Autumn Scramble

AUTUMN SCRAMBLE

I have a casual attitude about gardening. If you are a weed looking for a home your  chances of survival are good under my care. I try to weed enough to give the veggies or flowers I’ve planted room to grow and I occasionally claw out great clumps of chickweed that have taken over my “alleyways”, but once the preferred plants gain sufficient size I have a casual attitude about gardening. If you are a weed looking for a home your  chances of survival are good under my care. I try to weed enough to give the veggies or flowers I’ve planted room to grow and I occasionally claw out great clumps of chickweed that have taken over my “alleyways”, but once the preferred plants gain sufficient size and strength my weeding takes a back seat to thinning, harvesting and preserving.

This year was an odd one, it seems most years are. Cold, no rain, tons of rain, smokey skies, excessive heat… resulting in huge, chest high, bushy, unruly (and, as per my gardening style, unpruned) tomato plants which appeared to flower little and set almost no fruit. By early September, though, I discovered dozens of good sized tomatoes well hidden amongst the vines! And here I thought I was nearly done canning

And beets! Last year a hungry hoard of rodents devoured my crop leaving only the greens and a tiny bit of beet. So this year I grew extra and the critters left them alone leaving me with over 30 pints, bunches given away, and a large pail to put down the cellar in peat moss.

My specially purchased costly heirloom pea seeds barely grew, so I harvested the whole crop for seed, getting 300 grams. Potatoes turned out great - big no scabs. I got only two decent sized buttercup squashes from one  giant plant, too many zucchini, enough honeyberries (Haskap) for a batch of wine, 120 lbs. of raspberries (3 batches of wine, many quarts of juice, jam, vinaigrette, some frozen and many devoured), and lots of sunflowers for beauty, bees and birds. I will harvest thousands of seeds from the last years carrot that I planted. All in all a pretty good year. But, with Autumn officially around the corner, both my husband and myself are getting antsy to see the end of gardening. Most nights are within a degree or two of freezing and the bees are sticking close to home. It’s time to “get ‘er done” so the garden can be tilled up, manured and ready for next year.