Stephen and the kids went to our garden today to clean up for the winter. I was in docent class, so they took care of it without me. It sounds like everything went well.
We cleaned out the cucumber and pumpkin vines a while back. Between the powdery mildew and some animals, we didn’t have any pumpkins. We had picked our carrots and didn’t have much else grow except tomatoes. Our tomatoes were crazy. We had pint after pint after pint of cherry and grape tomatoes. We also had a decent crop of Roma tomatoes. The problem with Roma tomatoes is that they ripen a couple at a time. That was a hard adjustment for me since I canned 120 pounds last year – in two days. Most of our tomatoes went straight to the freezer and at the end of the season, I made some sauce.
So, for today’s clean up, we mostly had tomato plants and stakes to clean up. I suggested that Stephen take a garbage can with him. That turned out to be a good idea since the waste truck was a bit of a walk from our plot. We didn’t think to take a rake, but someone lent them one. That turned out to be useful for raking tomatoes that had split and fallen into the beds. Our stakes were muddy, so Stephen and the kids went back for them later in the day when they could take towels to wrap them in so not to dirty the car interior.
We had used single green plant stakes. They turned out to be rather useless for our huge tomato plants. Next year, we need to invest in much beefier stakes. We also need to plan on more room per tomato plant. Our plants took off and shaded a good portion of other plants. By the end of the season, we had a tomato garden.
The kids are still the highlight for many of the adults and couples at the garden. They enjoyed all of the attention during the garden visits.
We plan to plant another garden next summer. We’ll probably try to start some plants indoors and have an earlier start with a more comprehensive plan. Hopefully, our weather will be a little more garden friendly next year as well.
