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11/4/12 10:14 A

Sounds like you are really protecting your crops. I have to protect mine also.
Enjoy your wonderful harvest!

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11/4/12 9:15 A

Hi SC, rural Tucson here. Greetings.

We built raised beds, then put chicken-wire PVC pie and A-frames over them. Works great but after the javelinas got several harvests, we also added locks, the O half half cemented into the ground.

Don't have my snow peas or beets in yet, this week for sure!

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11/4/12 9:09 A

Just came in from harvesting some kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, cabbage leaves for my morning smoothie. In the summertime I had to buy all of these, and now I feel so happy every morning to have fresh, organic food to nourish my body.

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11/3/12 7:48 P

PATTISWIMMER- that sounds good!
There is so much joy in eating veggies from the garden!
Enjoy your weekend!

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11/2/12 10:42 P

A year ago I probably wouldn't have liked it but tonight for vegetables cut up kale and swiss chard from the garden... cooked and drained then added to mushroom and onions cooked in coconut oil... topped with a few cashews... wow not bad for a vegetables... I am going to miss the garden..

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10/28/12 2:38 P

I moved some pots of veggies in the garage to get ready for the storm. I harvested green beans, peppers, carrots, lettuce and arugula.
Stay safe! Have a great week!

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10/28/12 11:16 A

Here in AZ the winter is so mild that we can plant winter gardens - I finally got my garden planted - had a hard time finding what I wanted - most vegetables came in 6 packs and I really dont need that many! I have strawberries, lettuce, spinach, green peppers, tomatoes, snow peas, and even have a Stevia plant- not sure how to use if for sweetening my coffee and tea - I buy the already processed into a powder, but I am thinking I can just add a leaf of this instead- guess I will find out!! Now if I can just keep the chipmonks out of everything, I think I will have a nice garden! I am definately going to try some of the ideas you all have posted here!

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10/23/12 1:33 P

potatoes

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10/16/12 4:13 P

That's too bad--but it sounds like you've gotten some great mileage out of your garden anyway!

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10/16/12 3:32 P

I didn't pull it up then but I will this weekend. It's getting too cold and the leaves are yellowing.

I picked a few small orange bell peppers and pulled the plants out, they're done! Only 2 of these were edible as some kind of moth larva has burrowed into the rest and they were starting to go mushy when I picked them. Drat it!

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10/13/12 10:07 A

What a cool "find" WATERFELON! Were you able to save the plant or did you pull it up?

I haven't harvested anything new for a couple of days.

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10/12/12 2:43 P

Well, one of my tomato bushes got too top heavy for the cage, so the whole thing was toppled over. I just got out to see if it was worth trying to salvage or just pull the whole thing to hang and ripen whatever fruit was left, and I found a whole bunch of red ripe tomatoes under the canopy! So I picked a whole bowl of ripe Roma tomatoes. Guess I'm having fresh pasta sauce with dinner tonight!

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10/10/12 4:53 P

a large cucumber and a couple of yellow crookneck squash today.

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10/9/12 9:43 P

Tomatoes, carrots, last of the bell peppers, and some fall spinach.

Harvested all of the sweet potatoes this past weekend, so I have a clean bed to dump my potato bins in to harvest the last of them.

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10/9/12 8:11 P

Good for you for making the kids pitch in--what a good mom!

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10/8/12 10:13 P

Yesterday was the whole garden, well I did leave the shelling peas, sugar snap peas, swiss chard and beans alone. But everything else came in. Took about 3 hours, for me anyways, then another 3 for the kids to scrub the carrots, they shouldn't have taken so long but they were playing around, arguing, whining. But I won't let them stop until it was done. We got the biggest harvest of carrots we have had in ever, but then it was because they weren't outside everyday eating them. We put our garden in a little late this year so they took a long time to start growing, so the kids gave up on them.

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10/6/12 8:14 P

I planted sweet potatoes for the first time this year and since we had a killing frost I dug them today. They look wonderful! I am excited to try them!

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10/4/12 4:01 P

Welcome Shirley!

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10/4/12 2:46 P

Hi All!!
Im new to the team - but was looking for someone else doing organic gardening and found you all!!
Im just getting ready to start my winter container garden - I live in AZ where the winters are very mild. Im excited to hear all of your wonderful tips and tricks for growing winter vegetables!

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10/4/12 12:24 A

Bring your tomatoes in, I just cut them off the plant leaving some vine attached and into a box in a cool place. That way you get your own "vine ripened" tomatoes, like they sell at the store. I did this one year and was able to bring a 6 qt bowl of cherry tomatoes to a community potluck almost a month after our first frost.

I am not too sure about canning them after they ripen this way, but freezing them would be just fine.

