September Garden

We were camping for a few days - and when we got back we found that an accident in front of our house had snapped off the pole. Thankfully the power was back on by the time we arrived home. But our phone and internet wasn't restored until yesterday.

But I still wanted to share these photos of our September garden. Even if it is now October.

And maybe I should thank you.

Often my energy disappears by September and the garden is abandoned. In the spring I am pulling out the old tomato cages and discarding old broccoli plants and wondering why I had not taken care of them months earlier.

But knowing that I was going to take a photo of my garden and share it with friends and strangers was motivation to get out to the garden and do some housekeeping. Besides the weather has been so lovely the last weeks that I hated to be indoors.

Maybe the reason that the garden often doesn't get cleaned up in the fall is because I'm waiting for the first frost to kill the peppers and tomatoes. Until then, I want to enjoy every last bit of harvest.

But not this year. My tomatoes were nearly dead with blight anyway. The few remaining tomatoes were just hanging there inducing guilt that I was not preserving them. So in a rash act (which I have not regretted) I picked all the ripe tomatoes and peppers and pulled the plants out of the ground. I chopped up the peppers for the freezer, dehydrated the tomatoes, and could call that part of the garden finished.

I'm not done, but I'm farther along in garden clean up if it had not been for you.

So thank you. And here is the garden tour.

In the lower garden I had taken out the old strawberry patch and planted late corn. I didn't expect to get much harvest but the corn did well. It was fun to have fresh corn in September - long after our corn is usually finished. It inspired me to do better at multiple vegetable plantings next year. But I know that the generous rainfall this summer is what made this corn planting so successful.

 

My next job is to cut down this corn and clean out this area. Next to the corn is broccoli, cabbage, and kale - almost ready to pick. To the right is the worn-out green beans and zucchini plants. Another area that has not yet been cleaned up.



This is a shot of our larger garden. It is looking rather barren. In front is more broccoli hiding under row cover. We just finished harvesting the carrots in this area.



In the middle of the garden was the pumpkins which were planted to closely to the  potatoes. They grew all over the potato patch, but actually I think it worked out okay. As the potato plants died back, the pumpkins took their place and we had fewer weeds than usual. But it was rather difficult to dig the potatoes. I thought the pumpkin vines would eventually die back but the vines continued to root along the stem and send out new blossoms and baby pumpkins. Finally I started digging through the vines and found that we had a huge number of pumpkins that were already mature enough to pick. There was no need to continue to wait for more pumpkins.

 

I started picking pumpkins while the children hauled them to the porch. We ended up with over 50 long-neck pumpkins! With them out of the way we could start digging the potatoes. We only have about half dug so far but already got three bushels of potatoes. It looks like we will be eating potatoes and pumpkins this winter! If you live locally and want a pumpkin that makes wonderful pumpkin pie - please come visit us and take some off our porch!



This photo is from the far end of the same garden. I'm battling thistles in the strawberry patch, determined to get ahead of them but so far I'm failing and considering changing the location of our strawberry patch next year. It is so hard to eradicate thistles once they are established in a strawberry patch.



The red raspberries out did themselves this year. I picked a gallon of berries - several times a week. And some of them went to waste because I couldn't get to them. I froze them loose on baking sheets and stored them in bags. I feel so rich when I think of the many bags of berries in the freezer. I hope to make jam sometime - but it didn't get done this month. The berries are nearly over so another job will be cutting down these plants and giving them a good layer of mulch for winter.

So that is our garden this past month. How does your garden grow?