It’s hard to believe today is the first day of September. The days of summer have flown by like the wind in the trees high on the ridge behind our house.
Our summer garden is winding down.
We still have plenty of okra, a few beans, cucumbers, squash, tommy-toes, and zucchini. There’s likely a tomato or two still hanging around and our pumpkins are still growing.
I’ve harvested all our small watermelons but I have two volunteers that are growing bigger by the day.
The things we planted for fall are coming right along.
Our second planting of rattlesnake beans have lots of blooms and a few beans here and there. The cucumbers we replanted in the backyard are about to bloom and the succession plantings of beans are producing.
The kale, radishes, turnips, and cabbages are all sprouted and growing.
And the late planting of tomatoes we started are beginning to set fruit.
The second planting of squash and zucchini isn’t doing very well and I don’t think they’ll produce anything. And only some of the turnips came up so they’ll need to be replanted. The cucumbers we planted in the front did really good until they just didn’t. They’ve about died out without really blooming or producing.
Here’s the best planting signs for September 2022.
Taurus: good for all root crops and above ground crops 13, 14
Cancer: best for planting above ground and root crops 18, 19
Scorpio: best for flowers and above ground crops 1, 27, 28, 29
Pisces: Good for planting and transplanting above ground crops, trees and shrubbery 9, 10
Last night’s video: Learning to Use Cucumbers that Get too Big – Betty Jean’s Cucumber Relish (It’s so good!)
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There is a sadness to the winding down of the garden. We know that cold weather is coming as we pass through another season. Even though I don’t garden I still feel the winding down of the season. The first day of September today, surely that must be a mistake and we are surely still in the middle of summer!
Tipper, if your fall garden is anything like your summer one, it will be a major success. I’ve learned about so many varieties of vegetables. I still intend on getting some grow bags next year and planting some Cherokee purples. Back when I was at home, Daddy always had collards, cabbage, a turnip patch and some peas for the fall. For folks that want a milder collard, cook you a cabbage with it or get the cabbage collard variety. My husband loves collards, but I prefer turnip salad and the pot likker is out of this world. Fatback is great to season with or put that country ham in there. It may not be healthy but boy is it delicious. Husband loves fried fatback but I won’t cook it often cause he would eat his weight in it, LOL. I am glad that I was raised on good ole southern cooking. Don’t forget the cornbread with the pot likker! Have a blessed day everyone!!
Tipper,
If you’ve ever mentioned growing rhubarb in your garden, I’ve missed that episode. Can you grow it where you are? I
kind of doubt it. Here along the TN/VA border we seem to be near the southern limit for it to do well. Not far from here in VA we had a whole row of it in the garden when I was a child; it always did super well. But In Kingsport, TN, we’ve planted it a number of times and had it do well until, in late summer, it develops a rot and turns black within a day or three. We have a couple of friends who grow it successfully here. I started some this spring that’s still going, so maybe this time it will establish. We love rhubarb stewed with sugar and a little water till it’s about like applesauce. Wonderful on a biscuit at breakfast. And then there are rhubarb pies (no strawberrys in it, please!)!
John- I have never tried growing it before 🙂
Rhubarb grew very well where I grew up not far from Tipper’s home. It’s about 88 miles due south of the westernmost point in Virginia. There are lots of plants that grow in the Smokies and surrounding areas that are not suppose to grow at that latitude. It’s probably the cooler temperatures. I don’t like cooked rhubarb but I used to eat it raw. It’s awful sour but it was fun to try to eat it without frowning.
Randy’s comment made me smile. In my growing up days many young ladies were Tomboys, and they were just as apt to say, “Watch this.”
Your garden seems to have done well. I always let cucumbers sneak and hide, or I may have had a great crop. The tomatoes and cherry tomatoes outdone themselves, and my family has been the benefactor. I am ordering some Mulbar spinach seeds you mentioned for next year. I fear a seed shortage, and I love spinach. I have cooked tomato recipes found on YouTube, tomato gravy, and had tomato sandwiches coming out my ears. I am doing something I have never done which is tearing out tomato plants that are still bearing. I am slower, and afraid winter will bere before I get the garden cleared.
