Posts about various things we’re doing in and around the gardens at Sage’s Acre.
Batch 20 of the fermented hot sauce hit 5 gallons of fresh peppers 8 weeks early, so I'm bumping up to 10 gallons by splitting peppers between 2 fermenters. As for what I'm going to do with 10 gallons of finished hot sauce next spring, I have no idea.
Back in August one of our females emerged from the lavender garden with 13 ducklings. They'd hang out by the vegetable garden and after a while developed a taste for tomatoes tossed to them from the garden.
Gardener's Log : Keyhole Garden date 569. Now that we're several weeks into fall, the temperatures are making their annual wobble between hot and cold. The days are still in the 80's with the occasional tip into the low 90's, but the nights are now dipping into the mid-50's and flirting with the upper 40's a couple days a week. For most of the plants here, those big temperature swings and longer nights are a signal to wrap things up [keep reading...]
Just put week 4's fresh peppers into the fermenter for Batch 20 of the fermented hot sauce. With the brine, looks like we're about 2/3rds of the way to getting a full 5 gallons before we send it off to spend the winter aging with oak
It's the first day of Autumn and the peppers are coming in hot and heavy. I'm picking around one pound every couple of days right now, which means I'll be moving the peppers to the five gallon fermenter this week. The weather has been very warm so the initial ferment is off to a good start. It smells spicy and yeasty, which tells me the lacto ferment is happy. Once I pitch it to the big fermenter, things should really take off.
It's day 548 of production for the keyhole garden. The recent heatwave ended what was left of the tomatoes and most of the sweet peppers, but the squash is doing great. Plus, I discovered some garlic.
It's finally Friday! Here's 3 minutes of rest and relaxation with our baby ducks at their swimming pool (actually a large plastic garbage can lid) to get you ready for the weekend.
Here in the Western U.S., native bees are solitary and great pollinators. They nest in the fall and hatch in the spring. Here's how I built a Bee Hotel to welcome them into my garden
We're trying to not let any of the garden produce go to waste this year (much to the chicken's disappointment), so we've been canning, drying, pickling and preserving everything possible.
It's too hot to do any real work on the Acre, so here's some then and now photos of the tropical garden before spring began and now in the height of summer. I'm going to find some shade and take a siesta.
