Today two more catalogs arrived in the mail, bringing my total up to six so far for the month of December.  My Baker Creek and Seed Savers Exchange will be late, as I had to re-request catalogs from them this year.  Moving does that.

But so far I have RH Shumways, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Totally Tomatoes, Seeds of Change, Botanical Interests, and Vermont Bean Seed Company.  The only one not pictured below is the Botanical Interests.

I’m not too impressed with Totally Tomatoes, as I prefer heirloom varieties over hybrids, but I am contemplating a few determinate tomatoes this year, and it’s at least a lovely catalog to look through.

Vermont Bean Seed is completely new to me- two pages in and I’m excited- I had no idea there were so many varieties of  beans.  I may be ordering from them for my beans and peas this year.

I’m anxiously awaiting the remaining few and then the real planning can begin.

That’s it.  The 2010 growing season is officially over.   The fact that we made it to October 28th is actually pretty remarkable.    What makes it officially over?

This is, or rather, was, my basil plant.  Last night the temps got down below freezing, and that was the end.  Of course, you can still see the parsley and the rosemary there next to the basil looking alive and vibrant, but the demise of the basil and any other tender growth is confirmation that the gardening year has drawn to a close.

I just went out and harvested my one lone butternut squash.  It’s still got a faint green tinge to it, but it feels solid.  I need to find out if it will ripen further now that it’s off the vine.  If not, it will be dinner tomorrow night with an amazing homegrown roasted chicken.

I’m getting anxious for those seed catalogs to start rolling in!

Our weather is beautiful right now! It’s Indian Summer all right, and it’s perfectly timed to get us out in the yard doing some leaf-raking and other yard work.

A week ago we had our first frost warnings of the season.  I went back and forth several times on whether or not to cover… and in the end I decided to cover just the basil and the tomatillo.  In anticipation of the frost, I went out and picked all the green tomatoes.

And then it didn’t frost here. :p

Apparently it stays a touch warmer here in the city, and there was frost on the roofs, but not on the ground.  With Indian Summer in full swing, there is a piece of me rolling my eyes at myself, wishing I wouldn’t have picked the green tomatoes.

Then again, had I left them, I could have gotten a few more ripe tomatoes, but not many.  So instead, I was able to take full advantage of the beautiful weather and rip all the plants out.  The sweet peppers I left- I’m really hoping the Red Marconis will turn red- but other than that, the tomato and pepper patch is gone.

The kids gardens are gone.

And Andy finally removed the large privet bush and grapevine- and look what we found! More sunshine. (And a seriously leaning fence…hope we can talk the neighbor into removing the tree that is pulling the fence over.)

My herbs are still chugging along in their strip of yard, and I actually have one butternut squash still defying the odds and managing to avoid being eaten by a bunny.

But I’m really excited about next year.  With my garden gone, I sat down in the yard last Friday and just relished my space.  While I had a terrible gardening year- it was not all for naught.  I learned quite  a bit about where we live.  Number one: there are no feral cats in our corner of the city.  Because of that, the critters and rodents are abundant.  Nothing I did this year kept the rabbits away, so we’re going to do the one thing I know to do to beat them.  And that is go up.

Andy is going to build me raised beds that are two feet tall- plenty of height to keep the rabbits out.   The raised beds will also be adaptable, so that we can make one or two a hoophouse and maybe get a jump start on growing season.  Fencing will be our friend, and I’m going to have to invest in floating row cover as well to keep the squirrels out when the seeds are first in the ground.

I’ve learned that next year I want to cut back on tomatoes.  Oh, I love them dearly, but I’d like to focus on the ones that I know taste delicious, as well as the more abundant ones.  I plan to trial one or two new varieties, but 20 new-to-me plants at once are a little silly.   Next year I will have an abundance of tomatoes.

Is it spring yet?

It could just be that I’ve read a little too much Little House On The Prairie, or Sign Of The Beaver, but I’m noticing things in my yard, and the city surrounding me that give me concern.

Namely, the critters.

Now, they are pests in the first place, I’ll give them that, but it seems to me that the squirrels are especially squirrely.   They started early harvesting nuts from the trees, burying them, literally everywhere.  I’ve found half-eaten apples buried in the dirt as well.  I realize that maybe a squirrel has nothing better to do than to scavenge and hide it’s food, but it seems more frantic to me.

And there’s the rabbits.  They’ve been content with munching a little here, munching a little there, but in the last week, it seems they’ve become frantic.  The carrot tops?  Sheared completely.  The Swiss Chard patch, and the one Kale plant that I was excited about have been sheared off as well.  As in gone.  As in, maybe they know something we don’t know and are stuffing their bellies before a long, hard winter sets in.

