Post-garden

[Wingnut]

What have you done with your garden reapings this year? I've got green tomato relish* in the waterbath canner at this moment. There was a little extra left from the batch, so I tried some with chips...oh my goodness! Sooooo good! I've got enough to make another batch. I have tomatoes, carrots, and bell peppers still to use up as well.

*Recipe found here: Farmgirl Fare: What To Do With All Those Green Tomatoes? Try My Salsa-Like, No Sugar Green Tomato Relish Recipe!

[Guest]

We didn't move here til the end of July, so didn't have a chance to put a garden in, but I'm so excited to have a garden space! We also have a few fruit trees and grape vines. The late frost this year was hard on all the fruit in the area so we just got a few plums to eat. Next year I should also have cherries and apricots. This year I canned several quarts of grape juice and a few jelly jars of grape jelly. Yum!

[NeuroTypical]

Our garden was destroyed by bunnies. So we vent our frustration by throwing things at the bunnies.

(I don't know which is more pathetic - an old fat guy throwing rocks at a bunny and missing repeatedly, or a bunny too dumb to know he's having rocks thrown at him.)

[Guest]

Mmmmm dumb bunny cake.

[Vort]

Our garden was destroyed by bunnies. So we vent our frustration by throwing things at the bunnies.

(I don't know which is more pathetic - an old fat guy throwing rocks at a bunny and missing repeatedly, or a bunny too dumb to know he's having rocks thrown at him.)

If you ever hit the bunny, the good eating that results might repay you to some small degree for your lost garden.

[Smudge]

I got one butternut squash shaped pumpkin, one tiny green bell pepper and some cherry tomatoes - so not really enough to do anything with.

If I hadn't wrecked my ankle picking blackberries to enter into the town Horticultural show (they placed 1st) I would have been had a massive harvest of them. I do have some elderberries in the freezer - I am going to try making jam at some point.

I only moved into this property in June so don't have much of a garden - but I have started composting and hopefully over the will will be able to build some raised beds so I can grow more next year.

[classylady]

I planted too big of a garden this year. I'd say about half of it didn't get eaten. We gave a lot away to neighbors. DH and I went out this past weekend and picked all the green tomatoes. We have about 4 to 5 grocery sacks full of them. I don't have a stove top that is good for canning, so we will just try to eat as many of them as possible as they ripen. We had a bumper crop of about 5 different varieties of tomatoes. Our peppers did all right. So did our zucchini. My crook neck squash died, which was opposite of last year. Last year our zucchini plants died while our crook neck thrived.

I've decided to give up on growing melons. I planted crenshaw, honeydew, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Every year I try them, but they just don't do well at all for me. I only got several small sized melons and they weren't particularly sweet. My lemon cucumbers did really well, so did my Armenian cucumbers. I only got a couple of regular green bush cucumbers. Last year my cucumbers struggled and I didn't even get one. I'm not going to do egg plant next year. I got about four egg plants off our two plants, and we ended up not eating them.

I planted cauliflower for the first time this year. I won't be planting it again. It did okay, but not worth the space it took up in the garden. Our broccoli did okay, but I don't know if I'll plant them again either. For some reason we just didn't eat it. Our cabbage was full of earwigs, so ended up not eating it. Our green beans did quite well, but I'm going to go back to my old variety. I tried a new variety this year and it was okay, just not as good as the old variety. The corn I planted, grew, but the ears were very small. The same thing happened last year. I don't think I'll do corn again.

For the first time I planted pumpkin. Just one plant. I'm really impressed at the pumpkins I got off that one plant. The grandkids are excited for the pumpkins, as am I, and the pumpkins are all out on our front porch as Halloween decorations. I'm definitely going to plant more next year.

Next year I want to try potatoes. I've never planted potatoes before. I also want to get some strawberry plants established. Also, maybe try carrots. I haven't planted carrots because of how rocky our soil is. I'm thinking if I can find a shorter variety, they should do alright.

Long story short: We probably spent more money on our garden than if we would have just purchased the small amount of produce we actually ate. But, I don't care. It was satisfying anyway.

[Smudge]

Try planting the carrots in pipes with sand or compost - that is how competitive growers grow them

Also if you have compost bin - you will get great potatoes if you grow them directly in the compost bin! That is what my mother used to do

[mordorbund]

We didn't move here til the end of July, so didn't have a chance to put a garden in

The pioneers didn't arrive until the end of July but they still managed to plant.

I saw plenty of green cherry tomatoes and green strawberries in my garden this year. I didn't see too many ripe ones because my kids picked them and ate them as soon as they turned. Now I understand Grandpa's rule: "Don't tell your ma or grandma that the snowpeas are ripe or the crows will eat them before we can pick them."

[Bini]

We moved so we don't have garden anymore. But prior to packing up and leaving, our lovely neighbour hooked us up with the best freshly-picked jalapenos, bell peppers, and tomatoes. He also gave us some pumpkins, small ones, for our daughter. The bell peppers and tomatoes are gone but we have a freezer full of various jalapenos and hot peppers in general. I'm deciding what to do with them.

[Guest]

The pioneers didn't arrive until the end of July but they still managed to plant.

I saw plenty of green cherry tomatoes and green strawberries in my garden this year. I didn't see too many ripe ones because my kids picked them and ate them as soon as they turned. Now I understand Grandpa's rule: "Don't tell your ma or grandma that the snowpeas are ripe or the crows will eat them before we can pick them."

The pioneers didn't have Walmart 3 miles up the street.

[Zeitgeist]

My garden story has a terrible moral (as in "moral to the story").

I live in a 2-unit building in a big city. No yard, and neighbors' houses touch our building on both sides. On one side is a little grocery store. The grocer there hates the other resident of my building, because the grocer built some strange penthouse-like structure on his roof and didn't follow the city building codes. The other resident of my building reported him to the city, because our city is in an earthquake zone and it wouldn't be good to have a wobbly wooden structure towering over our building.

Anyway, I have a small garden in a 2nd-story patio, and for about a year I collected organic waste and put it in a big plastic container. My idea was to make my own compost, but I was too dumb to realize that you have to do special things to make compost. You can't just let organic waste rot on its own. If you do, the rotting waste begins to smell like manure. The smell got so bad (my eyes would water when I went out to the patio) that I just decided to throw it all out. So I dumped the whole thing in my trash receptacle one night and figured the garbage collectors would take it the next day.

But my trash receptacle wasn't LDS (it wasn't sealed, LOL) so the smell came out and wafted directly into the grocery store. A few hours later the grocer came banging on my door accusing me of putting "gobs of manure" in my garbage and causing all his customers to stay away because everything smelled so bad. He was utterly impervious to facts. No matter how detailed my explanation got about it being simple organic waste, he was convinced that I had a secret mountain of horse manure in my house (why would I do such a thing?) and was trying to discard it in bits with the weekly garbage. He even told this ludicrous story to his customers, who swallowed the whole story hook, line, and sinker. I'm sure his hatred for the other resident of my building fueled this nonsense.

But it was a good lesson for me. People believe what they want to believe, hate can blind you, and utterly fictional stories can circulate freely as "proven" facts. The whole sorry experience did teach me an important lesson not to believe gossip automatically. And also to discard organic waste quickly.

[classylady]

Zeitgeist, I don't know whether to laugh or commiserate with you.