Inside: Gardening is a grand experiment of weather, plant hardiness, good soil, and time. Sometimes these factors work together. Sometimes they don’t. Read on for results of my late summer garden.
I had wanted to boast about my late summer garden. I’d envisioned a couple of rows of beautiful red and green cabbages, and even some snow-white cauliflower heads. In my mind’s eye I saw large golden tubers–defying all expectation of the growing season. I pictured a dozen quarts of pickles, some for gift-giving from the bountiful harvest of cucumbers I planted late. Melons and winter squash and pumpkins, too–I could hardly wait! And tomatoes? Of course, tomatoes! More than I could ever use! I’d be looking for people to take my abundant haul.
A girl can dream, can’t she?
The late summer garden was . . . disappointing. A perfect storm of things gone wrong. Soil not properly prepared in some beds. Hungry varmints. Too early frost–didn’t the weather man know I needed good weather to prove my point about what a great idea late summer gardens are? Too little time–both in growing days and my own time to work in the garden. Add in an odd growing season, too. Unseasonably cold beginning. Quick warm up turned unbearably hot quite rapidly. And so very little rain. Water from the well just doesn’t bring out the best in plants like a good, solid rain shower. Those came too late. Plants and trees and bushes didn’t get that vibrant green until late September. By that time most of us were already thinking of autumn.
So how did my plants fare?
Fair.
What Didn’t Work
To begin with, I’d nurtured a bunch of cabbage and cauliflower seedlings under a grow light before bringing them outside to acclimate them to the hot temps. They were coming along nicely, and soon it was time to plant them into the cole crop bed. They thrived there–for a day and a half. On the second morning I went out to check them, and every last one was gone. No trace of anything. (Clarence, my cat, has been pretty mum about the whole thing, so I have no idea what happened.) Suffice it to say, no red or green globes of fall goodness. No snow-white heads of cauliflower.
My winter squash and pumpkins were a no-go. Planted in hay bales, every squash seedling died. The pumpkins also got their start in a hay bale, and they took off, growing rapidly. I had a couple of baby pumpkins the size of large marbles, and then it happened–the arrival of the squash bugs. Bye-bye pumpkins.
Watermelon vines thrived as well. But, to be honest, they flowed into a patch of already existing vines, so I’m not sure if the late summer plants produced any fruit or not.
What Worked–Sort of . . .
As mentioned in the last post, I did get some sweet potatoes from the slips I planted late. Nothing to write home about, but at least I got something. The picture shows the potatoes from the mound that produced the most.
And remember that cute cuke pic from the last late summer post? About a week after that was taken, as the cucumbers were multiplying in my refrigerator’s vegetable crisper, I noticed some of the leaves on the plants started turning yellow. Within two weeks my vines were nearly dead. But at least I got a batch of curry pickles made.
The tomatoes grew rapidly in their late summer home. The vines spread all over the place, quickly moving past the cage that surrounded them–as I expected. The problem was that I didn’t stake them and prune them to keep them somewhat in their confines. (I’ve been around the garden patch long enough to know that cages don’t contain much when it comes to tomatoes, but I still find myself using them, anyway. Go figure.)
So with beautiful, lovely, sprawling vines, what went wrong? Jack Frost made an earlier than expected appearance. (I should mention frost fell within the “average first frost” dates, but so often it doesn’t show up until the final week in October. By this time I had one ripening tomato (pictured left) and a handful of green ones large enough to pick and put on my window sill.
That was the extent of the veggie harvest from my late summer garden. Thankfully I planted some tomatoes, watermelon, peppers, and herbs back in May! (More on that in the next post.)
Flower Power?
Remember those marauding raccoons upending my just-planted wildflower seeds? How I had to guess at what was growing in the pots? Well, I was right about the forget-me-nots. They did finally bloom with a few pretty sprigs of dainty blue flowers. But not long after, something got to them, and the flowers were gone.
No other wildflowers bloomed. A few zinnias popped up in the pots, and I’m not quite sure how that happened. As a matter of fact, everything was coming up zinnias. Everywhere I looked these latecomers were not only surviving, but they were thriving. I had three beds of them, ranging in color from pink to peach to mauve to maroon. (My descriptions of the colors aren’t plant breed descriptions, but how I saw them.) Most of these came from seed I saved from hybrids, so they weren’t true to type. But they were lovely. A sight to behold. Beauty in the midst of so many disappointing plants this year. . .
Verdict on the Late Summer Garden
If you’ve followed this garden saga, you might be wondering, is it worth planting a late summer garden? In many years, yes. This year, not so much. Had my time not been a factor, I would have done a few things differently. For one, I could have pruned and staked those tomatoes so that growth would have been directed to developing tomatoes instead of countless branches. Beds for the sweet potatoes could have been better prepared. I could have properly fertilized my plants to make them more resistant to insects and weather challenges, plus speeding along growth. I could have protected my cabbage and cauliflower plants from whatever ravaged them–bunny or possum.
Will I try again next year? Maybe. I’m certainly not abandoning the idea. I like a good garden challenge. But let’s get through fall and winter first, shall we?
How did your garden do this year? Tell us about it in the comments.
Related posts:
Planting the Late Summer Garden
Posts from a year ago:
Surviving Frost, Roasted Bean Mondays, and Other News Fresh From the Farm