Is it possible?  Of course it is.  If I was living in the early 1800’s I’d be out in the woods, looking for a muskrat lodge or a beaver dam, to see how thick the mud is.

I hope I’m wrong.

It’s been a trying year for the garden, to say the least.  The best thing about gardening is that there is always a next year.  There will always be another year to try new things and be successful in growing vegetables.

My garden though, is not ready to give up.

My surviving pole bean plants were putting out a few beans here and there- enough for the kids to get a snack, but then something began eating the actual beans- six feet in the air. I now suspect it was voles, as we have ’em.  But as a result, I stopped checking the bean plants.  Well, as it turned out, a handful of beans did grow- and they are huge!  Too huge for eating, but today I harvested and I will let them dry a bit and then have seed for next year.  The beans themselves are delicious and worth growing.  The real reason I harvested though is because some of my other bean plants have put out another round of blossoms.  Since the hot sticky weather passed, they want to grow again, so I wanted to encourage my plants to put out more beans.

By butternut squash is finally producing squash as well.  Crazy, but I have about six or seven baby squash out there.  I saw today that one has been nibbled on, and I really am doubtful as to whether there is enough growing time for them.  But I can dream, and I can spray the plants with soap spray to keep the bugs off.

My tomatillo actually has three lanterns on it.  After waiting all this time, it’s amusing to see it doing something.

I seem to have a serious shortage of bees in our yard.  Something I am going to have to remedy next spring by making sure I have some good attractors for them growing.   I suspect that many of our issues are from the lack of bees.

We also found a miracle in Zander’s garden patch.  A tiny, three-inch cucumber.  A small Poona Kheera managed to survive the baby bunnies.  It was deeply russeted, and ready for harvest, despite its diminutive size.  Everyone waited eagerly for me to wash off the prickles and carefully slice that tiny cucumber so everyone could get a taste.  Oh my, as delicious and crispy as we remembered.  Next year, we will grow more and they will be successful.

The tomato patch looks better and better everyday- provided you can ignore the damage from whiteflies.  I suspect this will be a good week for them, as it’s going to be toasty again.  The other day I picked a Black From Tula to let it sit on my counter- we haven’t tasted it yet.  Today I picked a Valiant, and decided to let the Brave General ripen on the vine for just a few more days- as seen in the picture above.  Dangling just above the general in a lovely cluster is my Gypsy tomato plant.

Earlier this week a neighbor shared some ripe tomatoes, so I went out to my garden and harvested some chard for a simple salad.  Tossed with some black olives and almond slices, it was wonderful to be eating something grown in the backyard.

I’ll leave this post with a picture of my tiny harvest today.  My pole beans that will be saved for seed.  My Black From Tula, my Valiant, and Zander’s teeny tiny Poona Kheera.  This is why we garden- the rewards are always unexpected.

I know it hasn’t been that long since I planted my tomato plants, but it really seems like it has been taking them forever to ripen. In a quick glance I found 6 that were starting to ripen. I am also suspecting that my malakite and green zebra are probably close too, I just didn’t have time to examine them that closely.

The first two pictures are from my two sungold plants. The first one is in a pot while the other is in the ground. I can’t believe the size difference between the tomatoes. The ones on the second plant have to have at least three times the mass of the first.

And here we have the royalty of the garden, the Golden King of Siberia. The biggest one is ripening, as well as one other just behind it to the right. We’ll see how it looks tomorrow, but judging from the amount of color already it should be ready to eat in a couple of days.

Next up is another Russian, the Cosmonaut Volkov. This one was hiding on me, I was very surprised to find a flash of pink. Seems like a pretty good sized tomato, and should be ready to eat by the weekend.

The last of my ripeners (I think I just made up a new word) is a yellow pear. Next year this will be replaced with Yellow Submarine, which is supposed to have a slightly better flavor. The yellow pear plant I keep having to prune back as it tries to take over the garden.

My peppers are doing great. I am debating picking some of the jalapenos so I get some more by the end of the season, but I really want them red. I had taken a picture of my tobasco plant which is finally poking some peppers up into the air but the camera battery died while snapping the last shot. The hot hungarian wax is going crazy, peppers everywhere. If hot pepper rings weren’t so cheap I would pickle some of them. As it is I will be saving them for salsa.

The sweet chocolate finally threw a few peppers too. Hopefully I can get one or two by the end of the growing season.

The last picture is one of me standing in my tomato plants. For reference I am 6’2″ tall, and most of them are as tall as me or better. I wish my cages were 7 feet tall!