Your comment about Tomboy girls made think back to the mid 60’s when me and some friends were teenagers. There was a younger girl that would run around with us. Sharon was a drop dead beauty. We were always looking out for.her, I guess we thought of her as a younger sister. For the ones that might enjoy reading a book about country boy teenagers and also some girls growing up. It starts with them (Mississippi teenagers) at the age of 13 and goes through their high school graduation. A lot of outdoor, hunting or fishing or similar stories. There was usually a Vietnam Veteran (Wacky Mack) watching out for them. It will keep you laughing and also at times bring a tear to your eye especially at the end. It is out of print but easy to find on used books websites. The title is The Jakes by Robert Hitt Neil. It is true stories most likely dressed up at times.
I always enjoyed walking by an open field in the fall and seeing a turnip or something that failed to get harvested. Sometimes we’d also find a big potato that also got left behind. We’d leave any stray sweet potatoes, cuz we didn’t like them til they got baked and slathered with butter. We’d pull it up, pull out our pocket knives and get to work on it. If someone would run back to the house and grab a hunk of cornbread and a jar to get water from the spring, we’d have a fine meal. A favorite place to enjoy our unexpected feast was along a fence row and under a low hanging tree or bush.
I grew tomatoes on the deck in pots for the last few years and this year was a flop. As soon as I saw a few green tomatoes on the plants something came along during the night and ate them. So much for my gardening days. I know I will try again next year and build cages. I thought I was through with that when I moved from the yard to the deck.
I am going to miss digging sweet taters this fall. Last year’s crop was destroyed by moles or mice while still underground and that left me wondering if I would ever plant them again. My turnips and radishes came up and took off in just a few days. My favorite thing to harvest this time of the year is papaws. That chore has to happen in a day or so before the coons sniff them out and beat me to it. If they get ripe and fall, the deer are waiting in line to eat seeds and all.
Coons and deer are good to eat, especially those that have been fattened on papaws!
Come on down here if you get to missing it too much. I will hook you up with my friend Ben, I am sure he would appreciate your help, read my other earlier comment. Sorry about you loosing your potatoes to rats and moles. Here deer are the problem, Ben puts out something around the outside of his field called iron mite. This may not be correct name, it is dry granular sewage and has a strong smell deer don’t like but also has a lot of nitrogen. You are not suppose to put it on anything grown for human food. He is not putting it on the plants. The wildlife department also gives him a permit to shoot deer during the growing season for his potatoes.
Meant to include this in my other comment but forgot. Ran across this somewhere in my wasted past. Do you know the last words of a redneck man or boy? They usually are Hey y’all Watch This! Hopefully this will lighten somebody’s load and give them a laugh this morning. For some unknown reason my warped thought of this this morning.
I am so ready for fall. We’ve had so much rain this summer that are garden didn’t do great. The corn weathered a few storms, but did good considering. Out first planting of beans got water logged and we had to replant them. We are just now getting beans to pick. The yellow squash did great as usual. I was able to fry them, bake casseroles and pies from them, and make squash patties, that everyone loves, before they died off. Our tomatoes were splitting open so bad that we had to start picking them before they turned red. But all things considered, the veggies we were able to harvest was delicious! But, like the garden, I’m ready to rest until next summer when we start all over again.
