How does your veggie garden grow (v.2011)?

As the growing season draws to a close here in the Mid-Ohio Valley, time to assess the 2011 veggie garden.

Tomatoes: Overall a C+. I'm pretty sure I need to add more potash, potassium and lime to the soil before the crop will meet my expectations. Not an abundance of fruit, but that which we did harvest was very tasty.

Peppers: I'll give the sweet and hot peppers and A-. Would have been eve better but for the wind damage sustained in an early August wind burst.

Green Bell Peppers: Another A-

Herbs: Solid A.

Lettuce: Another stellar year. A+. The fall crop is now producing prolifically.

Spinach: See Lettuce above.

Basil: Stellar crop, A+

Garlic: B-. Not exactly sure why the crop was so small. This reminds me I had better think about planting my next vintage of garlic soon.

Potatoes: Didn't plant any potatoes but harvested 5 pounds or so that sprouted in the compost pile.Definitely a Passing grade.

Parsley: Went bonkers.

[Robin Garr]

Just upstream but in a slightly warmer climate than Bill P (partly because of the river valley and partly the urban heat sink), we'll probably make it through this week's forecast cold snap without a frost. Curiously, our tomatoes, after being really crappy all summer, are coming on like gangbusters now, and we're making and freezing a lot of sauce as well as having some Indian Summer capreses. Lunch today: Fresh chunks of a just-picked tomato, basil chiffonade and fresh mozzarella dice over conchiglie.

Here in central MN the summer veggies are through. There are a few leftovers at the market but mostly fall vegetables are now being sold. Some areas have had their first frost others have been lucky and just missed it.

Herbs still going strong. One basil plant has gone to seed, because I forgot to nip the seed heads. The rest I keep picking from. Cilantro, arugula, mixed lettuces, mache all coming up. Even some Chinese Long Beans that had dried in the pod and dropped into a pot have sprouted. I'm pulling them out, of course.
Peppers still hanging on, and flowering. Swiss Chard and Lacinato Kale doing great.

No killing frost here yet. Tomatoes still coming in; harvested about 20 lbs after being away for weekend. English thyme died, but French hanging in there. Parsley very strong. A few pumpkins still maturing. Red Romaine still strong, as is the kale.

A recent frost has pretty much done in the garden except for leaf lettuce, parsley, and spinach. Will be cleaning up the plot this afternoon and planting the 2012 garlic crop. All that's left is to fold in some lime, leaves and excess from the compost pile.

[Robin Garr]

A recent frost has pretty much done in the garden except for leaf lettuce, parsley, and spinach. Will be cleaning up the plot this afternoon and planting the 2012 garlic crop. All that's left is to fold in some lime, leaves and excess from the compost pile.

Weirdly, on the morning you got that frost it only dropped to 40 here in Louisville. We're doing better with tomatoes now than we did for most of the hot summer. Caprese for dinner last night!

Weirdly, on the morning you got that frost it only dropped to 40 here in Louisville. We're doing better with tomatoes now than we did for most of the hot summer. Caprese for dinner last night!

We are having some strange weather experiences around here too. People who live south of us and hundreds of feet lower have had killing frosts, and we haven't. We have pulled a lot of things out of the garden simply because their lifespan was over. Tomatoes, parsley, parsnips, kale, romaine, and others are still doing fine. Having said that, it is a day to day experience here.

Only 35 miles or so separates Robin from Casa Redwinger. That said, we are ~1,000" elevation which is probably 350' higher than Louisville plus the homestead is in a valley that seems conducive to trapping cooler air....that is a nice plus during our humid summers, but not so much for frost. Our first average date for 36 degrees is about 10/10, so we really didn't fare too badly this year.

[Jenise]

We had a good summer. It started late and cool, but we picked our first tomato on August 3rd which beat last summer by five weeks and here we are in late October without any of the killing frosts yet that turned our garden brown by the first week in October 2010. A friend who farms in this county said it was his best tomato season ever: abundant and lasting.

My grapes were a standout. The vines are now five years old and where I've only had three or four bunches in the past, this year I probably had 50. They were gorgeous and sweet.

My herbs did well. The lime and French thymes came back beautifully, as did both Oreganos and the tarragon. I can't reccomend the golden oregano, if you ever have a chance to plant that one, highly enough. It's beautiful, a low-growing ground cover shaped plant, and wonderfully tasty. It tastes like oregano, but it has a little more perfume to it. And it cooks well, but it's especially wonderful raw added to a tomato salad or tossed on top of a just-baked cheese pizza. It's tenderer and milderer than any other oregano I've used. My rosemary doubled in size and is now about two feet high by at least two feet across. The only problem: again, the sage died. It's the strangest thing: I had one sage plant in the ground for four years, it survived when other things tanked. Then one summer, in the middle of summer, it died. Every year since I've planted a new one, and each one dies before summer's over. Must be something in the soil. Next summer I'm going to plant one in the raised bed vs. the ground-level herb bed all the deceased plants lived in.

