Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Garden Status at 17 Weeks

Our growing season is just about over, and this is what our garden looks like after more than 4 months: a bit overgrown, kind of crowded (and this morning it's wet from overnight rain). For comparison, see 9 weeks, 5 weeks, and 0 weeks.
We've managed to get a few red tomatoes this summer, although our most recent ones have cracked while growing. We have tons of green tomatoes of all sizes, with the medium and larger ones also cracked. Possibly they grow too fast?

Our zucchinis got huge while we were away for two weeks - the scale in the photo has inches on the bottom, centimetres on the top. The zukes seem to either not grow large at all with rotting near the ends, or to grow fat, usually with rotting near the ends except for the two giant ones. Maybe we'll carve one for Halloween!

Our Anaheim peppers have grown exceptionally well with zero problems, and a few have now started to turn reddish on sides facing the morning sun.

The red kale looks good and has grown well. We stopped the caterpillar chomping of all the inner leaves by spraying water containing garlic and red pepper. Leaves we have eaten taste of garlic, and even the small ones take a long time to tenderize. A. Very. Long. Time. We'll try chard next year instead of kale.

A few links I came across while trying to avoid canning:
Drying peppers: UK Chile-Head
Freezing peppers: Learn2Grow
Storing peppers: UC Davis Publication 8004
Freezing greens: PickYourOwn.org
Freezing tomatoes: PickYourOwn.org
Freezing green tomatoes: NCHFP
Freezing food: NCHFP
Freezing vegetables: NMSU Extension Service

Date and time of photos: September 29, 2009, at 10:20 pm.

6 comments:

hypocentre said...

I pretty much lost all my tomatoes and potatoes to blight this year, our 'summer' has been so wet.

Courgettes (zucchinis) have been moderate as have the onions.

Main successes have been runner beans, chives and raspberries.

Silver Fox said...

We should do chives next year, and will grow a variety of hot peppers for sure.

ReBecca Hunt-Foster said...

Nice! Our garden did not do that well - being absent gardeners does not work I guess ;) Maybe someday when we are actually home it will work.

@mihaela4021 said...

Nice pics of the garden and the "crop". I love the scale in the photo, it shows it was taken by a geoscientist. Our garden still has the basil, oregano and hot peppers going strong.

Silver Fox said...

ReBecca, we could have done better, I think - travels and things do get in the way of gardening!

Silver Fox said...

Mihaela, I should place the scale with my camera so I have it with me all the time! It currently resides in my wallet, of all places.