The fall season has arrived. We had our first frost here on 9/20/09 and our second frost on 9/26/09. The Farmer's Almanac calls for a colder than average winter with less than normal amounts of precipitation; we'll see...
The tomato harvest was bleak, but not a total loss. I managed to get 7 new varieties of tomato seeds fermented, cleaned, dried and stored; Blue, Coure De Bue, Delicious, Rose De Berne, Sasha's Altai, Siberian, and Taxi.
I had a remarkably good harvest of Charlevoix Beans considering they were ravaged by "Fat Bastard" - that's my name for one of the local ground hogs... I was amazed to see that the bean plants sprouted new leaves and continued to grow!
Above, the dried beans were shelled for the rosy-red kidney-shaped beans. But believe me, these aren't your ordinary kidney beans. Charlevoix Beans are known for how they create an indescribably fantastic broth in soups.
Here, I set up my work area in the September sunshine and separated & shelled the Charlevoix Beans. The ones that are not quite ready will be place in the greenhouse to dry for a couple more weeks.
I will save about 500 seeds for next year's garden and save the rest for warm winter soups in the crock pot. Next entry will be on saving the seeds from the sunflowers.
:)
