Fall 2020 Garden

I kept meaning to talk more about gardening this summer but, like most people, I was both overwhelmed and under-motivated. Concentration was shot, both by events from the world and by what was going on at home. It turns out that those of us who became parents in the Before time did not expect to have to be parents without playdates, without our extended support networks, without even playgrounds. 

 But enough about that. One of the few things that I prioritized this summer was our garden. I was far from alone, as it turns out, since many people began or expanded gardens this year. I'm actually pretty pleased by that, even though it meant some of the seeds I wanted were sold out. Even chickens were apparently sold out! Not that I was in the market for chickens...sadly. 

 As always, this year had major ups and downs. The summer started with a massive, massive overload of lettuce. Which was just fine, we gorged ourselves on salads for several weeks. Yum. So yum. It turns out that we don't get sick of Cobb salad, we just run out of ranch dressing. And then we move onto other salad varieties. I also started the summer being inundated with turnips. Last time I planted this variety it didn't germinate well, but it was tasty so I decided to plant more. Well, this time they all germinated. I ended up giving away 40 turnips to people in the community through my Buy Nothing Group and the food distribution for needy families. I like turnips, just not that much! Even after gifting so many, however, I still cooked with turnips a bit more than my family liked for a couple of weeks. And, of course, a few were total losses due to bugs in my organic garden. It happens. 

Overload 

 Hands down, my biggest win this year were my potatoes. I spend a whole $30 on seed potatoes, which when I purchased them I thought was pricey, possibly stupidly so. I spent about $70 on all of my other seeds combined this year (since I had several seeds left from last year that were still perfectly good) so to spend almost another 50% on potatoes alone made me take a deep breath and really consider if it would be wroth it. It was. I know it's generally accepted that growing your own potatoes is "not worthwhile" (I have several friends who will happily state that) but they're wrong. I planted three rows of potatoes, so I spent $10 per row. More than I spent on any other crop or single row. Most of my rows are more in the $5 range, assuming that I use all of every seed packet--which I don't.(Yes, I'm nerdy enough that I priced out my rows to see my cost/value.) However, what I got in return for each of those rows was incredible. I dug up the first row and just started laughing at myself, because I kept digging. And digging. And digging. I had an able and enthusiastic helper in my toddler, who kept announcing, "P'tayno! P'tayno!". That first row unearthed 90 lbs. of potatoes. I did the math for you, it was just over a penny per pound. I have never, and will never, be able to buy potatoes for that cheap, let alone organic Yukon Gold and German Butterball potatoes. According to this website, the most dirt cheap potatoes to be found are $.25/lb. They are not top shelf, organic potatoes either. And, even more damning, the post is from 2018, before the insane food inflation that happened this year alone.

Just a few potatoes

The second row was approximately the same weight, though the potatoes were smaller. (That row was almost entirely the German Butterball, which tend to be smaller.) The third row was the first I planted and the last to be dug up, in October. The plants were so developed that, even though I had hilled it pretty thoroughly (I thought) earlier in the summer there were potatoes completely sticking out of the ground. They turned green and can't be eaten. (Too much solanine.) The rest of the potatoes, though, were perfect. This row was almost entirely Yukon Gold and they were massive. This row came in at an impressive 100 lbs, which is less than I thought it would be but I'm not going to complain. Even factoring in some loss (due to rot and other issues) I'm still coming in far, far ahead by growing my own potatoes than I would be by buying the absolute cheapest potatoes from the store, which also wouldn't have the same quality. 

 Even after giving away 70 lbs. to family and friends, it's still a lot of potatoes. I will be giving some away through a community pantry, but I also wouldn't have planted potatoes if we didn't like to eat them. And we're doing a decent job of it. So far family favorites include potato leek soup (this one's vegan, though I tend to go ahead and use real butter), loaded baked potato soup, and oven baked fries, in addition to all of our usual potato filled recipes. I found bougie ketchup at Costco to go with the fries and life is absolutely delightful. 