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10/3/12 9:28 P

Carrots. Left them in the ground too long, about 1/3 of them are split, and several more have centipede damage and/or live centipedes on them!

Still getting 2 or 3 tomatoes a day. By the weekend, I should again have enough to can a couple of jars of pasta sauce.

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10/3/12 1:35 P

Still dry as a bone in central Iowa. Ugh! The only thing I can harvest is tomatoes that I have watered religiously. Must bring in everything but the parsnips in the next day or 2 b/c we are supposed to get a hard freeze in the next couple of nights.

I'm ready to be done with the watering but hate to leave so many green tomatoes on the vines!

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10/2/12 6:58 P

I went out to the garden once it stopped raining. I picked tomatoes, peppers,
collards and green beans.

Edited by: GARDENSFORLIFE at: 10/2/2012 (18:59)

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10/2/12 6:03 P

Yesterday I decided I had better get to the garden. I bought in 1 bucket of shelling peas, 1/4 bucket sugar snap peas, 1 bucket carrots. Hardly making a dent in the carrots.

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10/1/12 10:56 A

Carrots, carrots and more carrots! Oh, and a bunch more tomatoes, too! More basil and parsley

Sweet potatoes next and maybe cannellini beans if the weather holds.

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9/26/12 4:06 P

Great gardens! It makes me happy just reading about your harvest!

It has been too much rain and cold for me to harvest anything tor the last few days!



Edited by: GARDENSFORLIFE at: 9/26/2012 (16:07)

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9/26/12 2:25 P

I'd love the recipe for that roasted tomato soup!

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9/26/12 2:16 P

Actually yesterday:

zuchinni, yellow squash, snap beans, peppers, few tomatoes, potatoes.

No apples this year because weird winter, early warm then frost left only TWO apples. Normally I give away about 14 bushels! (3 trees)

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9/26/12 1:59 P

Good for you! I wish I had my tomatoes ripen at the same time, but they're trickling in a few at a time. Makes it hard to save enough at 1 time to do any serious canning! I was gone for a week and came back to about 4 pounds of ripe tomatoes so with what I've picked already, I'll get about 5 pint jars of BBQ sauce for canning.

Do you have a recipe for the cream soup you'd care to share? It sounds yummy and would be a good soup to have on hand for those cold winter nights!

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9/25/12 11:56 P

Came home from a 10 day vacation and harvested 30 lbs of tomatoes so I had to quick can salsa and diced tomatoes. 4 days later DH picked another 30! So yesterday I roasted them ALL, along with about 5 lbs of peppers, a big bunch of garlic, added homegrown onions and basil and made an awesome cream soup - 16 pints worth. Never had so many tomatoes!
And the cucumbers this year have been very productive - I've got 10 plants and we are eating one cuke every day and taking some to the food bank every week.

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9/22/12 1:57 A

I canned green beans and make tomato sauce yesterday. We might get one more picking from the beans but the tomatoes are finally starting to really come in.

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9/21/12 5:27 P

Just got home from a week trip to move DD. So I just had to get out and see how all of the yellow/orange tomatoes were coming along. Just fine; I picked a whole bowl, at least 3 pounds, of Italian Paste and Roma tomatoes! Woohoo, I'll be canning this weekend! Also picked a handful of carrots to make a casserole for dinner tonight. I'll be picking basil and chives for drying this afternoon and maybe some thyme.

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9/13/12 3:04 P

I've heard of growing potatoes that way and, one of these days I'm going to try it. Thanks for the reminder about the potatoes. Mine are about ready to dig up, too.

More zucchini and tomatoes yesterday. Yellow crookneck and patty pan squash will be eaten soon, but zucchini will go into the dehydrator as soon as I have room.

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9/13/12 11:33 A

GARDENGIRL54 - Mortgage Lifters (also known as Radiator Charlie) are one of my favorites. We grow them every year, along with Box Car Willie, Kentucky Beefsteak (a large orange tomato with great flavor), and Big Rainbow. We also like White Potato leaf, which is a creamy ivory tomato, very sweet, which does have a soft skin so you have to be careful when handling them.
CRAZYNDNCOOK - One year I had a glut of carrots, some which weren't the prettiest but tasted great. I shredded the excess ones, made carrot cakes out of them, and then wrapped and froze them unfrostened. That way, if I needed a quick dessert, I could always take 2 layers out of the freezer, thaw them, and add frosting. They kept well in the freezer and tasted great!

My father-in-law used to grow potatoes in old tires (he lived on a farm). Just put the compost in the bottom tire, add the potatoes. Instead of hilling them, when they got taller you just added another tire on top of the first and added more finished compost. When it came time to harvest them, all he had to do was lift off the tires, harvest the potatoes, then he could till the compost in to the rest of the garden bed. No digging and easy to change locations if you wanted to.

