As of Nov. 4, I was still picking fresh greens from the garden.
I am racing against time to transplant more lettuce in the cold frame and hoping for a very mild winter. I have a lot of flowers blooming and the Oriental poppy plant just gave me two beautiful orange blooms. One more large bud is ready to open but a hard frost might put an end to all of that.
I still have some tulips to plant but I will put them in pots and bury the pots in the garden. Lots of the leaves have been shredded and the other ones will stay in the bags to cover the globe artichoke plants. This way, I might be able to save them for another year. I also use a lot of leaves to put in the cold frame between the pots of perennials that I overwinter. I also cover all the pots and once the very cold days arrive, I close the windows. If we have a lot of snow like last year, it makes a good insulation If no snow, with all the leaves and the closed windows, the plants don’t get the wind and are fine until spring.
I still have beets and carrots which I am harvesting this week. The parsnips will stay in the ground until next spring. The seven fig trees are staying in the ground this winter. I made them some sort of cages and they will be covered with leaves. I will have to move some of them to a more sunny spot as I had figs but they didn’t have time to ripen. I can blame this on the smoke we had all summer which kept the sun from shining.
http://www.everfieldusa.com/Pruning_Grape_Vines.html
Somehow I ended up on the above site about growing, pruning and propagation of grapevines. I found a lot of good information which I will apply to the vines that we have. This year we had a beautiful crop of Himrod green seedless grapes. However, it was like a jungle by the end of the harvest. The birds and the wasps had a nice buffet.
On the other vine, I had to chase the magpies as they were making a mess underneath the arbour. We just finished harvesting another one which is almost seedless. This one I was able to protect with some row cover. It was worth the effort as the birds could not get to the grapes.
The kale and Swiss chard are still producing and will do so until a heavy frost. I had both of them overwintering and producing lots of seeds during the summer. Some of the seeds fell to the ground and lots of seedlings came up. I am using these as baby greens. Even with the late spring, smokey summer and cold September, I cannot complain about all the food I was able to grow to eat fresh, canning, freezing some and sharing some of the extras with the Upper Room Mission. Nobody should throw any food away when so many go hungry.
For more information contact 250-558-4556or email jocelynesewell@gmail.com.