Tomatoes and Squash 

 My second biggest win this year was with various squashes. Just as last year, I managed to grow a bunch of sugar pie pumpkins, and I got even more zucchinis than I did last year. Enough to share with some friends, and to put a bunch of shredded zucchini in the freezer. Unlike last year, I staked my zucchini's so that they would get more air flow and I was able to prune them easier. They still developed powdery mildew (is that even avoidable in this climate?) but it took a while and didn't seem to impact the productivity of my plants until the very end. From now on, I'm staking all of my zucchini plants for higher yields. It also saves room in the garden, so it's just a better way of growing all around.

Sugar pie honey bunch....

The pumpkins are waiting to be either frozen or canned, I haven't decided which. We're running out of room in the freezer but I'm out of canning jars! In the meantime, they're sitting outside waiting. After giving away two to my brother, we still have a dozen pie pumpkins, which will be made into waffles, baked oatmeal, pumpkin bars, and pumpkin logs. Despite the name, pie pumpkins aren't actually the best pumpkins for pie, nor is pumpkin actually what you get when you buy canned pumpkin. "Pumpkin" used to be a catch-all name for winter squash. The canned stuff is actually a type of butternut, which has a stronger flavor and makes a better pie. (They're also amazing keepers. I had one on my windowsill--not the recommended way to keep them--for 9 months before I finally cut it open and it was just perfect.) 

 I also got three large carving pumpkins, which the kids have been asking to carve since July. I've explained that if we carve them too soon they'll get moldy before Halloween but that explanation doesn't seem to stick when something so exciting is on the line. Since we only have two kids and really only need two pumpkins, the third was given to my cousin's family. 

 More even than the squash, though, I consider my tomatoes to be my second best crop. We tried a different method this year, growing them up strings to an A-frame that my spouse built for me. Despite the warnings of a friend I still didn't quite take into account how heavy the plants would be when they were covered with tomatoes and pretty much all of them fell. However, before then they had time to develop hundreds of tomatoes. We were eating fresh tomatoes like...well, like we really only do for a short time each year. HusbandX was cutting them up and salting them for snacks, then being yelled at by our toddler because "they're my pone-atoes!" One of my varieties was a small slicer called German Lunchbox that is, thankfully, very prolific. Every time I harvested I had to pay tithes to a tiny tomato thief, who will happily snack on raw tomatoes. We ate BLTs, snacked on tomatoes, and I discovered the best sandwich ever: homemade sourdough, cheddar, sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, grilled. That was pretty much all I ate for a few days, with a side of snacking tomato. To think, I used to dislike fresh tomatoes. Now I know it's just the bland store-bought tomatoes I dislike fresh.

 

Best sandwich ever.

In addition to all of the tomatoes we're still eating fresh, I canned a bunch. I found 24 oz. canning jars (they look like extended pint jars) and they are the perfect size for our diced tomatoes. I filled 19 of them. Then I took some of my paste tomatoes and cooked them down into a plain tomato sauce. I canned it in 4 oz. jars, plus 2 half pints. I'll use them for pizza, and that amount should make 14 pizzas. 

I actually have more tomatoes, the last of them, to deal with. A bunch are still green, so I'm looking for a green tomato salsa recipe from a family member. I'm also considering sticking some in a paper bag with a banana, which will give off ethylene gas and help them to ripen...theoretically. It could also just cause them to rot, but they'd do that out in the garden anyway so I don't lose anything by trying. 

A total garden fail 

 So no one gets the idea that my garden is always generous and hugely productive, I did have a major failure. My corn. The failure crop always changes, but I always have at least one. This year, it was my corn. We still have a bit of the Glass Gem corn I grew last year (which turns out to be gorgeous but made an indifferent popcorn, so I ground it up for meal and made fascinating looking cornbread), so I decided to grow a different variety. This time I decided to go for an actual cornmeal type of corn, and found another beautiful one. Montana Lavender Clay Corn sounded like fun, so that's what I grew. And I blew it. I'm not sure what I did wrong (maybe drought stress?) but I only got a few small ears with not much corn on them. ??? From what I can tell other people have excellent luck with this variety and love it, so I assume I did something wrong. Oh well, I can't excel at everything. And what corn I did get was totally worth it. I made cornbread that was a beautiful lavender pink color and it tasted just as lovely. I will definitely try growing this one again. In looking at it further, it seems that it also matures early, so places with long growing seasons might even be able to get two harvests of corn. It's not a particularly tall plant, either, so row cover fabric should be able to fit over it and extend the growing season. Might be worth a try?

