September Song
11 Sep 2010 2 Comments
All of my hard neck garlic this year
Our Japanese watermelons. Sublime.
This year has been mostly successes and relatively few failures. Some of what I would call failures were not really so, but only that I wouldn’t repeat them. Tomatillos, for example, I won’t plant in the hoop house again, although they gave us a bumper crop. They’re large plants and take up valuable real estate, and they need to be staked fairly well. Another failure was my garlic that didn’t produce like I wanted. I waited too long to cut the scapes from the plants in addition to letting the soil dry too much during the growing season. I ended up with small bulbs that were somewhat of a disappointment. Our winter squash, an Italian variety called Marina di Chioggia, never really produced. It was a mystery.
But I don’t want to dwell on the negative. We had so much fresh produce to eat this summer with our tomatoes kicking in around the end of June; pepper plants like I’ve never seen before; wonderful eggplants, summer squash, fennel, sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme…Oh, and the watermelons, which I used a little technology to encourage (the hybrid plastic mulch), were absolutely the most delicious watermelons I’ve ever had. A Japanese variety called Hime Kansen has a only a 3/16″ rind so has relatively a large amount of flesh inside a small fruit. Being smaller in size they ripen quickly (about the first of August this year). As is usually the case, watermelons will usually come to ripen all around the same time. However, these kept in our refrigerator for weeks. Six plants produced 13 melons.
Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes. Like candy.
Two-Foot Long Cucumbers
We had a lot of people around this summer to feed and at times we didn’t have enough to go around, but in the end we ended up giving a lot away, and still are just to prevent them from spoiling. The tomatoes are an example. I had 16 plants in the hoop house, with 4 extra plants outside. They are still producing more tomatoes than we can eat, and we freeze (for sauce) anything that can’t be eaten fresh. But since we host monthly piano camps for adults and kids with a hired chef, we use most of it.
The fall crops have been started in the hoop house and are planted at different times depending on the crop. Carrots take a while so I had them in the ground by August 1. The tatsoi, a huge hit earlier this year, was started in soil blocks on August 6. Spinach and turnips by August 20.
Mesclun and Turnips Getting a Head Start
Napoli Carrots on Their Way Before the Winter Hits
Being honest, it takes a little fortitude to be an all-season gardener with a hoop house. In order to make room for the fall crops, you must sacrifice some of your summer crops while they’re still producing. You can’t wait until everything gives up the ghost because it would be too late to get much of anything started in time to reach maturity by late fall. But many times the summer crops, like the cucumbers, will be done by the time you need to move the fall crops in. My larger sacrifice was the tomatillos. Cutting them was not easy. Another reason to have them outside.
I rarely pull plants out. I’ll cut them below soil level and let the roots decay in place. Feeding the soil is one of the mantras of organic gardening. Speaking of compost, I actually didn’t have enough to go around. I succumbed to purchasing more at my local feed store. As a cover crop grower I try to produce as much compost as possible for the year, but sometimes I fall short. About 60% of my outdoor area is cover crop.
Oats and Winter Peas (right). Rye, Clover, Austrian Peas, Hairy Vetch (left)
More Rye, Hairy Vetch, Clover, Winter Peas, Rye Grass
There’s so much to prepare for the fall coming out of the summer. But it’s all a pleasure really. Isn’t that why we gardeners do this?
