Mother nature decided to throw us a bit of a curve ball this year in Massachusetts and bring us a threat of frost for the next several days. We usually deal with this in October not September. With the gardens I really developed a closer bond with the Wheel of the Year. As many of you know, Mabon is this upcoming week. Mabon is typically the second harvest, with Samhain being the final harvest. I think Mabon may be our final harvest this year! Though we do have some things that do better in the cooler weather like my cilantro. I took a bunch of pictures yesterday and I thought some of you may be interested to see what things looked like this year.
Of course the basil was the first to come in. I was honestly thinking of pulling it last week as it really doesn’t love the cooler temps. You can see that it’s already starting to change color. The orange buckets that you see are all five gallon buckets.
Pumpkins! For those of you who go to Costco they may look familiar. They are grown from the seeds of Costco pumpkins that we bought several years ago. Each year we harvest the seeds from the new pumpkins for the following year.
These are Dills Atlantic Pumpkins. They are grown for their size. For those of you who go to fairs, when you see the giant pumpkins they are likely this variety. One of these years Earl wants to get one big enough to go out there. This year he was battling with a ground hog. These are four that we had to end the growing season a bit early on. They are incredibly heavy.
This was the state of my kitchen last night as they can’t be left out in the cold. Loki had to investigate of course.
Tomatillos! I found a new love for them this year. We did ground cherries last year for the first time and I loved them so this year I wanted to try tomatillos. They are amazing! My favorite way to have them is in a salsa that Earl makes with Jalapenos, tomatoes and cilantro. You can cook them or have them cold. I use them in so many different things. They are incredibly expensive out here in the stores and hard to get. Monday we are going to get the canning book out and figure out how to can some salsa and maybe some sort of relish? If you have any canning recipes for tomatillos I’m all ears! This is a full five pound bucket. This was definitely our bumper crop this year.
This is the final five pound bucket. It has roma tomatoes, jalapenoes, and mole peppers. Can you see the salsa?
We had a lot of damage this year from the ground hog and and flower rot on the tomatoes. We also had a storm come through and rip down pretty much everything so we have some changes for next year! Overall though I’m incredibly excited by how much we have!
The sunflower in the picture above is one of the three plants that I told you about last week. I still have one inside and we planted one on each side of the steps outside.
I hope that you enjoyed my little garden tour! We still have almost all my herbs out there as a lot of them can handle the colder weather. Snow is honestly one of my biggest issues with a lot of them.
Have a magickal day!
Much Love and Many Blessings,
Jasmeine Moonsong