Canning, garden cleanup and mulching.

Canning Sweet potatoes

As I mentioned before, my sweet potatoes were in rough shape.  I decided to can most of them (all but 3 which I will use for starting next seasons taters).  This was the first time I canned sweet potatoes.  A bit of a surprise was that they stain your hands brown!  I used fruit-fresh and water to keep them covered as I cleaned and prepped them, but my hands where exposed the whole time and picked up a brown stain.  I got a total of 7 pints - the last pint was a little short.  These were pressure canned with 10 lb for 65 minutes.

7 pints of sweet potatoes canned

More dried pumpkin

I got a few trays ready.  I must admit that the allergies were getting me.  I had quite a headache driving up Friday afternoon.  I persevered though.

Cleaned up the black plastic off of the front and big gardens

This took way more time and effort than I thought it would.  I think I rediscover that every year I have done it!  The front garden was especially surprising since I had forgotten that I had doubled over the plastic there to make the rows closer together. 

Front garden - sans plastic.  The stuff on the left is the strawberries which still have some plastic down.  They need to be cleaned (de-weeded).  The plastic that I took up from the far right side had been down for 2 seasons and was NOT easy to get up or clean.  In fact, some of it was so bad I cut it off and will just re-purpose it in some other way.  Maybe on the blackberries?

Mowed off the weeds and ground up the debris using the Cub Cadet zero turn on the highest height setting first, then dropping it to normal lawn setting to finish up.

Big garden with the plastic removed and weeds mowed down.  I also have removed the broccoli. 

Left the Kale and the brussel sprouts.

Last of the Broccoli

I decided to pull the broccoli plants, but first, I picked all the broccoli florets that were big enough to bother with.  

I got 1.25 lbs of broccoli the last harvest!

Blanched and ready to vacuum seal and freeze

Garden Mulching

Finally got to use some of the mulch I have been building for the past 3 years!  I had piles of mulched leaves and grass clippings that I used for mulching the veggie gardens.  What I didn't realize was that I need A LOT more mulch! Anyway, I used all my mulch but the gardens could definitely use some more.

Paw-paw patch got leaf mulch.  Could have used a lot more!  Note that I do plan on shrinking this patch a bit.

The new portion of the front patch got all of the grass clipping mulch.  Some of this mulch hadn't complete rotted up yet.  I hope its ok.  I will till - maybe plow - this all in next spring.  If its not all mulch by then it will not be good for the soil!

I got pretty good coverage on the new portion of the front patch.

The big patch got leaf mulch.  Not near enough even though I worked around the Kale and Brussels sprouts!

I am planning on cutting this patch in half - I only mulched the half I plan on keeping.

Last of the Sprouts!

Well, not really - but of the sprouts that are likely to yield anything.  I picked and pulled the plants for all of the short season sprouts and also for some of the red-sprouts.  The red-sprouts need a longer season - I got very few of them that were big enough to eat.  Anyway, I got 3 lbs of sprouts!  Some of these were eaten immediately the rest I froze - 24 ozs total frozen.  I don't think we ate 24 oz - but you always loose some to waste.

3 lbs of sprouts! These are probably the last.  Only red ones left in the garden now.

Finally cut into the Musque de Provence pumpkins!

Look how orange they are!  I baked these and ate a half of one.  Texture was not great.  I removed the pulp from the skin and pureed the rest.  Added a little sweetener and salt and it was a pretty good pudding like dessert!