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9/12/12 11:02 P

Picked a couple zucchini, a handful of strawberries, and started pulling potato plants, they were starting to die back, got a not too bad harvest out of them, really need to move the potatoes out of those beds though, been 3 years, but they are our deepest boxes. Also a some shelling peas and a few sugar snap peas. Gotta start pulling carrots soon too, or gonna have a glut of them.

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9/12/12 4:15 P

Tomatoes - my heirloom "Mortgage Lifter" is great! Basil - seeds from our trip to Italy. Herbs, zucchini, green beans, zinnias....

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9/11/12 11:49 A

canning green beans and tomatoes today; canning and drying more pears; drying zucchini

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9/10/12 2:29 P

I hope everyone's gardens are now producing well as we enter into the fall.

Looks like no canning this year. I'm getting enough tomatoes now to cook with, so I make batches of spaghetti sauce, lasagne, stuffed peppers, and then freeze them. Hopefully next year will be better. Plan on growing my own tomatoes from seed again (haven't been able to for a few years due to being in the middle of projects when it came time to start seeds). I haven't had much luck with the ones from the store. What grew was definitely NOT what I supposedly bought, so either the seeds weren't what they were supposed to be or the plants were marked incorrectly (maybe someone switched the labels?). Instead of the big red tomatoes I was expecting, I ended up with half the plants that had small 1.5 inch tomatoes on them!

Squirrels got most of my pears again this year. A shame since they weren't buggy like in times past, even though I don't spray them at all. Still getting zucchini, peppers, picked more basil, parsley, and oregano to dry. Beans are about done. Pumpkins have done well, though they are on the small side this year - again probably due to the drought. They just don't seem to do as well without rainwater, even if I do try and water them myself.

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9/9/12 8:09 P

I am getting a lot of tomatoes and peppers.

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9/9/12 7:41 P

cherry tomatoes, kale, peppers, and cucumbers

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9/8/12 2:25 P

our tomatoes aren't ripening very quickly but, when/if they ever do, I'll have a lot to can. I'm still working on the pears. I made 3 batches of plum jam in between batches of pears.

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9/7/12 4:03 P

I'm gettingready to leave on vacation, so of course my tomatoes have come in! I canned 24 pts of salsa yesterday, with all the onions, cilantro, bell peppers and hot peppers from the garden,.
Tuesday I pickedf a couple dozen ears of corn and cut it off the ears and froze it. Today I went to water the community garden and came home with another dozen ears! So the last thing I am doing before heading out is freezing corn! Its all about the timing, right?

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9/5/12 10:40 P

Nothing to harvest right now. But I do have 2 raised 4 x 4 beds ready to go for my fall garden. 2 more to go, but I need more peat, and enough compost for one. That is waiting for a little budget recovery for now.

So I'll be checking the plan again and making sure I'm planting those things that I really want to eat that I can't find in the markets. That will probably be the organic salad fixins.

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9/5/12 1:46 P

Your house sounds like mine right now! Last night, I cut up 30 bell peppers and put them in the dehydrators and this morning, they'd shrunk down enough that I could make two trays of zucchini too. I still have pears coming out my ears and need to pick out the ripe ones and get them canned today. Our nights are getting cool and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get tomatoes to can~

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9/5/12 12:53 P

My tomatoes are just starting to ripen more rapidly now. Not enough to can, unfortunately, so I've been cooking them up and saucing them. Made a triple batch of spaghetti sauce and froze a bunch for later, then a quadruple batch of stuffed peppers (24) and froze them too. Also made a triple batch of eggplant parmesan (the lighter version) and froze 3 containers of that. Next is to make a large batch of lasagne with the tomatoes I have now, again freezing most of it. That way hubby can take these to work when we don't have leftovers, or I can quickly thaw some of it for dinner if I am rushed.
Still getting lots of zucchini and now pumpkins are turning orange (picked over 40 so far). Beans are starting to die back (thanks to cucumber beetles spreading disease), and cucumbers have died back as well. Corn is almost finished too. Don't have many new eggplants forming, but still getting lots of bell peppers. Have dried oregano and basil, and need to cut and dry some parsley now.

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9/4/12 1:45 A

I wouldn't have ever thought of canning my own fruit cocktail! What a great idea!

Today was taken up with canning more pears and a few jars of green beans. Yesterday we harvested lots of bell peppers and zucchini and a few tomatoes.

