The very first piece of advice I recieved about life in Oklahoma was…
If you don’t like the weather, wait about 30 seconds. It’ll change.
I was standing in the administration office of the college I had hoped to attend. I thought the lady was joking, exaggerating. Weather changes happen all over the country, even on the East Coast. No big deal. Right?
WRONG!
A few days later, on a warm sunny day I walked into Walmart for a few groceries. Less than 30 minutes later, I was greeted at the exit by a cold front that had swept through, dropping the temperature significantly.
It was then I began to learn to never trust the weather, the forecast, or even the morning’s sunny beginning.
Over the past week, we have had temperature swings from the mid-eighties to the thirties. We’ve had warm and windy days, and freezing rain days! We have had the A.C. running, the heat blaring, and no power. Talk about chaotic weather patterns.
Of course, as I checked the forecast on the warmer days, I had some idea that a massive cold front was likely to head our direction, which meant I needed to tend the garden. I heavily mulched the base of each summer plant with a thick layer of straw. I covered the fall seedlings that finally have begun to grow. And I cleaned off as much of the fruit and herbs that I could.
Tomatoes
Of course, most of the fruit were very green. I harvested only the full sized tomatoes that I knew would eventually turn red.
The best way to ripen green tomatoes is….
Simply place green tomatoes in a cardboard box with a banana. As the banana ripens, it releases chemicals to ripen the tomatoes. Above is a box that I had gathered earlier in the month. (While I prefer sun-ripened-on-the-vine-tomatoes, I found I also have a rabbit or a few making meals out of the garden offerings.)
Herbs
It is best to harvest herbs first thing in the morning, before the sun has begun to shine directly on the plants. If you are fortunate enough to coordinate harvest day right after a rain, you won’t need to clean the herbs. We however had very little rain this past month, and our garden is positioned near a dirt road. I had to run the herbs under water multiple times. You could even soak them in a cold-water bath if the dirt is really caked on.
Shake off excess water, gently pat dry and move herbs to a drying rack. I prefer to do this in my kitchen, at the end of my counter. I can keep an eye on them, cover if necessary and quickly put them in storage containers when they are fully dry.
Above I have about half of what I actually gathered; mint, oregano and rosemary. Not pictured is the mountain of basil, catnip and lemon balm.
Peppers
I have three red chili peppers that have produced a significant abundance of fruit this year. While I certainly don’t need anymore, I figured it couldn’t hurt to pick the full-sized green ones. Again, I rinsed these as they too were covered in a fine layer of dust and then sat them in a sunny, South-facing window.
Once these beauties ripen, I will decide if I will leave them in the window to dry or freeze them.
This pretty much concludes the summer garden for 2020. It was more fruitful than I had expected, but maybe not as much as in years passed. Learning new garden methods, in a new location proved to be a bit overwhelming with all the other things going on around the homestead.
