It’s the waning time of the year. We’ve been harvesting, processing, storing, and eating what we sowed back in May. We’ve had considerable successes, notable failures, questionable results, and object lessons and now is the time to consider all of them and get ready for next year.
Now, just to be clear, the harvest isn’t all in and won’t be until late in October. But most of the crops are done in one way or another and I think we can read the writing on the wall.
It was a strange year in terms of weather. We had a fairly warm spring—good forties weather as early as the end of March. I was able to get the peas out quite early. It stayed warm throughout June and got downright brutal in mid-summer. We had a few days above a hundred in early July. Rain was quite sporadic. We would have a space of a day or so where we might have a full inch over a couple of days and then two weeks of nothing. This was during that heat wave.
The combination was hard on some things, good for others. We had melons for the first time in years.
The new soil in the garden was also a challenge. We filled the main garden to a depth of about 18 inches (about .45 meters) at the deepest point. The remainder we used to top off the raised beds and mixed in with the soil in part of the east garden.
The composted soil had two qualities we didn’t care for. The first was it was, essentially, black. In the heat wave, the soil got quite warm. Several of the plantings didn’t take it well. Second, the soil had a strong tendency to clump when it dried. It made it hard for delicate new growth for crops like carrots. Where it was mixed in (such as in the east garden) what we planted did better.
That’s the general issues. Now for the details. We’re going to proceed east garden, main garden, raised bed, and fruit.
East Garden
There was little in the east garden this year. We planted potatoes, some adorable tiny tomatoes, volunteer squash, a few cold crops, and experimental barley.
The potatoes did okay. Not great. We got about fifteen pounds worth—which, if you’ll recall previous harvests, is pretty pitiful. The volunteer squash did quite well and we pulled in several good-sized gourds: spaghetti squash and what looks like some kind of butternut. Volunteers may or may not be identifiable. We compost our kitchen waste and that is probably the source for most of the volunteers.
The asparagus did very well with six-foot, feathery stalks by the end of the summer. I expect many good meals come next spring. We also planted groundnut next to the bed and we had groundnut vines twining through the feathers. Glorius.
We tried barley in the bed next to the asparagus and something grass-like came up. But it was indistinguishable from a grass weed so we’re calling that a failure. That’s the problem with the grass family: they all look alike until they seed and then it’s too late.
The cold crops didn’t do well at all. That corner of the east garden has gotten too shaded by the adjacent maple. We’re just going to have to either cut that branch or give up on the space. Wendy thinks she can make the thornless blackberry work over there. I’m dubious.
So, I wouldn’t say the east garden was a failure but neither was it a resounding success. Put it in the “questionable results” category.
Main Garden
We were very ambitious in the main garden, what with the new areas now available for cultivation and the increased depth of soil. Probably too ambitious. If we took one object lesson from this year it’s to concentrate the effort on less variety and increased commitment. We just planted too many different things.
I put up a map of the main garden earlier in the year. (See here.) We haven’t harvested the giant Japanese carrots or the sugar beets yet. We’re giving them as long as possible. So, we’ll talk about them at a future date.
The carrots and beans were my biggest problems this year. I’ve talked about this before. I just could not get a good bean crop going before the rodents got them. I did, finally, get a crop of pole beans and bush beans but not enough to eat. Just enough for next year’s seed. If we can get the plants more than a foot high, they seem to be safe. But until that time, the voles and mice think of them as smorgasbord.
We’ve been considering different possible solutions for this, including growing them in the greenhouse and planting them when their big enough. We need an outdoor cat. But the fact that the previous two cats we had that spent time outdoors did not come to natural ends gives us pause.
The carrots just did not like the new soil. Whole sections didn’t germinate at all. Those that did, didn’t do well. We got a crop of Danvers 126 once they got going but there weren’t many of them. We have some ideas on how to handle this next year.
We also didn’t have much luck with the cold crops. It was just too hot, too long. The early crops didn’t have a chance. I tried some late planting and, it must be said, they’re doing well but it is October and we don’t have a lot of time.
(We have a sort of reverse crop pattern. We get good lettuce out of the greenhouse hydroponics in the winter but not so much during the spring. Weekly winter salads are fun.)
The radishes tore into that soil like it was nothing. In fact, they were so efficient and grew so quickly that I’m thinking next year to use them to break up the soil, harvest them, and then plant more delicate carrots in their place. Not all of the radishes produced, however. We had very good production from the Soro and French Breakfast varieties and not much else. Not much difference in taste between any of the varieties: a radish seems to always taste like a radish.
