Hi everyone!

This week I’ve been busy replanting my beds for the winter, and splitting up a few plants to further our production next year and also to share with friends. I’ve also been doing a little harvesting and there is plenty more to come.

We received somewhere around 5 pounds of plums from friends earlier this week and they are delicious! Mackenzie has been eating a few every day but I need to start speeding this up a bit, so today I hope to get around to making clafouti (or what I like to call plum bread pudding) when I’m whipping up a few other things in the kitchen.

Our sunflowers are finally starting to open, and most have reached heights of over 6 feet — even in the tiny cinder block planters they are sitting in. Our grapes are also very nearly ready (we’re just waiting on them to sweeten up a bit), and I need to check our peaches and apricots again today to see if they are ripe (they tasted pretty good last week but were still very hard).

We’ve got plenty more things to harvest before the season really starts to wind down, but my thoughts are already turning to what will come next. In fact, I’ve actually gotten a bunch of seeds in the ground already and am starting to see the results. Last weekend, I put a whole bunch of Asian and Italian salads into the salad table, and they are already sprouting!

I also threw a ton of Lamb’s lettuce seeds into our aquaponics table (even though it’s not really active right now) and they are also growing. I figured if the weeds and parsley can happily grow in there, why not lettuce?

I’ve also planted quite a few carrots, two types of broccoli, Brussel sprouts (and they are already starting to sprout), radishes and beets. These are just a few crops that are well suited for cool weather growing. Other things you might want to think about planting are onions, winter cabbage (although July is probably the cut off for getting it in the ground unless you’re in a warm climate), cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, turnips, mustard greens, spinach, lettuce, and even shallots in a few more weeks.

You want most of your seeds to have turned into nice little plants before the summer is over, so the cooling weather doesn’t come as too much of a shock. It’s actually almost too late for me to do Brussel sprouts here, but I’m going to try them anyway. Better to take the risk instead of getting no rewards at all.

Oh and if you want to grow your own garlic, find yourself a local organic grower and buy a few really nice heads for planting, then make sure you get them in the ground about one month before the first frost.

By the way, for those that have had trouble with their eggplants, here is a photo of male and female flowers next to each other. The female is on the left and the male on the right. It’s a bit hard to notice here, but the male is significantly smaller than the female. As I said before, I just take the male flowers and bend them toward the females to help pollination. With pollinating them myself, the success rate we’ve had with eggplants is very, very low.

I know some of you have been asking if I plan to keep these Garden Life link ups going through the winter and I do. I will be sharing things about collecting seeds, propagating plants, raising a winter garden, seed wish lists, and that sort of thing — and before long I know it’s going to be time to start getting the beds ready again for planting. We kind of finally have an idea or two in mind for our garden behind the barn, so I’ll be talking about that as well. In fact, now is the time to get your beds ready for spring as your harvest completes if you don’t plan to grow during the fall and winter.

Cover your beds with cardboard or at least 5 sheets of newspaper, then a layer of mulch or grass clippings and you’ll keep weeds at bay and have nice healthy, soil for next year. This will also work for any areas where you want to kill off grass or weeds…or under walking paths. Cardboard is especially good if you don’t plan to plant anything on top because you’ll need to cut through it in the spring to plant anything. Newspaper, on the other hand, has generally broken down enough that you can easily get through it.

Harvested This Week

• 3 Eggplants – 1083g (nearly 1 pound per eggplant)
• A handful of strawberries
• Yellow tomatoes – 500 g
• 1 Red tomato — left a bunch on the vine to keep ripening
• 1 Pumpkin – 900g
• 2 pounds of onions
• A couple of carrots

We also have a whole bunch of jalapenos still to harvest. We ate all of the last ones by grilling them (which Stefan is going to talk about in another installment of Tales from the Grill) but I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with these now. Maybe I will stick one or two in the chicken I’m going to rotisserie today — but I just don’t want it getting too spicy which would keep Mackenzie from eating it. She can eat her weight in BBQ or rotisserie chicken. 😉

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

1. You are free to join the Garden Life link up at any time. You can also skip a few weeks and then come back. It’s entirely up to you.
2. Please link directly to a post about your garden, a recipe, a tutorial for gardening, an inspirational idea, etc that relates to GARDENING — not your main blog URL.
3. Please only link to your own blog or photos hosted online.
4. You MUST link back to No Ordinary Homestead or a Garden Life link up post in your blog post. This way, if someone else wants to join the fun, they can. You can either link with text or using the Garden Life badge.
   Below is a code for the badge above. Just copy and paste this code into your post or save and upload the image to your blog:
   <a href=”https://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/garden-life-link-up/“><img title=”garden-life-300″ src=”https://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/garden-life-300.gif” alt=”garden link up” width=”301″ height=”301″ /></a>
5. I highly encourage you to visit other participants and leave comments. This is a great way to meet new friends and become inspired about your garden! I try to visit all the blogs participating as well 🙂

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

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