August 2011 in Review and September Preps

I'm a bit late with my monthly summary, but here it is. To cap off a very interesting August, both of our water heaters died last weekend. It took five days for the parts to come in and for the water heaters to get fixed. No hot water when you have four young children home making messes all day in the middle of canning season? Life gets complicated and everything takes about twice as long to get done. It's going to take a few days to unearth my house from under the debris of dirty dishes, kids, and laundry.  I'm hoping September will be a better month.

August Garden:

Here's the bad news: the germination rate hasn't been great for our fall plantings.

Cauliflower hanging in there

We have a few tiny cauliflower and broccoli plants.

The Box of Death

This is the box we have christened "The Box of Death". All the strawberries we planted last spring died and now only one cabbage seedling remains. Lots of seedlings sprouted, but they mysteriously died. What gives?

Brandywine tomato plant gone wild

Our tomatoes are in a holding pattern. The insanely hot weather of July and early August caused the plants to drop flowers rather than produce fruit. Now the weather is better and flowers are setting, but we have to wait until the fruit is produced and ripe.

But there's good news.

The pumpkins are looking great. It won't be long before they're ready to pick. Our cucumbers and cantaloupe are consistently producing, too.

I'm harvesting and drying tons of cayenne peppers.

Green beans in September?

And, miracle of miracles, we have fresh green beans! Lots of them! Hubby Dear picked nearly two pounds just yesterday.

I reported last month that the green beans died, right? Well, in two of the boxes, the green beans bounced back and began producing with the mild weather we've been having.  How strange is that? It's fun to have some garden serendipity instead of garden catastrophe.


August Preps:

• In addition to the odds and ends I picked up at Cabela's, I bought some more items for our long term food storage: local honey, oil, mayonnaise, molasses and evaporated milk. I broke down and shelled out the mega bucks for a case of dry milk. We are getting so close to having a full year's supply of food. Exciting!
• I also added to our three-month supply: dry carrots, dry fruit, cornstarch, granola bars and cereal. My family is a crazy bunch of cold cereal addicts, so we have to build a big stockpile of it. Cereal is getting more and more expensive (like everything else these days) so it's a challenge to find bargains. 
• Speaking of stockpiles, my budding toiletry stockpile was getting out of control. I had been just pitching items in the cabinets in our master bathroom and it was pretty chaotic. To solve this problem, I bought five storage bins and divided the stockpile into five categories: oral care, body wash & soap, skin care, deodorant, and hair care. The bins should hold about a year's supply of these toiletries for my family and items are much easier to find now.  

The beginnings of my hair and skin care stockpile

• I added these two books to my library:  Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition and The Organic Fruit Gardener. 
• I've canned a bit of salsa, spaghetti sauce, pickled peppers, and cucumbers. I have two dynamite recipes to share with you soon. 

What's coming up this September? 

• I'm so excited! Global Sun Oven is lending me a Sun Oven to take for a test drive.  I can't wait to put it through its paces. Will it really work? Is it worth the hype? Is it better for baking cookies than my mini-van? You'll be along every step of the way.
• Of course I'll continue building our food storage. I plan to dehydrate a bunch of herbs and freeze pesto. Apple season is upon us so I'll begin canning applesauce, apple butter, and try my hand at dehydrating apples, as well. 
• The advent of cooler weather reminds me that we need to get a back-up form of heat for our house. We plan to get a wood stove at some point, but for now, a propane heater will have to do. 
•  I'm cutting back a bit on my prepping budget this month to start saving for my chicken coop. Hubby Dear and I are going to begin building the chicken moat this month. Since the two of us are ridiculously un-handy, that should be fun times indeed. Thankfully our marriage is strong enough to survive the trials and tribulations that are sure to unfold. ;) 

What did you do to prep or in the garden during the month of August? What do you have planned for September? 

