Edging Fall

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The end is near for the bountiful garden. The three nights of frost finished off my tomatoes,  eggplant, tomatillo, both zucchini and yellow squash and the last few beans I had been hoping would give one more meal. The peppers were iffy by the last day of frost so I used them up as fast as I could and did dehydrate a few for seasoning during the winter months.

I’m still giving away buckets full of beets, potatoes, carrots, red cabbage, onions and kale. What I can’t give away will be fine in the ground until the really cold and wet weather sets in when the saturated soil causes them to rot.

All of the early apples are over for the year,  now we are down to the fall/winter varieties like honeycrisp, Jonathon, rome, golden and red delicious varieties (they are best after frost because it makes them sweeter, at farmer markets they are sometimes called ice apples because the middle turns opaque from the cold). The Bartlet pears are all gone, but I see some Asian pears nearly ready to harvest.

The Chanterelles growing in the forest seem to look like there is enough moisture to keep them popping up until really cold freezing temperatures ends their growing cycle. It has to get down into the 20’s before the cold affects the ground beneath the tall fir trees so another month of fresh mushrooms is possible.

As the season turns, the garden will need to be put to rest. Next up are those spent vines of the raspberry bushes and Marion berries also the sprouts around the base of the filberts need to be trimmed flush with the trunks.

Speaking of filberts, this year’s crop was fodder for the Stellar’s Jay birds that robbed the nuts right off the trees. There were blue hordes of relatives swooping in from the big leaf maple trees and flying off with the nuts still in the husks to be devoured or hidden well away from the garden. There was also a handful of gray squirrels that chattered around on the ground below the trees to grab errant nuts that fell during the Jays thieving. We humans did not get a single filbert from the crop, its a good thing that I still have some left in the freezer from last years bumper harvest.