End of Season Garden Update

Back again, at least I'm going to try! I'm a bit mesmerized by political developments these days. I took all these photos at least a week ago, so they are bit out of date already.

This section still looks pretty much as it does in the photo above, perhaps a little less lushly green. But we haven't pulled carrots, or sweet potatoes, or peanuts, or the turnips or beets. Those leeks in the mid right frame should have been onions but I mixed up the seed and for some reason the leeks really dominated.

Tomatoes have been kind of over for a while. We've done all the canning we intend to do, and the nearer tomato bed has been cleaned and had the trellises taken down. We've replanted the bed with garlic. Normally we only plant two-thirds of a bed of garlic, but we decided we are not growing enough garlic and planted the whole thing. Yes, we use (and share with Mr. Ferdzy's brothers) a lot of garlic! Cucumbers and zucchini are pretty much over due to powdery mildew, as usual. I still have to pull them though.

Peppers are still going strong. We aim to keep them going as long as possible by covering them with plastic on cold nights (and days, sometimes) but again, the end is in sight.

We have some really good looking cabbages but otherwise the brassicas have done even worse than usual and their usual is not good. I am lobbying hard with Mr. Ferdzy to grow considerably fewer of them next year.

Beans are well over. They were hit with yellow mosaic virus early on, and you could see by the little yellow spots how it was transmitted by insect bites. This then left a means of access to the plants by anthracnose and it hit hard and early. We are growing 2 varieties with notable resistance; the Anellino yellow clearly visible on the right side of the trellis, and Roc d'Or, a bush variety which is just planted in a single row across each end. I'm just waiting for the Anellino Yellow to dry down before the plants are pulled and the trellises can come down.

Our bean crosses being grown out for anthracnose resistance show some variability and in general are noticeably better than most of the named varieties, but still nowhere as good as the Anellino Yellow and Roc d'Or.

Strawberries and asparagus are just memories from early summer at this point, but the beds look lush and healthy. We are now looking forward to having them again next spring.

We grew a smaller number of watermelons this year, and only the Golden Rind project. (Random lettuce pops up everywhere and sometimes gets left.) Still, we have some good looking and tasting melons; better than I was fearing early in the summer. They are very late though. There was just not enough heat this summer to give many things the push they needed.

Not too much to say about this picture; it's just another view from another angle of the peanuts, carrots and sweet potatoes. The second bed (in the centre left) has late planted peas in it, planted about a month ago when the garlic was harvested. This is the first year fall peas have not been covered in mildew, and we might even get a few. Even if we don't they keep the ground covered and enrich it with some nitrogen.

Spring planted beets and rutabaga are in the back. They were very spotty in germinating and the rutabaga have been very slow to grow. We have been eating the beets in fits and starts all summer and I am amazed that they are still in an edible condition. The one upside to a cool summer, maybe.

The grassy plants in the front are Mammoth Sandwich Island salsify; a thing we have never tried before. Still haven't... we'll see what we think of it once we do.

We've dug our potatoes. They were a very pathetic crop overall, but some of the seedlings did well and we will be cleaning and sorting them today. Next up we will pull in the peanuts and squash as I think the forecast week of rain ahead of us will not do them any good. As usual, we are triangulating with the sweet potatoes to keep them in the ground as long as possible without them getting too cold, but the end is nigh for them too. So now it's back to work...

p.s. I forgot to mention it, but this has been a good year for butterflies; at least for Monarchs. I've seen dozens of them. That doesn't rate with how common they were when I was young, but it's quite a few more than I've seen the last few years. I am less enthused about the number of furry moth caterpillars of various stripes (that's a joke, har har) I've seen around the garden this fall - but still, I don't think it's really a bad thing. 

Posted in: Ontario Food