Except, of course, for the daikons. The daikon in the picture above was small. We were in daikon and carrot salad all summer. There is one very large diakon left in the garden that we plan on harvesting in the next week for a grand farewell salad.
We read about a Hopi method of planting corn, squash, and beans in a modified three sisters method. The idea was to plant the beans and corn in small groups and then the squash nearby. The beans were supposed to grow up the corn in a sort of trellis and then the squash would entwine the area.
We used Bloody Butcher variety of corn, which is quite tall. Planting it in small groups made the corn vulnerable to winds. We won’t do it that way again. The beans didn’t take—see above—but the squash did well. We pulled in several gourds.
That said, this is a case where we planted too many varieties. We had five mounds of squash that pretty much went nuts. But because the planting was so dense, we had a numerous yield but not very many big fruit. The Lakota and cushaw did fairly along with the butternut and spaghetti. But the pumpkins never got very big. There just wasn’t enough room. Good but not great results.
It was pretty cool to see the squash grow over the trellises as if they were beans. It’s a jungle out there.
We had good luck with amara greens. We’re definitely going to do more next year. We tried purslane, as well, and liked the taste. But it got away from us. The amaranth just never did well. Tomato, zucchini, and celery did great, as always. But we had one—count them—one cucumber. Peas did well as I said before. Not a great crop but enough for seed.
And, as I mentioned, this year we got melons! First time in years.
Raised Beds
We had our now welcome volunteer tomatoes and they were doing great until we got an infestation of hornworms. We did get some tomatoes and seed. But those tomatoes had problems. Peppers and strawberries did well. This is the third year for the strawberries and they just didn’t look that great so we’re going to replant next year.
We had very good luck with sweet potatoes. They grew quite well right until the deer decided that sweet potato leaves were just the thing for a late-night snack. We haven’t actually harvested them but I think we’ll do all right.
We did get some volunteer squash that, like they always do, like to grow over everything.
We have two sets of raised beds: birdy beds, that are about three feet tall, and regular wooden beds that range from 4-6 inches deep. We use the lower beds for onion family: garlic, leeks, onions. We haven’t worried about them because what wild animal is going to eat an onion?
Rabbits, apparently.
We have a huge crop of rabbits living on the property. And they reproduce like... well, rabbits. I’m guessing food was scarce when they attacked one of the onion beds. Not sure how we’re going to handle that next year.
We’re going to net some of the birdy beds to help keep some of the crop for ourselves.
Fruit
We had a lot of success with the various fruits this year. We’ve rebuilt the blueberry house but didn’t finish it in time to keep the birds out. So, we lost that crop. Oh, well. But that was made up for by the quarts we got from the outside two bushes.
On the apple front we just started harvesting them this last weekend. So far we have about a bushel from two trees and hope to get another before we’re done.
This year I got a dozen quince from my trees. That is more than double the harvest I got last year. That was about fifteen pounds before we cut them up and processed them—say an eight-pound yield.
Quince are hard fruit and not so great to eat from the tree. Though, I do hear there are varieties that can serve in that capacity. Not mine. They also come off the tree a bit astringent.
I skin them and cut the flesh away into relatively thin strips. Then, I layer them into a crock laying down sugar between the layers. The sugar draws out the water and softens them. It seems to remove the astringency, leaving a sharp, delectable flavor. After a while, I pull them out and put them into the dehydrator.
A few quarts of blackberries. But the drought seemed to have an effect on them.
We’re still harvesting pawpaws. Something on the order of forty pounds so far. So many that we’re having trouble figuring out what to do with them. We tried to make a fruit leather from about ten pounds worth. It came out all right—sort of a pawpaw brittle. I also made about ten gallons of pawpaw wine. We’ll see how that turns out.
We’re thinking next year trying to sell them. The problem is pawpaws are fragile and they’re not very pretty.
The big star this year were the pears. We got pounds and pounds of pears. We ate many of them fresh. Dehydrated pounds of them. And created quarts of pearsauce. (Like applesauce but better.)
Didn’t get much in the way of mulberries—we were too slow. The birds got them.
In the next month, we have persimmons and chestnuts. Both are still on the tree. The persimmons are a little confused. They like an October frost and it’s not at all clear if we’ll get one. The chestnuts are the big crop for October and November. That’s our flour supplement.
We’re coming along on our farming experiment. We will never be self-sufficient. We don’t have enough space and New England isn’t the right spot. Even if all the stars were to align, no one can ever be truly self-sufficient on an individual level. Such a goal can only be attained at a community level and even in the best of times that hasn’t been the case. People have always traded for things they couldn’t grow themselves.
That might well be our next step.
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