The garden in mid-summer,
with the tomato A-frames
and seeds being started
on the patio.

Taking the garden to the next season 

 This year I actually got my act together to plant a dedicated fall garden. In the past I've carried hardy plants forward, but with only a few exceptions I've been really bad at starting plants in mid-summer for fall and winter. Well, this year I did it. I got broccoli and cabbage started at the end of July, as well as some onions, and managed to plant them out in August. Some of them were started under a row cover to protect them from insects and, as I discovered in the spring, that was 100% the way to go. The plants that were covered are universally larger and healthier than the ones I didn't put under cover. This includes a few I weren't certain would survive being transplanted, since they were nothing more than nubs of stalks after the insects ate all of their leaves. But I started them early enough that the plants are all growing well, even the non-covered ones, and I should get a fair amount of vegetables from our garden this winter. 

I planted some greens, and discovered that one good way to get pretty much a 100% germination rate is to leave my seed packets out in the rain. #Gardenerfail By the time I discovered them the seeds had not only germinated but were growing into the paper of the seed packet. So, I tore up the packets as best I could and planted the whole thing. If I get any lettuce, spinach, and bok choy this winter, this will be why. 

 For the first time ever, I ordered garlic, a variety called Music that's supposed to just generally be great in our climate. I'm excited to try something new, although I'm a bit worried it might take up space that I'll want in the spring. So we'll see how this goes. 

 My other autumn plants include carrots and chard. My gardening friends and I all agree that, when it comes to greens, you either grow too much or two little. I'm trying to err on the side of too much, so that I can take my excess to a community pantry that was set up in my neighborhood. If anyone else out there has too much of anything this winter, it might be worth looking into whether there's one in your neighborhood. Or start one yourself! If that's too much, check to see if your local food pantry will accept homegrown produce, or post it on a local giveaway board. There are so many ways to give excess food to your community. If it's an unusual thing, however, like kohlrabi, maybe add a couple of recipes to go with it so people know how to use it. :) 

Composting in place 

 To support the insane amount of food I'm getting from my garden, naturally I need to add things back in periodically. The sheet mulching I did when we built the garden will keep it fertile for a long time, but I'm still growing intensively enough that to keep up the productivity I should be adding things back whenever I can. So I did. In one of my winter rows I did trench composting. That is, I dug a shallow trench and put in our vegetable scraps and eggshells. I'm glad I didn't try to plant immediately, however, because I dug the trech too shallow and attracted some sort of animal pest. (In my yard, it was either a raccoon or a rat. I've seen both.) So now I know, and in future will dig a much deeper trench. But aside from that one hiccup (which didn't damage anything, nor did the pest actually take much, mostly just spreading it around) it seems to be working very well. I did it when the soil was still warm, so the scraps should break down quite quickly to immediately add nutrients into the soil. 

 That was only for one row, however. One of my tasks this autumn is to do some trench composting in at least most of my rows, to get them ready for spring. Especially in areas with heavy feeding plants like the corn, squashes, nightshades, and brassicas, adding amendments every year and moving them around the garden instead of planting them in the same place each spring/summer will help keep my garden healthy and productive. And, frankly, trench composting is the easiest way to do that. Seriously. Give it a try. 

Putting the rest to bed 

 On my list of chores this week is to pull out my row covers and get them up, keeping my plants a bit warmer and helping them to keep growing as far into the fall as I can. But for many plants, such as my tomatoes, the season is unequivocally over. The plants are dead or dying, they're no longer producing. Instead of pulling out my plants I cut them off at ground level, leaving the roots in place to rot. This helps keep at least some of the plant's nutrients in the soil, helps the microbial and fungal elements of the soil, and keeps the soil from getting too compacted over time. Especially in our heavy, wet winters here, soil compaction can be a major source of gardener despair. So I leave the roots and compost the rest of the plant to add back at a later date. Then I put the garden to bed. I'll rake the rows back to being somewhat tidy--a task I'll do again in spring, but is necessary in autumn so that the rows don't just ooze into each other and lose all definition. I'll put up row covers and, in one case, put down some black ground fabric to help retain heat. (It's an experiment I'll talk about later.) I'll do my trench composting and then, for the most part, the garden will just rest. Sleep well, garden. See you again in spring.