A week in the woods was the death stroke to much of the garden.  Without me here everyday to spray liquid fence or cayenne pepper or soap spray, a good deal of the garden was descimated by critters.  And I mean descimated.  My new green bean patch- gone.  40-some little sticks are poking out to the sky with nary a leaf in sight.  My lettuce was completely shorn off, and most of the beet greens are gone too.  I may get a beet or two yet though.  The newly planted kale was digested by something from the insect world- and that is not a cabbage looper- I know what those are.  The scarlet runner beans had their stems snapped by rough winds, and the pole beans had their stems eaten through about 8 inches up.  I have about 4 pole bean plants still chugging along.

The butternut squash is looking okay, as is the delicata, but there are no fruit yet- as there are no fruit on the pumpkin.  The melons are all growing very slowly, and I don’t expect they will bear fruit, really.  The tomatillos are growing and pushing blossoms, but they’re not getting pollinated and are not setting fruit at all.  The peppers are mostly intact yet, although the fruit they bear is small.

The pots that I recently planted with chard, kale, lettuces and cucumbers have been obliterated by squirrels.  I put fresh dirt in the pots, and the squirrels proceeded to dig, dig, dig.  With a nut tree in the yard, they are constantly looking for places to bury their plunder.  I wish we could get rid of that nut tree.

But then there are these.

Those are on one of my Black From Tula plants.

And these are on one of my Woodle Orange plants.

And this is my Brave General.

Then, as I was tying up a few more branches on one of my plants, I spied this little fella below.

My trusty Sungold that I took from a sucker from those plants in my house.  My Sungold plant gave me my very first ripe tomato.  As I popped this gem into my mouth and savored the delicious pop of the skin and the sweetness of the juice, I experienced promise.  This one little tomato speaks of promises to come.  The rest of my garden may have succumbed to the never-ending parade of squirrels and rabbits, but I will have a tomato harvest.  It may be modest, at best, but I will enjoy tomatoes of all shapes, sizes and colors, and I will enjoy every single one.

In the meantime, plans are being made.  Next years garden will have to have fencing.  In multiple places.  The beds are going up.  We need to get away from tree roots galore, so we’re going up a good foot or so.  Where the existing bed heights are, we will attach fencing in-ground to prevent burrowing critters from digging up.  And then every garden bed will have a fence- and depending on the bed, a system in place for floating row cover as well.  We are trying to decide the best lay-out, but I have to confess, other than the tomatoes, I’m looking forward to starting over.  It’s rather saddening to walk out to the garden and take a peek.  Even my sage plant has met an untimely demise.  How did that happen?  I have no idea, but just like that, the plant is void of life.

Next year, the garden will be wonderful, but for the remainder of this year, I will be concentrating my efforts completely on tending and enjoying the tomato patch.

I am at the point where I am going to stop counting the fruit that are on the plants and just count the fruit that come off. I have well over 200 tomatoes on my plants now with more on the way.

This first picture is from my Carbon Tomato that was a megabloom. It is very ugly, but I can’t wait to see how big it will get, and once it starts to darken I think it will be a very pretty piece of fruit.

This next one is from my Purple Russian plant, which is a roma shaped tomato. If you notice the one in the upper left was also a megabloom, so the shape on the tomato is quite a bit different.

This next one is my biggest tomato so far, as well as the most productive plant. It is the Golden King of Siberia, and this one seems pretty close to a pound already. My hands are a pretty decent size, and I threw a quarter in there for reference. Reading reviews on this plant it is said that it may not be the tastiest tomato out there but they are very productive.

This is my Green Malakite plant. It is the king of the garden right now and over 5 feet tall. Over 20 fruit on this plant and looking forward to slicing it up for some grilled cheese or BLT’s.

This is from my Sungold Select II plant, and I mistakenly thought earlier in the week that it was my Black Cherry plant.

The next 3 are Brave General, Cosmonaut Volkov, and then Monomahk’s Hat (I am not sure which is which on the first two).

The last tomato here is from my Cour Di Bue plant, an italian oxheart. A very pretty tomato, I cannot wait to bite into one of these.

My peppers are doing really well too. I am a little disappointed that I have less Jalapeno plants than I thought. I still have 8 plants, but the two that I thought were regular Jalapenos turned out to be Bishop’s Crown peppers.

This is one of my Early Jalapenos.

Here is my favorite, my Purple Jalapeno. I might have to eat one of these this week, they just look tasty.

The last pepper here is from my Big Jim plant. This pepper is a monster!

The rest of the garden is growing great. The Basil is in need of some pruning, I would love to try making pesto. We had our first two zucchini last night for supper, and the carrots are starting to get to edible size.

Next week will be a very late post, probably not until Saturday night. Going on a bit of a holiday as the brits say it. Hopefully it rains a bit here at home while I am gone 🙂