The End of The Garden

It's been a long while since I've posted!
Too long. So here's what's been happening since August (in the garden for now)!
My tomato plants took a weird cue from the cooling weather and each shot up a few feet in every direction. pretty weird. And now, I have TONS of green tomatoes that won't have enough time to ripen before the inevitable frost.
So here's the first update, some stuff I picked today, but nowhere near all the green tomatoes.
I guess I'm gonna have to do a lot of pickling, and fried green tomatoes! Maybe green salsa?
I've actually come to love fried green tomatoes since I've made them a few times from fallen green tomatoes, and I LOVE anything deep fried. The last time I made fried green tomatoes, I also made breadcrumb-coated fried avocado, broccoli, and ripe Roma tomatoes. I used specifically Roma, because they aren't that juicy. They were pretty good. The green ones are my favorite though.


So here's what I picked today, and brought in out of the cold:

Here's the recipe I use for fried green tomatoes, it's kind of cheating, and I'm sure it's better with buttermilk and corn meal. I'll try a more interesting one soon!

Seed Saving Envelopes!

I've been looking everywhere for some envelopes that are tiny enough for seed saving. I couldn't find any, and I have a lot of seeds with nowhere to go, so I decided to make my own.They're pretty easy, just cut them out, a few folds, and some glue. I have some letter stamps so I labeled each one.

And here's the template I used. I printed them out, cut them out and traced them onto some cheap postal paper I bought a while ago. I would've printed them straight on, but since the paper was from a roll it wouldn't have printed well. And I'd rather trace than fight with my printer. I'm not the best with technology.

templaaaaate. whoo.

Wooden Coasters!

I think it might be black walnut that's not mature?

 I found some beautiful wood at the side of the road a few weeks ago, out for garbage pickup from someone pruning their trees. It's pretty hard to find nice fresh wood that isn't yet riddled with bugs, and still in whole logs and not chopped up like firewood. So with some help I brought a few good-sized ones home. A few days ago I started sawing them into slices, and from one log, I got some good sized coasters! The only thing is I'm scared about them cracking. They're new wood and haven't shrunk yet, and I don't have access to a  drying kiln. Hopefully they wont shrink/crack that much. I also start wood shop in a few days!  I'll finally be able to find out what I should do to prevent cracking!

Squirrels. Grawr.

I haven't been out to water and check on my plants in a day or two because it's been pretty rainy the past few days. I went out today to pick a ripe tomato, and discovered a squirrel(s) has dug huge holes in all my pots.
It wouldn't be the biggest deal if squirrels were digging in my garden (even though it would be terribly annoying), but since I have pots that are quite small, a hole that size cause severely damage the root system of the plant and kill it. Major grr. Maybe I'll just fertilize and hope in some way that will help the plants not die. And they even dug in the hot pepper plants! I thought they'd at least stay away from those.

Anyhoo, I picked a bit today. The peppers and tomatoes seem to have tons more growing and ripening. I've noticed that some of the bell peppers are getting their leaves eaten up so I'll have to spray with dish soap and water. Earlier in the season my Italian eggplant was completely covered in aphids and was dying. I know I could've bought ladybugs I've heard they're pretty effective, but putting dish soap and water in to a spray bottle and rinsing the plant off with water after sounds a lot easier and cheaper. All the aphids were gone after doing the soap spray and rinsing with water for about three days in a row.
The squash and cucumbers seem to have caught more of that horrible powdery mildew that doesn't seem to ever go away (even with constant application of fungicide). I guess I just need to put in more time maintaining the garden for now with all the pests, constant rain, humidity, and lower temperatures. Hopefully the squirrels with stay away from the pots since I sprinkled lots of powdered cayenne in them . It's weird though, they didn't touch any of the veggies/fruit, they just dug. Last year I had the issue with them eating all my tomatoes before they were ripe enough to pick.

So here's some fruit from today!

First strawberry in a while! And also an early girl tomato. Also a very strangely shaped cucumber.

Unexpected Harvest

As I said in a post or two ago, nothing looked like it was gonna be ripe for the next few days at least, but I just went out to water and found out I was mistaken. I guess the plants were in dire need of fertilizing because I did so a few days ago, and each of the tomato plants have actually grown a foot taller and bushier, and so many are ripe! The same with all the peppers (hot and sweet)! And the Ichiban eggplants have grown tons of new leaves and flowers! Nice surprises are always great in the garden, they sure beat out finding squirrels have discovered your plants and dug in your pots. Which are the kind of surprises I'm used to.

So here's today's harvest.

Tomaaatoooesss

dried cayenne

cayenne seeds saved!

peppahs

Even more tomatoes, I just find the different colours so pretty. One cherry tomato plant I have growing was labelled Black Cherry Tomato but sadly it was mislabeled and they're just extremely large cherries.

Some more of the garden:

The darn squirrels keep munchin' on my aloe

Crafts

My initial intention was to make this blog a gardening and crafts blog. I seem to have become overtly obsessed with my gardening lately so it kind of took over. So I shall now add some craft posts since craft content is severely lacking. And by severely lacking, I mean nonexistent.

Anyhoo,

Yay craft!

These are a pair of candlesticks I made a few months ago for my mother for her birthday. It's from the same piece of wood as this:

A project I did for a course last semester at OCAD.

It's structure I built for my Time Based Media class. It's made out of a oak tree branch I found at the side of road from pruning, cut into sections with plywood boxes I built in between each section.
In the plywood boxes I cut and glued together plexiglass to make more boxes boxes to fit into the wood ones. The top and bottom ones with bundles of wires going through them, to look as if the wires run through the tree. In the middle box, there is a robotic-thing I made that when you push the 'on' switch, it spins two slices of the maple pretty fast.

I got a lot of use from that oak branch. I also made this for another class around the same time.

Close up

This was a self portrait for another class. Basically on each slice of oak there is an image that I've transferred on from old family photos and other shtuff I like. Each piece is held together with a thin loop of wool.

More crafts to come including some jewelry I'm selling! Hopefully my Etsy page will be up and running really soon.