(I published this yesterday, but it wasn’t opening for some reason. I hope you can read it now).
This is the last installment in an ongoing series. You can read parts 1-7 on my profile page, found here.
Well, folks. As you already know, I have been quite busy. My goal was to write a garden update every two weeks. Then I stretched it to three weeks. This time, I have let at least two months pass. So much has happened in that time that I don’t know where to start. Anyway, here is my update for weeks 14 through 22. It’s been about five months since we planted.
In the past two months, basically everything left has needed to be harvested and I tried to clean and save what I could. At this point, the garden is pretty much winding down to nothing. I have some pumpkins that are picked, but still sitting out there, and some cabbage that didn’t amount to much.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally picked all of the dried sweet corn, otherwise known as parched corn. It still needs to be taken off the cobs, sorted for good kernels, and cleaned. We had a problem with cross pollination from the field corn and Indian corn, so most of the sweet corn had some weird kernels that need to be separated from the good stuff. You also have to get the silk and other debris out of it. The best way to do this is to take it outside on a windy day with two containers. Then you just pour it back and forth from one container to the other, letting the wind carry away everything but the corn. We made our first batch that night and it was delicious. I will have to give more specific instructions in the future, but you basically throw it in with the popcorn when making homemade popcorn and dump it out at the same time. It puffs up into crispy, air-filled kernels. Then you salt it all. Although not healthy, this is all the better if you can pop it all in leftover bacon grease. Yum.
With so much reaching its maturity at the same time, I was busy for several weeks with harvesting things, cleaning them, and eating and saving what I was able to, including peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, potatoes, squash, pumpkins, gourds, and eggplant. Freezing is my method of saving, since I have never canned and don’t have the equipment for that yet. If something could be frozen, I froze it. I have tons of frozen red and green peppers now.
I also saved many small tomatoes and some bigger ones. With the bigger ones, I just cleaned them, cut a little X on the bottom of each one, dropped them into boiling water for a bit, and then moved them to a bowl of ice water. The skin just peels right off (this also works with peaches). Then I put them on cookie sheets and froze them before moving them to freezer bags. The pan method is quite helpful in keeping things from freezing together. I wasn’t sure how to freeze eggplant, but discovered that if I made breaded, fried slices of eggplant, I could freeze them and then reheat them in the toaster oven. I just cut thin slices, soak them in salt water, drain them, dip them in a beaten egg, cover them with Italian breadcrumbs, fry them until golden in olive oil or other oil, and then sprinkle with salt. They are good for eggplant parmesan or alone.
I did have a problem with the tomatoes once we received a lot of rain. They all started to split open and rot. I lost at least two thirds of my tomatoes to this problem.
The potatoes were the hardest work to harvest. Unlike the easy way of picking a ripe tomato, potatoes are like digging for buried treasure. For those who don’t know much about potatoes, I will give you the basic run-down. First, you plant the potatoes and build a mound over the row. Then they grow plants with blossoms. When the plants turn brown and die, you can start checking the potatoes by gently digging them up with a small shovel or by hand. You have to be careful not to cut the potatoes with the shovel.
Well, we had planted a long row with red, white and russet potatoes. It took me quite a while and a lot of sweat to dig them all. I don’t think it was the best year for potatoes and most of them were fist-sized or smaller. I harvested about half a paper grocery bag full of each kind and am storing them in the cool, dark basement. Our cat, Zinni, was a big help in the garden. For instance, whenever I tossed a potato to the side, she would run to it, bat it around, and sometimes even wrestle with it. She also liked to spontaneously attack the dried corn stalks, scare herself, and then run away. You might not think that was being helpful, but when you’re doing hard manual labor, a dose of humor will help pass the time.
