Planning time

Sure, it's a wee bit chilly still, and half my winter tasks are unfinished. Who am I kidding, they're unstarted. But now is the time when an old man's fancy turns to thoughts of... see catalogs. Really, I don't think we'd be too badly off if we started the peppers under lights in the basement right about now.

And it's never too soon to go over the problems we had last year and see if we can work around them. Look out squirrels...

Cold

It's cold out. Snow.

I planted a load more garlic very late in the season, I'm not sure if it'll even come up. So far nothing. I mulched all the garlic beds with leaves ground up in the lawn mower. Hopefully that organic blankey will keep them warm until the spring. I put the leaf mulch on late too, they weren't looking too happy.

Preliminary planning for next season is underway. Current plans:

• Peas - sugar snap. Maybe plant them a bit earlier this time, maybe pull them a bit sooner.
• Zucchini - Maye get a mildew resistant variety. Definitely do more to fend off squash borers. Maybe mesh row covers.
• Tomatoes - Need to set up a chicken wire cage for them. Need zero access for squirrels, easy access for us. Thinking different colored cherry tomatoes featuring prominently.
• Peppers - We have maybe ten varieties already. Going to go big with buckets this time, they did well in containers even when overcrowded last year.
• Corn - Need a cage to keep out evil squirrels.
• Pumpkins - A few varieties.
• Beans - They did great last year, we have a lot of saved seeds.
• Cucumbers - Loads of pickles this year hopefully. Maybe relish!
• Winter Squash - A few varieites. Butternut did pretty well.
• Out this time: Carrots (did poorly), parsnips (did poorly), onions (also poorly), barley (too lazy to harvest and store it properly), cabbage (did poorly), pole beans (were nowhere near as good as bush beans, and didn't do as well). Well, not all of them are out, but probably won't do near as much of any of them.

Garlic Planting Time

Planted 90 garlic bulbs today. Have a vague notion of going into NYC and hitting the Union Square Green Market to see if I can get some cool varieites.

Butternut Weekend

Harvested the butternut squash today. We had maybe a dozen plants, and our total harvest was 10 squash. Not the biggest squash you've ever seen either. I think the problem lies with fertilizing. We had a little compost on them, but we could have done much better. I think I'll dig up the bed and mix in as much compost as I can get my hands on. For the winter I'll try laying a thick layer of leaves over the bed to keep weeds from sprouting.

Also got 2 lb, 6 oz of tomatoes today. Jill turned that into a nice tomato sauce.

Also whipped up 2 batches of hot sauce, one red, one green. Used about 5oz of peppers for the red sauce, somewhat more for the green.

Late Planting

Went a little nuts and planted some green beans, cucumbers, and yellow crookneck squash. I think there's little chance the squash and cukes will provide much in the way of a harvest, but I expect the green beens have time emough before the first frost to give us a load of beans.

What have we learned this year?

We had some rough times this year:

• Hail storm
• Zucchini vine borers
• Zucchini white leaf fungus
• Set some plants out too late
• Squirrels munching tomatoes
• Squirrels and birds eating all the corn
• Cucumbers dying off
• Winter Squash/Pumpkins dying off
• Barley is too much effort
• Tomatoes don't do great in buckets
• Our upside down tomatoes didn't do too great, and the fruit had extremely tough skin
• Our lettuce was bitter
• Peas need to be planted crazy early, then pulled to make way for other stuff
• Cucumbers being eaten by something - maybe deer?

So for next year we'll make some changes.

• Tomatoes and corn will grow in cages, but these cages need to be accessible. Our current cage system is a pain, too much effort to get into it (small access ports, which we wire up).
• We need to plant several different kinds of winter squash. We have gotten a decent amount of squash, but it's all butternut. Woulda been cooler to have several varieities.
• Don't plant onions and carrots under landscape fabric, not many of them came up.
• Don't bother with tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets, they didn't produce much. However, peppers in buckets did well. Next year we try more peppers in buckets.
• Tomatoes need some better trellising. Next year they get tomato cages when young, and when older get a pvc trellis (covered with chicken wire, with easy access ports).
• Zucchini will be started much, much earlier. We'll put out traps with yellow buckets of soapy water to catch the vine borer bugs. Also we can put row covers over the zucchini to keep the vine borers out. I don't know what we can do about the white fungus (mildew? mold?). if we start the plants much earlier, we'll get a lot more zucchini, so maybe we won't care as much when mold kills the plants in late August.
• Potatoes are pretty cool, we should do more. We should also start them much earlier and try a few different types/colors.

Magic Beans

Well, the beans are up, and the Mrs. has been grazing. Today I did a real pick and came up with 14 oz of them. It was enough for a meal for 5 (ok admittedly the kids ate all of 5 of them). And we have another meal left over. Or possibly two. These were from the seed leftover from last year, I was pleased that it even came up. I think the output was a lot more than last year - suspect that's due to the compost they were sewn in.

Oh, must mention that a week ago we salvaged 2 ears of corn that the squirrels and birds. They were pretty starchy, I think they were overripe (Lego brick shown for scale).

Also two new types of tomatoes from the garden - Big Boy and Cherokee Purple. Still haven't seen Mortgage Lifter, Summer Choice, and Steak Sandwich.

Cucumbers are dying out. One of the dills I planted is coming up. Next thing on the agenda is picking the peppers and doing something with them. Going to try drying some and making some hot sauce. Tonight we make amber pickles from the yellow cukes we picked recently.