Herbs did great, with the exception of my sage. I lost a large, gorgeous plant 4 years ago due to a cold snap. I have replanted sage each year since and none of them have taken. Don't know what that's about. I am extremely disappointed. I'm going to try different areas of the garden this year to see if that will make a difference. I'm praying that the tarragon will make it over the winter. For some reason the two plants I had been nurturing the past couple years didn't return this spring. I replanted and those look pretty good right now. I planted butternut squash and all I got were blossoms, then a heavy dusting of powdery mildew. Not a single fruit! Rats!!! But, it was all worth the effort for the tomatoes. I finally got a pretty good, ongoing supply that were scrumptious. I discovered a few weeks back that, if I harvested vine and all and just let them sit on the counter in the kitchen, I would get a few ripened ones every few days. So, this weekend I cut the remaining clusters of unripened green grape and placed them on the counter (those were my favorites), just ahead of the predicted frost. I should be eating them for the next 2-3 weeks. Yum! Planning to make pesto this weekend, if the cold doesn't outright kill the remaining basil.

Final harvest 002.JPG

Hi Jo Ann,
I have French Tarragon. Our summers are very hot, winters are mild. We do not get snow(mabe a inch or so now and then) but we do get into the 20's for a few days. The tarragon always comes back in the spring. It is like a crazy weed, gets huge and takes over whatever is in the way. Our sage shrub dies back every year, but returns in the spring. My herbs are in raised beds, protected by our home on two sides, and fences on two sides. I use frost cloth in the winter to protect some things and it works beautifully. We get it at Lowe's or Home Depot, large hardware/garden/do it yourself type stores.

We had two inches of wet snow last night. I got the remaining green tomatoes in this a.m. and potted and brought in the rosemary. Kale, parsley, parsnips, and thyme still look ok.

[Robin Garr]

First frost this morning. The temp just hit 32, but it was clear and still, there was a thin rime on the car windows, and pale frost on the remaining tomatoes. I guess we'll gather the last harvest today, red pink or green, and see what we can do with them.

It wasn't really a very good summer for tomatoes, although they came on nicely at the end. Ditto the eggplant; but we did very well with okra and green beans in season, spinach and lettuces earlier; herbs all fine, and I could have eaten all the swiss chard and kale I wanted. Mary likes greens better than I do.

Well mine has 10 inches of snow on it right now; so I guess it's curtains for this season!

Carl-
Do you have power or are you running a generator?

Carl-
Do you have power or are you running a generator?

We're the only people we know that didn't lose powa; an all time first!

P.S. Our generator does not cover the entertaiment mediums.

Herbs did great, with the exception of my sage. I lost a large, gorgeous plant 4 years ago due to a cold snap. I have replanted sage each year since and none of them have taken. Don't know what that's about. I am extremely disappointed. I'm going to try different areas of the garden this year to see if that will make a difference. I'm praying that the tarragon will make it over the winter. For some reason the two plants I had been nurturing the past couple years didn't return this spring. I replanted and those look pretty good right now. I planted butternut squash and all I got were blossoms, then a heavy dusting of powdery mildew. Not a single fruit! Rats!!! But, it was all worth the effort for the tomatoes. I finally got a pretty good, ongoing supply that were scrumptious. I discovered a few weeks back that, if I harvested vine and all and just let them sit on the counter in the kitchen, I would get a few ripened ones every few days. So, this weekend I cut the remaining clusters of unripened green grape and placed them on the counter (those were my favorites), just ahead of the predicted frost. I should be eating them for the next 2-3 weeks. Yum! Planning to make pesto this weekend, if the cold doesn't outright kill the remaining basil.

Final harvest 002.JPG

Hello scientists out there. So, I have a question. Since the posting above, my gardeners pulled all the possible-to-ripen tomatoes from the vines before they tossed all the old growth when they cleaned up the garden at the end of October. I ended up with about a basket and a half more green tomatoes. Some ended up in green tomato chutney, some ripened and have been used in various recipes. The picture below is what I have left of the final harvest (Oct 31 to present). I have had tomatoes in my house, sitting on my counter for over a month, yet I have not had a single fruit fly. Why is that? Are fruit flies only an event that happens in summer? My house is set at a comfortable (for us) 68-72 degrees every day. If there was the potential for fruit fly larvae to mature, I would expect in this environment. But, I have had nothing but a clean harvest of delicious, vine-ripening tomatoes without pests. What gives?

Last Fruits2.jpg

In the back there's nothing left except Italian parsley and French thyme. In the much more sheltered front we still have most of the perennial herbs.

[Robin Garr]

We've had a couple more light frosts where the temp just touched 32 and got a skin of frost on the car windshield, but remarkably, the tomato plants are in protected south-facing locations and still survive. It can't last much longer, but Mary brought in about a dozen red ones and maybe two dozen green ones the day before yesterday. The red ones are kind of mushy - texture seems to suffer in these late bloomers - but their flavor is great.