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9/4/12 12:31 A

Not much harvested lately from my garden, handfuls here and there. I did pick up 5 dozen corn last week from a local grower. Hoping to get a couple more dozen. Then I picked peaches (from a store but they are from the same province as me), then some pears and grapes, in the plans of doing up some Fruit Cocktail jars for the kids' snacks. I forgot the maraschino cherries, will get those in a day or two, the peaches were ripe yet.

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9/4/12 12:28 A

Got about 5 lbs of tomatoes, some green peppers and 6 big cucumbers tonight! We've been gone camping all weekend - I picked all the ripe cukes before we left on Friday. I guess I'll be canning salsa and pickles this week!

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9/2/12 12:32 P

Today's harvest is long burpless cucumbers...tomatoes are slow and not very bountiful this year probably due to the lack of rain.

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8/31/12 11:34 A

The green beans are coming in and I've already been canning them. Not many tomatoes yet, though. When I went to prepare the raised bed for planting last spring, I was surprised to find it FULL of potatoes! I dug out a 5-gallon bucket full of medium-to-large potatoes and left a lot of tiny ones. They were all "volunteers" from the compost pile. I love free, healthy food!

The neighbor's pear tree is ready and loaded. She has offered us everything that's left, since she has already used all she wants for this year.

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8/30/12 10:43 A

Tons of potatoes coming in now! And parsley that I can't chop down fast enough! Tomatoes are trickling in, but increasing so I'll be canning this weekend. All the corn is in so I need to get out and pull the stalks out. Bush beans are flowering, carrots are almost ready. It's going to be a busy next couple of weeks!

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8/30/12 9:01 A

WOOHOO! What a zucchini!

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8/30/12 12:09 A

Last night and this morning we harvested tomatoes, onions, green peppers, red peppers, hot peppers and cilantro. And today I canned 8 pts of salsa. The only addition to the recipe that we did NOT grow was the lime juice! I think this is the first time everything has been ripe at the same time.

DH checked the community garden this weekend and came home with a zucchini weighing 5.2 lbs. It was humongous! I made zucchini "noodles" with half, and grated the other half - 8 cups from half of the zuke - in the freezer. It was delicious!

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8/27/12 6:31 P

Today's harvest is-more potatoes!

Saturday, though, I finally, finally got some ripe Roma tomatoes-6 of them in fact! Yippy! Not enough to can with, but I'll be making a small helping of pasta sauce with them this weekend!

I'm not sure I did right, but I was getting too many aphids on my corn, so I just had to pick the ears off. I think they were not completely ripe-the silks were not brown all the way into the ear. I husked them and froze them right away and now they are looking a little shriveled. I'm wondering if I shouldn't have boiled them before freezing? I hope they're not all ruined, but they were easy to grow. I just hate how the aphids get on them and then nothing can get to them b/c they tuck deep down into the sheaf of the ears.

I will also be picking a lot of the basil now that the tomatoes are ripening and it's getting late in the season!

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8/27/12 2:35 P

May Storm Isaac only bring you as much rain as your gardens need.

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8/27/12 1:50 P

I make stuffed peppers and freeze those for later, so DH can take them to work. Also can tomatoes and pickles, cook and freeze pumpkins for later. I also just bring the whole pumpkins in and store them in my basement for later, as well as the spaghetti squash. Since those, as well as acorn, butternut, etc, are winter squash, they store well this way for several months and don't have to be cooked right away. I've even had some spaghetti squash last until I am ready to start harvesting the new crop the next year!
I cook, puree, and freeze zucchini, since I use a pumpkin bread recipe for making zucchini bread, and it calls for puree. But you can shred and freeze zucchini for using in recipes as well, as I have done that in the past.
Didn't grow potatoes or sweet potatoes this year, but usually I just spread potatoes out on cardboard in a dark room to cure, then put them in bushel baskets in my basement and store them that way. Save onions the same way. Garlic gets spread out to cure, then I put it in net bags to store until I'm ready to use them. I rinse and freeze berries in gallon size freezer bags until I'm ready to use them as well. I often make low sugar jams to give as gifts, but wait until the weather is cooler to make them.
I also dry basil and oregano, then store them as whole leaves in jars. I don't crush them until I am actually ready to use them, as they retain more of their oils that way and don't lose flavor.

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8/27/12 9:20 A

How are you prepping for the coming fall season? are you freezing berries or ears of corn to enjoy this winter? Cooking pumpkins down for pies for Thanksgiving?

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8/25/12 9:12 A

I have not tried a shoe organizer; however, it looks like other hanging gardens I have seen. It looks like a good idea. I garden in a lot of containers and always like new ideas. If you try it, please let us know how it works.

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8/25/12 12:02 A

Has anyone tried this way of growing vertically?

serentipity.com/2012/05/repurpose-hanging-
shoe-organizer/

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