Getting ready for the winter...

I don't even want to say it...fall is coming.  Things are still very busy here, in fact it will inevitably get much busier before it calms down but the nights are cooler and the days are shorter and it is time to prepare for the winter.  I took the last of the peas and blanched 'em, bagged 'em, and froze 'em.  Then we pulled all the plants and through them in the compost pile. In previous blog posts I wrote about the importance of crop rotation to organic farming.  It is one of the easiest ways to prevent pests and ensure a healthy crop.  Peas are an excellent source of nitrogen, they have a a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that forms nodules on the root system.  The nodules suck nitrogen out of the air and store it in the soil.  Knowing this, we did not actually pull the plants we cut the tops of them off and left the roots in for a few days before we tilled up the empty rows.  

You can see that the peas are on their last legs

These are the nodules that attach to the root system

Peas headed to the compost pile

Now we wait for a few days to till

The picture above also shows that we left a lot of the weeds; the seed pods on these weeds are well developed this late in the season so we will not add them to the compost pile.

After freezing the peas, I moved onto tomatoes.  We have an unbelievable amount of tomatoes and literally can't get rid of them fast enough.  Lissa has been cooking down and freezing batches of tomatoes for the last week and I thought maybe I could help so I did my first batch last night.  We pick out any of the over ripe or funny looking ones, cut them up and throw them in a pot.  Let them stew and cook some of the water out of the tomatoes and then bag and freeze.

Now that fall is coming there are a few things to look forward to...

the trees are full of apples