September - Harvest Times

From times immemorial, there have been sayings in the style of: "as you sow, you shall reap". Ominous words, indicating that you get your just deserts when fall comes.

Those of us who are eager and optimistic infallibly sow more than is practical to harvest. Especially in these times when other activities distract us from working in the garden.

Here in Sweden, an apple tree is for many people too much of a burden, so most apples are not harvested and cared for, but left to rot in piles. It is said that 90+% of all apples in Sweden rot away. At the same time, we import 100,000 metric tons of apples, to sell in supermarkets.

We moved in here last year and planted a few apple trees, but it will take many years before they bear. Therefore, we have been biking around town to ask people if we could purchase some of their apples. So far, we have not been able to pay anything, everybody is happy to get rid of their surplus. I think that we have collected closer to 100 kg apples so far, and still some storage area to fill for the winter.

Hoop house harvest

We brought 12 different varieties of figs, and two of them have already fruited.

Here is one of my favourites - 'Hardy Chicago':

We also had 22 tomato plants in the hoop house and we have had a perfect size harvest, enough for our own use and to generously share with family and friends:

We train single risers of several varieties. Some hybrids but most are "heirloom" open pollinated seeds that we collected from last year.

One of our favourites is 'Valencia' that we got last year as a tomato from Palle and Stina, and this year we have grown out those seeds. These tomatoes are orange-fleshed and orange skinned with a sweet and rich flavour.

Some we cook into salsa with home grown chili, to store for winter use.

Going nuts in September

The walnut trees are now getting ready for harvest. The last days of september is when the first walnuts fall out of the trees.

In Båstad, we found a family with a beautiful walnut tree, where we will go to "roll" walnuts in the coming weeks

In the middle of our small town Laholm, there is a large walnut tree, but it is quite alone, so the pollination is not perfect. Beautiful nuts, but not numerous.

And in September I have given several workshops at my old university in Gothenburg. Every time, I pass by this young specimen (10 years?) that is starting to give a rich harvest of well-shaped nuts.

Many walnut trees have nut-rot this year, since we had rain in July and August almost every day, but not this tree. All nuts that I can see are perfectly green and glossy.

Pumpkins and squash

Pumpkins are great fun and fantastic indicators of soil fertility. In well-fertilized and well-irrigated spots, the pumpkins grow like crazy, both vines and fruit. In other parts of our sandy garden, the plants barely could survive in the competition with other plants like grasses.

Here is a part (20%?) of our pumpkin harvest:

Solar power

We also installed solarPV this year. We have a 10kW installation of grid-tied solar. Not resilient in any kind of catastrophic scenario but maybe good for the local energy use.

Next step will be to build some kind of interface to force our heat pump to run when the sun is shining...

For the laughs

25 years ago, when I was a student, I was part of a comedy musical group. This year, we gave the show again, two Saturdays in September. It was a lot of work to study the script, the dances and the songs, but it was great fun.

The feeling when the audience is in contact and enjoy the show is exhilirating. I had forgotten how energizing it is to sing and dance together, just for the fun of it.

Singing and laughing and eating good food with friends is the meaning of life. All the rest that we do is just to make this happen.

I even got to play the role of the disillusioned and disappointed futurologist called Nostradamus in 16th century France. Most of his predictions centered around death and destruction, and his books described a difficult future.

Quite similar to the book that I wrote, that was released this year. Coincidence or not?