The Garden's End

We got a full extra month out of this year's garden. Our first overnight freeze didn't occur until last weekend. So I had fresh tomatoes and peppers all the way up until Friday.

I tried to cover the raised-bed planters Friday night, but the plants didn't care. When we removed the blankets the next morning, the plants that should have been toasty warm were dead. This happened last time I tried to cover the plants prior to a freeze, which I think was spring last year, but I had to try again.

Prior to covering, we brought in all the baby peppers and all the tomatoes that looked like they might be mature enough to turn red in the window. I'm not sure how many will actually turn. I gave my mom a good belly laugh because she loves fried green tomatoes, and she remembered the year I tried to make a baked version with my green tomatoes. (Miserable fail.)

We had our first snow Sunday night, and now the flowers are gone, too. I am going to miss my garden for the next five months, but I'm hoping I will get many chances to shoot snowflakes while I wait!

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Garden Report

We had such a good tomato and pepper year in my raised-bed gardens!

We still have many peppers flourishing, and they will continue to do so until first frost. I plan to dig up a couple of the tastiest and most productive plants to transfer them to indoor pots for winter before we drop below 40 overnight. This is the time of year I always have to watch the overnight forecasts very closely.

This was my best tomato year since I moved from New Mexico, where I (accidentally) grew enough beefsteaks to supply a grocery store. This year, I had enough grape tomatoes, rainbow blend cherry tomatoes and chocolate cherry tomatoes to stock a grocery store. I grew enough Romas (very difficult in this region) all at one time to make a pot of spaghetti sauce. And I had salad after salad all summer long. Lizard doesn't like tomatoes on or in anything but sauce, which means more for me!

The squirrels discovered my late-season cherry tomatoes when I didn't harvest them fast enough, and now I have to keep a constant eye out to keep the critters from ravaging my raised-bed gardens. I try to make sure I harvest before the tomatoes turn cherry red now, and I've kept a continual blanket of cayenne pepper powder, cinnamon and black pepper on the raised bed gardens. I ripen the not-quite-red tomatoes in the southeast-facing window, which gets the most sun of all our windows.

Got only one cucumber this year, so no home-grown fridge pickles this time around. Thankfuly, the grocery store has a healthy selection. Does anyone else think veggies from our own gardens just taste fresher???

The big surprise of the year for me so far are my Brussels sprouts. I planted from seed last year and got nothing but leaves (which are good in salads and most excellent steamed for stir-fry). This year, I bought a mature plant, which I also thought was not going to be productive until the last couple of weeks, when heads began forming. !!! I didn't know this last year, but these plants will survive up to 10 degrees, and the colder they get in the evenings, the sweeter the heads will be. I like them steamed with just butter, but I also like them steamed with garlic and parmesan. I cannot wait until I get to try my first-ever home-grown Brussels sprouts!!!

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Lessons Learned

I tried extending the season on the tomato plants I started last year from seed by setting them up with grow lights in the basement last winter. Miserable experiment that will not be repeated.

I planted more tomato seeds prior to this year's growing season and put them on the porch once it was warm enough with no chance of overnight freeze. I'm just now beginning to get my first tomatoes from those plants, and some of them have blossom end rot, probably because I did not water them enough during our record-breaking heat wave. The porch gets hotter than any other part of my garden in the afternoon sun. Lesson learned.

Because tomatoes are my favorite food, I also bought five different fully mature tomato plant varieties from the local home improvement store to plant in my new double-decker raised-bed gardens. By about the second week of June, I began enjoying fresh, (mostly) home-grown tomatoes on a nearly daily basis. (Some of the early tomatoes were already on the vines when I bought the plants, so I can't honestly claim credit for them.) My tomatoes never grow as big as what I might find in the grocery store, probably due to elevation, but they taste SO much better. I had only one tomato from the raised bed garden all summer long with blossom end rot. YAY!

I'm still getting tiny tomatoes from the raised-bed garden almost every day. And loving every single one.

Lesson learned: Although I may start some plants from seed again this winter, I probably will not keep them in pots but transfer them to the raised-bed gardens once they've hardened next year. And I likely will buy more fully mature plants because I don't like to wait for fresh tomatoes. I really had a great and enjoyable crop this year! No regrets at all! Oh, and they get to go to tomato heaven on first freeze; I won't try to bring any tomato plants in this winter.

I planted cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin, cucumber and crookneck squash seeds in the new raised-bed gardens in early June. I also bought one mature zucchini plant and put it in with the cucumber and squash seeds. (I learned many decades ago in New Mexico why you do not plant melons and squash anywhere near each other.)

My seed squash and cucumbers are just beginning to make their first blossoms, mostly male, so I've had no success whatsoever from seed. I've had six wonderful zucchinis so far, with one more that might be ready by the time we have our first freeze.

Lesson learned: Just buy the mature plants next year. I might try starting some seeds this winter, but I'm going with mature plants from now on. It's fun to grow something besides leaves in your vegetable gardens.

