We hit the end of our growing season in October thanks to one very cold week. The weather went from nice fall temperatures to a freezing 8 degrees!
Prior to that in September, we picked the pears that were still on the 2 pear trees. This is the first year they have produced for us and I didn’t want to lose them! The bugs and birds had started getting them, so even though they were not soft we picked them all and let them ripen indoors. I was able to make some pear preserves with a bunch and dried a few into slices.
This year I planted green beans later them I normally do but they produced really well for me! I blanched and froze most of them, which was really quick to do, so I think next year I will try to plant more to put up into the freezer again. We also wanted to try growing our own “pumpkin patch” and planted several hills of pumpkin seeds this year. We got a lot of pumpkins to show for it too! It was fun to go through the patch and pick them in October, but now we have A LOT of pumpkins to do something with! We carved a few for Halloween, have given a few to the chickens, and I am in the process of freezing and drying some to put in storage. I think we will plant several again next year, but maybe have better plans in place for what to do with them all in the fall!
Lessons Learned
This year we’ve also learned a few things:
- Tomatoes – I liked growing the tomatoes up the string for the lean-and-lower method. Clipping the vines to the string and harvesting the tomatoes was much easier then using cages, EXCEPT the twine I used broke toward the end of the year, so the plants were laying on the ground and I was breaking the stems as I tried to pick them up. Next year I will have something better to use. Also, growing the indeterminate and determinate varieties in the same place caused some issues because some plants were growing faster/taller than the others so I couldn’t move the taller plants very much. Next year I need to plan different places for the tomatoes if I grow different varieties.
- Green Beans – Planting them “late” works just fine! I can use them to succession plant after a cool weather spring crop and will get a nice harvest from them. Yay!
- Bok Choy/Broccoli – Watch for the bugs!! We had a crazy amount of slugs this year, and this fall the cabbage worms became a problem on the broccoli. I need to keep up with my pest management, even when the weather cools off.
- Carrots – This is the second year the tops of the purple carrots were eaten by bugs. I need to research why that is. Maybe I just need to pull them much sooner than I have been. The slugs were eating all the varieties though, so more general pest management would help them all.
- Corn – This year we planted popcorn and sweet corn for the first time. From the popcorn varieties that we tried Burro Mountain and Mini Pink grew the best. The sweet corn was a hybrid variety, and it grew well, however we didn’t pick it all before it started to get starchy. Next year I need to get it all picked!
- Cucumbers – We were really enjoying the cucumbers until the hail came! Then the plants really slowed down because they were damaged. Next year I need to plan on protecting them better.
I would like to have covers ready to put over the entire garden all year long next year. The hail this year wasn’t too bad, but enough it definitely slowed down all the plants, not just the cucumbers. Overall I think we had a good growing year!
