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A Year in Our Garden - 2012 - Page 3
December 24, 2012

September

The drought began to break in September, allowing us to harvest some crops we thought we'd lost, but still also seeing other crops fail. Our row of Red Pontiac potatoes succumbed to the drought and had to be dug early, producing a bevy of tiny red tubers that got used as new potatoes or mixed with green beans.

Our carrot rows that had begun to perk up with the few, light rains in August, actually produced a good, if somewhat ugly, crop. The row of green beans that germinated and then languished for months, suddenly started putting on blooms and bean pods. While we didn't can our normal amount of green beans for the winter, we got a whole lot more than I'd previous thought we would (none). Instead of beginning picking beans at the 50 days to maturity suggested on the seed packets, we started picking 89 days after planting!

Everything we had left in the garden seemed to respond to the somewhat regular rainfall during the month. We had lots of melons from the vines that survived the drought, pumpkins maturing on the vine, summer squash, and eggplant.

The volunteer apple tree that apparently pollinates our Granny Smith apple tree matured lots and lots of small, buggy but tasty, apples. The grandkids and I picked the best of them, cut out a lot of bad spots, and made applesauce. It was the only appearance our Squeezo Strainer would make in the kitchen for the summer.

Our pepper plants in our main garden put on a bumper crop of fall peppers that we froze, gave away, froze, used, and gave away until our first frost (around October 8).

The Earliest Red Sweet open pollinated peppers we isolate in our East Garden for seed production never really recovered from the drought, putting on just a few nice peppers along with lots of cute looking but useless midget red peppers. The good ERS peppers got used as well, but only after the precious seed was removed from them.

October and November

Parts of our garden are usually still in full production in the fall. A year ago with a late fall (and floating row covers), we picked fresh lettuce, broccoli, and green beans during October and November. With this season's drought precluding getting a fall garden started in August, there were just a few things to harvest, but all of the usual end-of-season garden cleanup chores to complete. But even with its bare patches, our main raised bed looked pretty good right up until the first frost on October 8 (Images below taken on October 7).

Our short row of sweet potatoes produced just enough medium sized tubers to let us grow some sweet potato slips next spring. Our Kennebec potatoes did a bit better. When they began to recover from the drought, I covered them with a floating row cover to extend their season a few weeks. As I had been digging some of them each week, I saw that the row cover did indeed help, or maybe just the last of the row I dug always had bigger potatoes.

And Kennebecs are always fun to harvest because of the mix of normal and unusual shaped tubers you find!

Only one kale plant survived its August seeding and the drought, but standing alone in the main garden, put out a great quantity of leaves. Augmented with a couple of bunches of kale greens from the grocery, we were able to make a small batch of our annual Portuguese Kale Soup.

When I got to making the soup, I found it interesting that the volume of leaves from our one kale plant was about double that of the two bunches of grocery kale greens.

We ended up with eight pints canned, two quarts frozen, and probably another two quarts that got quickly consumed fresh.

Saving seed is an all summer long activity for us, but intensifies in the fall as the last of our crops come out. Seed has to be cleaned and dried, the latter occurring on coffee filters, paper towels and paper plates. We also further dry some of our seed by letting it sit in a tightly covered jar with some powdered milk that absorbs even more moisture from the seed. While we've successfully frozen excess seed for years, the extra powdered milk dry down step adds a bit of confidence that the seed won't have moisture that expands in freezing and damages seed embryos.

Saved vegetable seed is always germination tested before going into the freezer for long-term storage. While seed suppliers test a thousand seeds or so for their government required germination ratings, a sample of ten seeds usually gives us a good idea of the seed's viability.

This year we saved seed from two varieties of tomatoes (Moira and Quinte), peas (an Eclipe-Encore cross), pole beans (Mohon's greasy beans), peppers (Earliest Red Sweet), dianthus (Carpet series), snapdragon (mixed varieties), and zinnia (mixed varieties). We didn't save seed from our cucumbers, as I planted our Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers alongside some plants from commercial seed that I thought was the same variety. They weren't, and I want to keep our strain of JLPs pure.

Note that we and several other Seed Savers Exchange members will offer Moira, Quinte, and Earliest Red Sweet seed for sale this year via the SSE annual yearbook.

After several really hard frosts killed almost everything in our garden plots, we began pulling and composting plants, vines, and sometimes the grass clipping mulch that was under them. Each day, our working compost pile would end up about five feet tall with the material added, only to settle down in a few days to around three feet tall.

Buckwheat

Alfalfa

We began tilling our East Garden even before a few late producers were pulled. We worked around a pumpkin patch that put on three large late pumpkins. Our caged Moira and Quinte tomato plants also continued to give us fresh tomatoes most of the month of October. The tomatoes' heavy foliage seemed to protect the fruit inside the cage from frost.

Tilling our large, 80' x 80' East Garden became a much easier job with the addition of a 30" mechanical tiller attachment to our mower. I may have to garden for another 50 years to amortize the investment.

Note that almost half of the East Garden tilled area is planted to turndown green manure crops each year. Our buckwheat and alfalfa cover crops were two giant successes this year in what was otherwise a pretty dismal gardening season.

By the time I got everything out of our main, raised bed garden plot, we were playing peek-a-boo with light showers every few days. The soil never did dry out enough to permit the thorough fall tilling I wanted to give it. Once I removed the grass clipping mulch that had covered the entire plot for the summer, a bit of work with a scuffle hoe and a standard hoe loosened the soil surface and shallowly incorporated a bit of lime and milky spore (to prevent cutworms and the moles that go after them).

After waiting far too long for the soil to dry out enough to be tilled, I finally went ahead and planted garlic late in November. We've used our own saved garlic sets the last few years, but added a couple more varieties of standard garlic this year to go with our dependable elephant garlic.

The rotting grass clipping mulch that I'd pulled from the main raised bed a few weeks earlier went over the freshly planted garlic to conserve soil moisture, prevent weed growth, and moderate winter temperature extremes. Lots of freezing and thawing can do evil things to fall planted garlic. Leftover mulch went over our small, raised asparagus bed.

I waited until after Thanksgiving to cut our other asparagus patch, as it's golden foliage made for a pretty view out our back window. Once I cut the foliage, that patch got all of our remaining finished compost.

Our East Garden was completely cleared and tilled fairly early in November.

Our main garden plots in our back yard were pretty well ready for winter and the next season by the end of the month. I never did have the heart to pull our snapdragons. They continued to bloom right into December, even after I roughed them up a bit pulling the t-posts and trellis they previously shared with vining peas and cumcumbers.

And by the time weather precluded any more work in the garden, we had things done. A bed for spring peas was ready for planting (possibly through the snow in early March), although the snaps still were in the ground where another, late row of peas will go.

November-December

Some necessary indoor chores take up a good bit of time in November and December. Each year I inventory our seed on hand, complete with some germination testing with seed I suspect may be getting too old to use. The inventory is a necessary step before I begin placing seed orders for the next season.

A more enjoyable task begins in mid-November when seed catalogs for the next year begin to arrive in the mail. Knowing what I already have on hand from the inventory allows me to focus on finding the varieties we usually grow along with a few new varieties each year for our fall orders. We begin submitting seed orders in November, as we'll be starting onions, geraniums, and some slow growing annuals in January.

I can hardly wait!

From Steve, the at Senior Gardening