Fall Update

I’m running short on time this week since I’ve been so busy with work!

That said I wanted to give you something so here’s an update on what I’ve been up to and what I accomplished/didn’t get done this year:

The Plots

The three garden plots are all in different stages:

The newest one has garden space prepped for next year and was where I started the watermelon landrace at. Unfortunately there was an incident with herbicides, but I still managed to at least save seeds from the resulting melons!

The three winners in terms of which did best this year are:

Janosik (A Polish heirloom with dark skin and yellow flesh)

Early Girl Otome (A serving sized Japanese striped melon)

Art Combe’s Ancient (An ancient watermelon grown by the Native Americans in Arizona most likely, found in a cave by Art Combe)

So those three all have been cross pollinated by other melons, and I’ll add a few more to the gene pool next year. This will be an ever-evolving process until I start to get consistent yields of a good low effort melon.

The second plot had a decent first year, we got notable yields of: golden raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, beans, elderberry, marigold, basil, red currants, garlic, and carrots.

I do think that it desperately needs some kind of animal input like fish guts or manure so over the winter I will be burying something in the soil throughout the whole plot.

The third plot was our first one and we let it mostly sit fallow for the year (although the perennials and self-sowers still produced quite a bit!) so we got: thyme, oregano, chamomile, mint, raspberries, onions, chard, garden sorrel, carrots, potatoes, calendula, dill, honeyberries, tomatoes, basil, and some flowers.

Recently we mowed most of it down since the weeds were pretty intense this year so currently it looks like this (disregard the plants we let stand):

I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to swing here next year, but we definitely at least have to get garlic planted. I may avoid planting any annuals here from now on.

The Wild

This year we’ve had a surplus of pears which is great!

We also discovered my favorite wild apple has recovered from a very harsh prune that I thought took it out completely and we’ve already got 6 gallons of vinegar brewing!

We didn’t get many autumn olive berries or pawpaws this year which feels kinda sad admittedly but they’ll always be there next year.

As I’ve mentioned in previous emails, we’ve also had a very severe drought here in the Midwest which has not only impacted our harvests but also what I am able to gather.

Housekeeping

I don’t think I’ll be able to do another foraging walk before winter sets in, I’m just too busy this month. I apologize to anyone who was looking forward to it!

As we head into winter I’d love to sell more plants if possible, and I’m thinking about placing an order pretty soon here so if any of you have any specific requests reach out to me either through replying via email or direct message on any of my social media accounts!

Also, I read all of your comments but I’m still not able to reply to all of them for some reason!

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