Fall gardening

It's prime gardening season. The cucumbers are coming by the bucket-load, we're finally getting some tomatoes, and it's hot enough to bake cookies in the car. Time to plan and plant your garden for those chilly fall days!

Believe it or not, it's true.

This is our first real effort at fall-time gardening.  In previous years, we have either been too tired or disillusioned with garden failure to attempt it, but with things going as well as they are, we decided to jump in. I hope the following tips will help you if you're toying with the idea of gardening this fall.

Research, research, research!

The first thing we did, and the first thing you should do if you're considering a fall garden for the first time, is to find out what you can grow in the fall in your area. Your state extension service (usually connected with a land grant university) is a good place to start for this kind of information. Click here if you need help finding  your state extension service.

For example, a lot of you may be able to grow peas as a fall crop. Not us. It just won't work in our area because of our torrid summer temperatures. I didn't believe the warnings from the state extension service and tried it out last year with dismal results. I learned my lesson!

After our research, Hubby Dear and I decided that we would try and plant:

• Lettuce - We're planting the same Winter Density romaine that we had such great results with in the spring.  
• Salad Mix - This time we're going with Johnny's Wildfire Lettuce Mix. I was attracted to this mix because it has a higher proportion of red-leafed lettuces (ie. it's purty!)
• Spinach - This is a new crop for us. We're planting Red Cardinal.
• Beets - The beets we planted this spring made wonderful pickled beets. I'm hoping for a bountiful crop this fall. We're planting Red Ace, the same variety from the spring.
• Broccoli - This, as well as cauliflower, is something we've never tried to grow. We're going to direct seed it in our garden. Our state extension service both recommends direct seeding broccoli and cauliflower AND warns against it in the same document. I guess we'll see what happens! We're planting the Bay Meadows variety.
• Cauliflower - See broccoli. We're trying Amazing, which is supposed to withstand both heat and cold. If it grows, well, that would be amazing!
• Carrots - We've liked the Nelson carrots from our spring garden. We're going to try them again this fall.
• Radishes - Radishes can get pithy and/or very strong tasting in the heat of summer. We're trying a new variety, Crunchy Royale, and seeing how it does. 
• Cabbage - We loved the Farao we had in the spring, but it is a spring-only variety. We're trying the very non-poetically named Storage No. 4 for the fall.
• Swiss Chard - I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never even tasted chard, much less cooked or grown it. This will be a new adventure all the way around. We're growing Bright Lights, which looks like it will be a beautiful addition to our garden.  

Here is the resulting garden plan:

Personalize the plan for your garden - especially if you Square Foot Garden 

All the squares in orange represent existing plantings. If you look closely, you'll notice that we had to add in a few squares of "overflow" for our pumpkins and some of the tomatoes. These plants are not behaving themselves and sticking to their assigned squares and we haven't had the heart to pinch them back. We're just going to give them wide berth and plant around them.

You'll also see our strange checkerboard of cabbage in the southwest corner of our garden. First of all, that area was supposed to be strawberries. Every single last strawberry plant there died. Major bummer and quite the head-scratcher. (Our working theory is that Hubby Dear over-fertilized them. He fertilized Mini Me's strawberries in her box at the same rate and about half survived. Who knows what happened?) We'll try again next year, but this fall we thought we'd try cabbages there. We're planting them in the checkerboard arrangement because we found that our spring cabbage got so huge that it needed extra room.  

Beat the heat

In addition to selecting the right types of plants for your climate and the best varieties of those plants for fall gardening, there are a few things to keep in mind as you establish your fall garden during the hot months of July and August.  

1. Plant seeds slightly deeper than you would in the spring. Deeper soil will be slightly cooler and more moist, and that can increase your germination rates.
2. You're also going to want to plant more seeds than you need. Those hot August temperatures can stifle germination, so it's better to over-seed just in case. You can always thin out the extra plants later.
3. Lastly, don't forget to water, water, water, especially as the seeds are germinating.

Are you a fall gardener? Do you have any tips to share?