Garden Fall

Just like that, it’s time to put the garden to rest. The lush, beautiful plants that took 6-7 months to grow, came down in just 15 min or so…

The first one to go was the Health Kick tomato, which is a little ironic. It produced ok this year, but overall the plant was quite sick from the beginning and lost a lot of leaves early in the season. Still had the most beautiful flowers of all my tomatoes though. Nothing compared to pepper flowers, however. They are the most elegant, simple flowers of all, and definitely my favorites to take pictures of in the garden!

Cutting the plants down is a bittersweet feeling. I don’t quite have the best method figured out. Since the summer is quite mild here in the north, it usually takes a long time before the fruit starts ripening. This year I only got ripe tomatoes from mid august. What that means is that, by the time autumn starts to creep in mid september, I typically haven’t had enough harvests yet to be tired of the gardening season.

Usually I like to wait until as close to the first predicted frost date to take the garden down. Unfortunately, that also means standing outside with 10 degrees, freezing my hands off, trying to work as fast as I can. So, last year, I decided on a different approach and to clean it all out while the temperatures were still manageable outside. Around mid september, on a sunny day with 12 degrees or so, I chopped everything down. Then, I sat quietly by the kitchen window, in mourning for my bare balcony outside and feeling empty and sad…

So this year I’m trying to take the plants down one at the time, as they show me that they’re done with the season. I’m hoping that a slow downsize will work better on my frail psyche and result in a smoother transition into the despair of the winter months. Only time will tell if it works better or not!

As soon as the temperatures started going bellow 15 degrees at night, I cut all the new foliage off my plants in preparation. This would be the signalling they need to focus their energy on ripening the fruit they already have on, instead of putting on new ones. I did this for my tomatoes and peppers and it worked quite well. Although it didn’t exactly result in night to day ripening, it did seem to kick off the harvest a bit. The only peppers that were spared were the padron, since they can be harvested quite green anyway, it was of no interest to me to cut off new growth.

By the time it was bellow 10 degrees at night, I knew it would be too cold for my chilly plants, and so brought them in the house. I trimmed off any dead leaves and gave them a nice hard shower at an angle, to remove as many bugs as I could from under the leaves. Then I watered them with a beneficial nematode suspension, to take care of any eggs in the soil. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’ve been keeping the shower routine at least once a week, keeping the aphids at bay. An added bonus is that they are so pretty when they ripen, that it distracts me from the slowly dying garden outside.

Both the Honey Drop and the Accordion cherry tomatoes outside are still producing, totally missing the memo I was sending them by cutting off the new growth. But oh well! Soon after the haircut, side shoots were quick to take over and even now I’m still seeing flowers and baby tomatoes on them. And that’s fine by me, because even if they don’t ripen before the first frost, I will still collect them and turn them into a delicious salsa verde in the oven.

The Accordion variety, in particular, was such a good surprise for me. It was so prolific and super tasty. Definitely the sweetest tomatoes I have ever grown! The first ones I got to harvest had some blossom end rot, but after amending the soil with some bone meal it stopped being an issue. See my previous “Troubleshooting your garden when disasters strike” post for more info on similar problems.

Some of the green tomatoes might still ripen inside though, even off the vine. That is what I did with my Confetti tomatoes. The plants were getting powdery mildew at an alarming rate. Even worse than that, the tomatoes were all cracking and starting to rot on the plant. That was the ultimate reason for me to take all the fruit off and get them inside. Even if they are not in the best shape, they will still make for amazing jam!

The Adelaide Festival tomatoes, in comparison, are still going strong! The plants have definitely stunted, with no new growth since I cut them back. But the actual fruit on them still looks amazing and the plants are resisting the rain and cold, so I’m leaving them outside for as long as possible.

The basil has also been down for some time now. As soon as it started getting colder, the plants started getting infested with aphids and I decided to just harvest everything and turn it into pesto. It turned out delicious and it’s been enjoyed in quite a few ways since! I made fresh pasta a while back for a dinner with friends, and I love it on some crackers with cured salmon, or a pressed sandwich with mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes. It also stores amazingly in the freezer and keeps the freshness of basil to enjoy even in the middle of winter.

The cucumbers are also slowing down by now. But I did get a few to ferment and have in salads, so I would call it a small win, especially after the struggle they put me through this year… Although I didn’t end up growing the variety I wanted, this one turned out to be quite delicious as well. Nothing beats the flavour of a freshly picked cucumber with nothing but a pinch of salt! Plus, since it turned out to be a pickling variety, the cucumbers stayed nice and crunchy and didn’t get big seeds inside like a regular cucumber would.

Another fun experiment I’ve tried this summer was an oyster mushroom box. Although not technically part of the garden, it was such a cool experience to grow mushrooms inside. They grow so fast and turned out delicious simply tossed in a dry pan with a bit of oil, thyme and garlic at the end, yum!

Overall, it’s been another really good and productive summer. I’ve enjoyed so many BLT’s by now, fresh pesto, and my own homegrown padrones! Not to mention the snacking on cherry tomatoes and snow peas. The best part of all, however, was the view upon returning home and the utter joy this garden has brought me throughout the spring and summer months! I can’t quite put it into words, but I’ve recently found this poem by Wendell Berry that describes the feeling better than I ever could:

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”