Putting the Garden to Bed
Friday night was our second freeze in a week. The first freeze was mild, but it was enough to melt the bush beans into limp piles of leaves, and singe the outer leaves of the summer squash. The second freeze finished the job. Thursday night I went to the garden and picked the remaining beans and tomatoes and eggplant. I picked five finger-sized yellow butterstick squash. I pulled up the squash vines and tossed them in the compost, and did the same with the eggplant. Saturday morning, the tomato and pole bean vines were melted as well.
My goal this week is to get all the remaining vines pulled and composted, and apply a nice layer of milorganite, followed by a nice layer of compost. I will pull the fencing I used, and coil up the hoses, and call this a year.
There were successes and failures. Successes were definitely the cabbages, the pole beans, the tomatoes, and the summer squash. The pumpkins were awesome, and I picked five good ones at the end of the year. They weighed 18, 14, 12, 11, and 11 pounds respectively. I grew Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins specifically, and they didn’t disappoint. The parsnips I wanted so badly took all summer to mature, and I only harvested about 3 pounds of them. As much as I love them, I will probably not do them again. The beets and turnips did wonderfully, but I probably won’t grow turnips again since I am the only one who eats them. The corn was fun, but took up a lot of space. I may do them again, however, because they shaded the peas well. I picked squash at least three times a week, so I will grow those again. Everyone in the house eats them, so that’s a bonus. The three freebie Kohlrabi were easy and tasty, but again, I was the only one who ate them. The tomatoes were the same – delicious, but we can only eat so many. I will probably just plant one or two next year. The broccoli never formed blooms, and the peppers didn’t produce anything worth mentioning.
So of course that leaves me wondering what I should plan on planting for next year. I will do cabbages again, but will stagger their planting so that I can stagger the picking. I will plant more Savoy, no Stonehead. The Savoy were the prettiest and tastiest, the Stonehead where the ones the slugs loved the most. I will most definitely plant more eggplant, as these did very well. I will look for more varieties. I wasn’t pleased with the Ichiban, but the White Star were amazing. I will also plant more peas. I may opt for bush beans instead of pole beans. The pole beans produced well, but they took forever to get to a point where they produced anything at all. I have frozen more than 2 dozen zip-lock bags of them, though, so they were excellent producers. I will plant cucumbers earlier, so I might actually get more than two stubby ones to harvest. Pumpkins are definitely a go again.
It was a good year. It was hard work, for sure, but it was a good year. When frost/freeze was in the forecast, I actually sighed in relief a bit. The hard work was over. I can have my winter to rest up and be ready for spring.
Kind of like my garden.
Why not can the tomatoes? I usually sauce some and just cut some up and call all that we don’t eat. I use tomatoes all winter and I love being able to just pull out a jar of my summer garden! This year we didn’t get enough to can so I’ll be buying them at the store ;(
I don’t have the equipment for canning, nor the full day it will take to do it. I froze plenty for using in soups and stews later, including some I roasted. There’s just more than we will eat.