As for the watermelons, I had a bit of bad luck. I didn’t have that many to begin with. One type had way too many seeds to really enjoy. The other type was actually pretty good. I cut it up into pieces and was enjoying it. I gave some to Kevin and we were both surprised that we grew a good watermelon. That’s when I noticed the moving seeds. Okay, the seeds weren’t moving, but the black beetles that looked like seeds were moving. And they were all over in the watermelon! After further investigation, I realized that the watermelon had a hole in the bottom. The bugs must have crawled in and had a feast. As good as the watermelon was, I had to throw it all out. What a shame.
Not only were there bugs in the watermelon, another gardening problem continued: tons of stink bugs! They were on nearly every pumpkin and gourd, sometimes just about covering the whole thing. Since the weather is cooler, I am also finding them in the garage and in the house. I have a feeling I am on the verge of a massive invasion. I’m getting scared. There are also smaller tan bugs with black spots. I don’t know if they are both eating the pumpkins, but many were lost to bugs eating them. We sprayed Sevin all over the pumpkins, but it didn’t even help. I think stink bugs are impervious to sprays. They are like the cockroaches of the garden. I can step on them, but it’s kind of gross, because they are filled with green, stinky goo. So we had enough pumpkins for our own decorating needs and I gave several smaller ones away, but as far as selling them, I was not able to do that this year. I was going to try, but it was a pretty sad amount and we were so busy. It also kept raining and the garden was really muddy. Maybe we’ll have better luck next year.
Since the frost, everything but the cabbage has died. My beautiful sunflowers and zinnias are no more. All that is left of the sunflowers are the ugly, brown skeletons covered in bird droppings. They weren’t really the kind that has big seeds, but the birds ate the seeds anyway. It was nice when the birds were out there, because while I was working in the garden, I could watch pretty yellow finches. I could never get a good picture, though. Now the birds are gone and there is nothing pretty to look at. It’s the circle of life, I suppose.
The last food item I harvested was my sweet potatoes. My mother-in-law helped me dig them up. We were surprised to find that mice had dug tunnels in the dirt and had eaten huge chunks out of many of them. There were two varieties out there. The kind that was pinker was supposed to be sweeter and they were bigger and nicer. Now, which kind do you think the mice liked more? Of course they ate the best ones, the little stinkers. Hopefully our cat, Zinni, will help out with this pest in next year’s garden.
Finally, I was able to embrace the season of fall and harvest some decorations. I was reluctant to let summer go, but after I started picking butternut squash, pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn, and broom corn, I started to get excited. We planted a good variety of pumpkins and gourds. I ended up with some neat decoration choices for the mantle and the front steps. My favorites were the white mini pumpkins with orange stripes, the broom corn, and the Indian corn. There were so many different colors of Indian corn; some were pastel while others were darker, and some were just cream-colored and purple. It was so cheap and easy to grow, too. I think I bought a pack for a buck and ended up with about twenty ears or so. I definitely got my money’s worth. The raccoons had no interest in my Indian corn, either. The broom corn looks really neat in a vase or as part of an arrangement. My mother-in-law gave me some years ago and I put it in a vase. It keeps its shape and color really well and looks good all year round. My mantle now looks like it could be on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens or something and it was so cheap to just grab stuff from the garden and throw it on there. If you have the room to plant, I highly recommend growing these easy fall decorations next year.
So, we planted our first garden on June 1, 2011, and 22 weeks later, we are saying goodbye to our dear friend. It gave us so much delicious food to eat, provided beautiful decorations, made us get outside to enjoy nature, required us to exercise, and reinforced the fact that a lot can come from some little seeds, a section of tilled land, and hard work. I typically avoid writing about my faith, and the atheists can scoff at me all they want, but I also felt very close to God in my garden. I’m not here to preach, but there is something truly spiritual about working so closely with God’s amazing creation. The complexity of it all is mind-blowing sometimes.
It was a lot of hard work, but hard work is good for us. You should never let life get too easy or you might stop appreciating it and become complacent. It was worth all the work and I am already planning what I want to plant next year. So, for those who enjoyed this series, I’m sorry to say it’s over. Others might be happy to see me stop rambling about vegetables and get back to humor articles. Either way, thanks for following along with my first garden adventure.
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