2023 Garden Thread

Getting tomatoes a few daily. Made up my mind this year to counteract the fruit flies on the kitchen buy often processing my ripe tomatoes. With 24 plants a better way to go about it. Given away cukes and trombocini to neighbors and letting one just grow to seed saving size- shell turns tan and hardens. 150 garlic cloves planted a month ago and some Duganski to plant when bed get cleared. I planted some Wasabe radishes a weeks ago where a potato bed was. Never tried them before so we will see if we like them.At Christmas time I will dig my RedBolivian oca tubers for roasting.and saving some to plant next year. Biennial broccoli needs to be planted for winter.
 
I finally finished all my concrete work, which has been eating up nearly all of my free time. The crumbling paver walkway in front of the house was the last to get taken care of. It was a safety hazard and I'm very relieved we finished it before winter.
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We also picked 5 boxes of apples and pear from a friend's hobby farm. Those hung out in the basement for a couple of weeks then got run through the old school cider press and we ended up with 1.5 gallons pear cider and 3 gallons of apple cider. Nearly all went in the freezer, but we enjoyed some fresh. Some of it will be reduced with spices and mixed with everclear to make a tasty apple pie "moonshine".
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Gary Knowels said:
I finally finished all my concrete work, which has been eating up nearly all of my free time. The crumbling paver walkway in front of the house was the last to get taken care of. It was a safety hazard and I'm very relieved we finished it before winter.
View attachment 82580View attachment 82581View attachment 82582

We also picked 5 boxes of apples and pear from a friend's hobby farm. Those hung out in the basement for a couple of weeks then got run through the old school cider press and we ended up with 1.5 gallons pear cider and 3 gallons of apple cider. Nearly all went in the freezer, but we enjoyed some fresh. Some of it will be reduced with spices and mixed with everclear to make a tasty apple pie "moonshine".
View attachment 82583
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You’re a machine! Has school started yet?
 
joefromchicago said:
More a yard than garden question, but yesterday was trimming an arbor vitae when I was assaulted by a cloud of fly-sized, stinging insects. Anyone have experience with this and can offer solutions?
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Did they leave little raised bumps/welts where they stung?
 
Apples! What to do with all the apples? I'm finally having some apple tree success. About 5 years ago I bought one of those bare root Honeycrips apple trees at Costco for $14 on a whim. Had a good but manageable yield 2 years ago and a few less last year. Got 3 boxes of apples this year and can't keep them all in the refrigerator. I have another tree in my garden exclosure that keeps deer out of my garden. It's one of those 4 variety grafted things that is shaped to follow the fence. For whatever reason, the Jonagolds have become the dominant branch, and now they are also ripe. I can only eat so much apple pie, apple crisp, apple cobbler, not to mention just plain apples with my lunch. I hope the neighbors are more receptive to apples than they are to zucchini.
 
Salmo_g said:
Apples! What to do with all the apples? I'm finally having some apple tree success. About 5 years ago I bought one of those bare root Honeycrips apple trees at Costco for $14 on a whim. Had a good but manageable yield 2 years ago and a few less last year. Got 3 boxes of apples this year and can't keep them all in the refrigerator. I have another tree in my garden exclosure that keeps deer out of my garden. It's one of those 4 variety grafted things that is shaped to follow the fence. For whatever reason, the Jonagolds have become the dominant branch, and now they are also ripe. I can only eat so much apple pie, apple crisp, apple cobbler, not to mention just plain apples with my lunch. I hope the neighbors are more receptive to apples than they are to zucchini.
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Box them up and keep them dark and cool for 1-2 weeks then come visit me and we can use my cider press to turn them into cider which can be frozen for later consumption. If you're interested pm me.
 
Make Apple Butter and can it...
We make this stuff every year, give some away and folks love it.
Do some math so you are adding ingredients at a reasonable hour...
;)

www.allrecipes.com

Slow Cooker Apple Butter

This apple butter cooks unattended for hours in a slow cooker.
www.allrecipes.com www.allrecipes.com
 
I should mention we use a bit less white sugar than called for, and in the comments there are some suggestions for adding additional spices, pecans etc. that are also very good.
 
We ended up with about a dozen VERY ripe peaches from a nearby orchard. I may incorporate some in to hot sauces... Anybody have any other suggestions?
 
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