple plants that the squirrels dug up, try planting my fountain grass, which is in a container, and some other small tasks, but ...

Basil, two varieties Dying: Leave in place for winter cover

Wagon Wheel and garage Harvested (archived plant)

Winter Houseplant update

Lost two tomatoes; they really need the sun; plus in the sunporch the soil on those plants just doesn’t seem to dry out. Have to be very circumspect watering them. Also lost the orange dais...