Growing Home: Last of the elderberries? Tater picking!

Berry picking winding down!

We are not sure what the final yield is - somewhere around 25-26 gallons we think!.

Probably the last major picking of elderberries this season

Last picking for the weekend. Didn't even fill the small bucket!

Potato picking!

Wasn't right on my birthday - but it was close! I picked up the potato plow I had ordered at TSC. After mowing the last bit of tall field grass I took the flail mower off the tractor an put on the plow!

LAst bit of mowing one before I remove the flail mower and put on the potato plow

Because there was so many weeds the plow did tend to lift. When it lifted it would cut up a bunch of taters! None-the-less, it was a heck of a lot easier and faster then digging by hand!

Dirty taters fresh from the harvest. This pick includes the ones I picked own at the city house

Washed, cured and sorted to remove damaged ones

Damaged potatoes will get used first - thinking of FDing some mashed taters!

More berry picking

Strawberries and blackberries are still producing. We got a few.

Blackberries are slowing down. Probably get a few next weekend too.

Some lathe work for friend

A friend of mine at work is creating a animatronic tree for halloween. He needed a couple of shafts turned down to fit some flange bearings. It has been awhile, but I got things running pretty quick. Unfortunately I only did one of the shafts! I will take care of the other next weekend.

Video of the process.

Trimming around hazelnuts

While mowing I noticed that the hazelnut trees where getting a bit overwhelmed with grass and weeds, so I cleaned them up.

Some of these still look pretty rough. I hope they all survive the winter.
I will try to make enough wood chips to help them out.

Trimmed around some of the elderberry plants too

Again, while mowing, I saw some plants getting overwhelmed by weeds so I made a point to trim around these elderberries.

The deer ate most all of the leaves off of several of these plants! I guess this is payback for putting the electric fence around the beans!

Parrot Tree survives!

This is the tree that Tom and Julie gave to me to plant during the weekend of the reunion. It was a bad time to plant, but since this tree is supposely a native to Iran (Iraq?) we figured maybe it would handle this heat and drought. It initially looked like it died, but here I see some new green growth! Notice that some of the new growth seems to have been eaten! Not sure if deer or bugs. I might have to put a cage around it if its deer.

Several new branches of green!

Squash and corn harvest

More summer squash came in - so Katherine will be happy! Also, a lot of the corn was ready. I grabbed several ears and decided that I needed to go get a bushel basket!

We decided to try freeze-drying the corn to see how it turns out. Also, we still have plenty of frozen corn from the previous couple years harvests and we just don't want to fill up the freezer!

The corn is under the cabbages

I had two full trays go into the dryer! I filled the trays to the brim (note that this tray is not full).
I figure I got about 5-6 pints of corn. Not bad for the crappy time I had with corn this year!

Tomatoes are ripening

The tomatoes that I planted are finally starting to ripen. I harvest mostly romas, a few others were starting to blush. I also de-weeded a bunch of the tomatoes and found a tomato worm! I sprayed with sevin.

I put most of these tomatoes in the freeze-dryer with the corn. I saved a few out to make tomato gravy for over some of the new taters!

I noticed that some of the vines were partially eaten, so I looked around and finally found the culprit! (there is a worm dead center of this picture - look carefully!). I applied some sevin to the tomato plants. I hated to do it - but these worms can destroy harvest fast!