End of the year wrap-up

The garden is done for the year.

The patio is completely shaded now for most of the day.  All of the plants have been pulled up, the perennials in pots were moved to the sunniest area for the winter, the cat guard has been replaced over the pumpkin bed and the patio furniture is packed up for the winter.

I decided to cover the big beds with landscaping fabric (I didn't have any black plastic) because of the aphid problem we had this year.  I'll probably also be trimming out all of the leaves from the strawberry plants for the same reason.  Don't want any pests wintering over in the leaf debris.  Hopefully the fabric will also be adequately light blocking and kill off any lingering weeds and weed seeds.

The winter rains, which will likely last until June again, will start up tomorrow so it's been a bit of a scramble to get things cleaned up before the rain starts. 

In the end I harvested over 12 lbs of green tomatoes that refused to ripen on the plants.  I should get a lot of green tomato salsa from them. 

My harvest total hit 121 lbs. and a cost of about $5.84 per pound.  Not a bad tally considering the weather, the costs this year being higher, and the fact that those added costs will carry over into next year.

My biggest costs were the grow room setup and my seed order, combined they cost nearly $350.  The grow room will be used for many years and the seed order was more than enough to provide seed for next year and possibly even the year after that.  Meaning if I get 120 lbs. again next year the cost per pound should be much lower.

The couple of garlic I left in the ground this spring had split into separate cloves and were sprouting, so I separated them completely and replanted them into one of the whiskey barrels.  I will probably pick up a different variety to put into the other barrel over the winter and see if I can get a better garlic harvest next year.

This is my final garden post for a while, not much to write about with the garden shut down for the winter. 

In non-garden news I am having a pro come out to measure my kitchen for the new flooring.  I'm going to bite the bullet and let them do the work since I'm feeling stressed about the amount of chores to do this Fall. 

Hope everyone out there has a fun and safe winter and I'll be back to posting when my brain is back in gardening mode again. ;)

Over 100 lbs!

Despite a terrible year for most of the hot weather crops, the harvest of my Small Sugar Pumpkins put my harvest total over 100 lbs.

September was unseasonably warm, and October has so far been warm and dry, so I may still see more ripening tomatoes come in.  But I am content to have reached 100 lbs. in my small garden, especially considering how long it took for Spring to warm up and summer to begin.

I even discovered one tiny green butternut squash starting out back, and one Fairytale pumpkin that was also tiny and green... apparently they didn't get the memo that they should be ready to harvest by now.  I am happy to see any pollinated fruits of either plant though.

Last week I was able to collect nearly a pound of seed peas from the Oregon Sugar Pod II plants, and hopefully will collect almost as much again of the Cascadia Snap peas... though I'm not sure what I'll do with so many pea seeds.

So that's the update from my garden.  Hope everyone else's are doing well and getting ready for the coming winter.