September in the Great Pacific Northwest was a dream. Probably 25 days out of 30 were blue sky and temps in the mid 70's. In a normal September, right after Labor Day the weather turns to shit. Fog, weather systems with rain, very chilly nights, grey days. I've been gardening for 15 years now and with our mild climate, 2 to 3 harvests of some vegetables are possible. This year was basically a write off as I couldn't plant the things I normally do in March-April until late May-early June. My wife passes away in mid May and the garden goes unattended for a good stretch of time. Many of the things I plant every year didn't get planted. Fortunately the stuff I did get planted in late May early June did alright. I have lots of Zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, green beans, cukes for pickling, potatoes, chard, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and all the perenial herbs. The apple tree looks like the usual 2 boxes worth. My biggest guessing game in the fall is my tomato and pepper harvest which are planted in my growdome. It doesn't offer the temperature protection of a typical greenhouse. Yes it gets quite warm in there during the day but doesn't offer much protection at night when fall temps can hit the low 40's and upper 30's. Tomatoes always get hit hit with some sort of blight in September and it's the begginning of the end for them. Peppers usually keep growing until a good hard freeze. Decided today October 1th, to harvest all the tomatoes even though most were still green. I've learned the hard way that tomato plants can be hazardous to your health when stalks and stems are covered with mold and any movement of the stalks or stems releases this cloud of mold. Mold is the main cause of colds/illness. Seems every year after messing with these tomato plants I get a fucking horrible cold. Even though the weather has been great lately, there really isn't any great payoff in seeing how long into the late fall/early winter you can keep a tomato plant going. Tomatoes will still ripen on the blighted, moldy plant until it really gets cold. Harvested green tomatoes will ripen and turn red eventually and there is a ton of recipes using green tomatoes. I've got about 35lbs of green tomatoes that will be useful for a month or two. Who knows when this great weather will end. Let you know in a week if I got sniffilous or I picked a good time to cleanup the tomato mess.
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If you are in a horror movie, you make bad decisions, its what you do.
That reminds me, I need to procure some local sweet corn and get some canned. Canning corn is a messy worthwhile effort. Corn needs almost an hour in a pressure cooker, one of the longest of the vegetable group. Looks like the Indian Summer is over as the Jet Stream is going to be camped out over us this weekend.
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If you are in a horror movie, you make bad decisions, its what you do.