Speaking of leaves... I've enjoyed fresh salad greens all summer long. Actually, all year long. I was able to grow them indoors throughout winter and spring. I also learned they do best indoors because grasshoppers and caterpillars are salad hungry, too.

Same thing with broccoli. I am going to try growing more broccoli indoors this winter, but I didn't get to eat much of what I grew during the summer. I've yet to ever get any florets, but the leaves, when they aren't stripped by garden terrorists, are good in salad.

The jury is still out on brussels sprouts from seeds. I've been able to harvest a few tasty leaves, but no sprouts yet. It may have gotten too hot; I probably do not live in a good zone for brussels sprouts, sadly.

Oh, and I almost forgot... My watermelon seedlings never grew past about an inch tall. Still green and healthy looking, but no blossoms, no fruit. I'm not sure the pumpkin seeds ever came up. And the cantaloupe seeds are just beginning to blossom. So another lesson in buying mature plants. I'll try that next summer. I think it would be fun to grow my own melons. Oh, and yes, I know pumpkins are in the squash family. They were in a raised-bed garden all by themselves. I thought I'd have enough to share with the neighborhood kids.

I wanted to try growing my own celery for the first time ever this year, but I couldn't find any seeds. So I tried planting the stalk bottoms from store-bought celery three times. The third one is growing! It probably won't produce prior to first frost, but the leaves are actually growing!

I've been planting all my onion scraps for a few years now, and I've had wonderful success from seeds, bulbs and root ends. I will continue to buy a bag of bulbs each year because I've found that's the most successful way to keep bunnies, deer and mice out of my flowers most of the time. When they are hungry, garden terrorists will brave any smelly plant, sometimes even spitting them out and leaving their gags behind.

Carrots and peppers have been wonderful this year, and I'll probably dig up some of the pepper plants and try to keep them going through winter, replanting them next year. I've enjoyed some of the best mostly home-grown salads and spaghetti sauce this year, and that's success enough to keep me trying again every year!

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That Darned Bunny!

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Raising Trouble

A handmade non-level, weathered sand box came with our house. The clay beneath the sand was beginning to take control, so I dug and stirred, then added more sand and some soil, then tried planting corn. We did get a few stalks, but mostly we got weeds. I think we got to eat two ears of corn that autumn.

The second year, I composted all the weeds into the box and tried corn once again.

Pierce, the bunny that came with the house (and got her name from me due to the slash in her ear) tended the garden while we were away at Ride the Rockies.

She ate the corn stalks to the ground!!!

The steep slope, erosion and further wood weathering rendered the sandbox worthless as a raised-bed garden, so Lizard built a new one for me on flat ground back in about 2014.

The flat ground was helpful, but the shade from a tree and our house, as well as an early September snowfall, prevented the first year's corn from maturing. The peas did well, though!

The following year, Lizard built two more raised-bed gardens for me. One has successfully grown spices every year since. Veggies planted in both the spice garden and the first raised-bed garden typically got eaten by bunnies.

I planted flowers in the third raised-bed garden. Because it had a bird-feeder over it, I grew more millet and sunflowers than anything else, but there were a few beautiful flowers now and then.

The flower garden became living quarters for mice, then mama bunnies. Even deer liked to chow down. My garden terrorists ate all my bulbs! For three years, I tried every spice in the book. I planted spices in the flower garden. I planted onions in the flower garden. I finally surrendered. The veggie gardens were good with onions and oregano, which seem to deter critters, but I've not had much luck with peppers, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, squash, pumpkins and cantaloupe. I still took care of the raised-bed gardens, but the flower garden felt very much like a losing battle.

Last winter, I came up with a plan. I thought if we built three more taller raised-bed gardens to put above the existing raised-bed gardens, perhaps we could at least keep the bunnies out of my veggies. The deer, squirrels and raccoons can still be a problem, but they are easier to see, and I can repeatedly shoo them away.

I drew up the equivalent of stick figure gardens with wood sizes and measurements. Of course, I know nothing about building. And Lizard isn't able to build now.

The Young Men from my church came to my rescue and built new raised raised-bed gardens to my specifications, and their leader bolted the creations into place the next day.

Lizard and I put chicken wire on the insides of the new boxes, then I put in a layer of ground cloth. I then put in layers of cardboard, twigs and leaves from last autumn, then put in soil. I bought tomato plants, pepper plants and a zucchini plant, and everything else is from seed.

The seeds are not sprouting yet, but it's been only four days. I'm hoping next week to see some brand new seedlings in the upper boxes. Meanwhile, I've thinned out and weeded the lower levels. I still must be wary of rattlesnakes, but my onions and oregano are going gangbusters!

The chicory in the lower level flower garden took over, so I really thinned it out. Some will come back because I couldn't get the whole root. But I LOVE the blue of chicory, and the bunnies, so far, don't seem interested.

I won't be putting any bulbs in there because I know they will just get eaten. I might stick a bunch of daffodils in there this fall because deer don't like them. And I'll keep trying and experimenting with bunny- and deer-resistant blooms. Gotta have flowers to fill up my blog posts!!!

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