As I write this, it’s the last day of summer. It’s been a hard one – many, many, many days of 90+ degree heat with little rain. Maintaining the garden has been tough. I didn’t get as much to eat out of it as I wanted to – but, perhaps more importantly, I got a lot of knowledge. I’m looking forward to next year.
I worry that the intense heat and drought will be ongoing, but one of the things I learned was harvest timing. Plant early – pray for no frosts and the late, ditto on the frosts. Use shade cloth! I’ve been reasonably successful in getting greens – lettuce, kale, chard, etc. going inside under grow lights and then keeping them covered by both insect screen – the pests have been intense – and shade cloth.
Soil blocks are the bomb. I’ve dabbled in them before, but over the past couple of months, I’ve made 100s. They work – beautifully. Crops transplant way better than they do from regular pots. I’ll keep my plastic pots – for now – but I can’t see myself changing from soil blocks.
Preserving food – I purchase a digital electric pressure canner and it’s the bomb. I’ve canned hundreds of quarts and pints of food – my primary purpose for being able to pressure can – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now but was afraid of stove-top pressure canners – is beans and broth. I’ve canned every color of bean imaginable and they’re perfect. We’re eating way more beans now than we ever did. Cooking a pot of beans, according to a recipe or not, is all fine and good but you can only eat so many beans. I was freezing leftovers, but I want to break away from reliance on the freezer.
After Hurricane Helene hit two years ago, we lost power for days. I agonized over losing the food – there’s a lot of food – in the two freezers. Luckily, we didn’t lose it thanks to a generator, but it was stressful. We did lose everything in the refrigerator.
No hurricanes this year thanks to El Nino, we’ll see what the winter brings.
Photography – I thought I might want to start to enter competitions again – it was a bad thought and I bombed with both images. It was a waste of $50. $50 buys a lot of seeds. I am still doing sports photography and except for the horrific heat, enjoying it.
The rabbits have done reasonably well in the heat. We lost a lot of young kits when it did get wet. Learned to breed more timely – no litters born after the end of April. Rabbits do way better in the cold than they do the heat. I processed nine of them last weekend and I haven’t lost my knack for skinning and cleaning rabbits.
The world has become a very scary place. Even just going to the grocery store is scary. Gas is stupid expensive.
Until later …
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