Tipper, all in all, I’d say your beautiful garden is a raging success (with all things considered we are up against.) I’m not going to kid here as I don’t totally understand about secession planting, but I’d guess it’s not something that happens up here where we live so far back in the hills, sunshine gets pumped in. Lol looked at prices on homes around Greenville, SC and dang near stroked out they’re so high!!! Smh… anyway I’m done with the garden except some Brussels sprouts out there looking like jacked up baby cabbage or something. I’m enjoying my flowers which is really where my passion and love lie. My flowers (with 1 inch long hummers, butterflies, strangely beautiful bees and wasps etc) are the closest to heaven I will ever get on this side… I like to sit at dark and watch and listen as the bats take flight… Bless every one visiting you here this day!!! Tomorrow I will be the double nickel…yuck. (I was planning on sneaking out to the local store and getting myself a PERSONAL cake and eating it by myself and then telling the whopper that I’m not getting cake or remembering this year,) but I’ve been found out and I guess I get a cake…lol best laid plans are of mice and men…
Sadie-Happy Happy Birthday 🙂
Randy’s comment made me smile. In my growing up days many young ladies were Tomboys, and they were just as apt to say, “Watch this.”
Your garden seems to have done well. I always let cucumbers sneak and hide, or I may have had a great crop. The tomatoes and cherry tomatoes outdone themselves, and my family has been the benefactor. I am ordering some Mulbar spinach seeds you mentioned for next year. I fear a seed shortage, and I love spinach. I have cooked tomato recipes found on YouTube, tomato gravy, and had tomato sandwiches coming out my ears. I am doing something I have never done which is tearing out tomato plants that are still bearing. I am slower, and afraid winter will bere before I get the garden cleared.
Good to read about all of the different things you have grown in your garden. Not so much to do with signs but in my area around the end of September and during the month of October is the time for taking up sweet potatoes.Right now is the time to sow your turnip greens (salet) to the older people misspelled for sure) according to them it had to be sowed by Aug, 15th if you wanted to have turnips. Purple top, seven top, and for some a little mustard seeds were mixed together for their turnip green patch. Collards and cabbage will be set out around now-got to have collards to eat on New Year’s Day if you want to have, folding money along with black eye peas for change. I am not crazy about collards maybe the reason I have never have muchf folding money but set me down to a pot of turnip greens cooked with some fatback throwed in and cornbread to not only eat with the greens but also for soaking up the pot lickker along with a quart mason jar of sweet ice tea and maybe a backed sweet tater. This old boy is in hog heaven when eating a meal like that. Back to sweet potatoes, I have a very close friend that plants 25-30 THOUSAND plants each year to sell. I stopped by to see him yesterday and people have already started calling to find out when he would be taking them up and have them ready to sell. Tipper, I noticed you said harvest your watermelons, besides eating some each day, did you use some for preserves of maybe something else? Hopefully one day soon I will be able to see better and my comments won’t be so full of mistakes.
Randy-I never have but I’d like to try making some 🙂
A great uncle of mine was the best gardener that I’ve ever known. He always planted by the signs.
Such an interesting recipe. I gleaned from the recipe, as you were adding the sugar to the vinegar, probably half and half. Now I know what to do with the large cukes that I don’t catch in time. Thanks.
Planting a ‘second’ garden for the year is such an odd concept for ME. Its interesting to hear how you guys can get a second rotation of things to fruit, due to your southerly location. I am lucky if the stuff I plant in May can reach maturity before frost. I have only just picked about 5 tomatoes! Many years I keep my fingers crossed that the Indian corn, beans, squashes & such will ripen before frost. We can have frost as early as mid to late September and we never plant before Memorial Day. In my lifetime, I have seen snow & hail on (& after) Mother’s Day! I have tried to experiment with planting successions of things like lettuce, peas, beans, in the past. They never work; they’ll sprout, but then just ‘hang’ there, never maturing & it seems a waste of time. Plus, I need to get the garden tidied up by Mid October, because we can have snow by then. My husband is always trying to entice me to move very far south (Tx) and tries to bribe me by telling me they have 2 growing seasons. But to be honest, I’m so pooped after my one growing season I don’t think I could plant a whole second garden. LOL. I am pretty happy with (most of) my garden this year. Just harvest 2/3rd of the potato patch & got 4 bushels. My pinto beans produced well & my Indian corn looks great – my brother in law found us a corn sheller, so I don’t have to strip the kernels by hand! But no squash or pumpkins of any kind. They just never would start.