Garden Update
This photo is of the beautiful cosmos bed that sprung out of the tree falling incident. The tree squashed the cosmos I had planted, but apparently sent the seed spraying out in an arc in a part of the garden that wasn’t planted. The result was this gorgeous bed of cosmos.
That’s the good news from this year’s garden. The rest of the squashed part of the garden didn’t fair so well. Most of the stuff that survived the initial tree damage didn’t make it or didn’t produce well. I’m guessing the root cause (pardon the pun) was the soil, which was compacted by the heavy tree. My formerly loose soil is just all mashed together and since there were plantings already, tilling was going to have to wait.
So, the sweet potatoes grew, but the yield was probably a third of last year. All but a half dozen or so peanut plants were killed, and the ones that survived just produced a few peanuts per plant.
The tomatoes I replanted haven’t done that well. They’ve just started producing over the last month and the weather hasn’t been hot enough to get good tomatoes. The peppers are only so-so. The jalapenos have done well, but the sweet peppers not so much. That, though, has been a problem for me since I’ve lived here. The hot peppers come in later than I expect but have good yields, but the sweet peppers come in later and don’t produce that many peppers. If anyone has any growing secrets for sweet peppers around her, pass them my way. I’ve assumed it’s heat, since I was always able to grow them fine in southern Ohio where the summers are hot, so I keep moving them to wherever I think the very hottest part of the garden is. It could be that they would have been fine there if they had had a full summer to grow.
I did replant basil and that grew fine, as I figured it would. Of course, it’s just luck that I actually got some picked because I’ve been procrastinating on dealing with all of it and completely forgot to cover it last night when frost was predicted. The temperatures got low last night but no frost here in Blacksburg, so the leaves only suffered a few black spots. I just finished putting a year’s worth of pesto in the freezer and my, is it tasty!
I’ve had a good crop of tomatoes and tomatillos to put into the freezer, plus lots of green beans. The potatoes did pretty well this year, too, and my fall crop of peas is coming along.
Our garden actually looks pretty good, due to all the flowers planted in it. Most people wouldn’t know that more than half of the stuff was destroyed.
October 11, 2012 - 1:39 PM
I nobody else will jump in, I’ll take a stab at it. All my pepper raising is confined to 5 gallon containers and a garden will out produce the pots everyday. Ionly raise one type of pepper that I’ve kept going since 1995, and dry and save the seeds every year. The rest I BUY. The earlier I plant them, the better they seem to do. I saw them slow down when the heat was so bad in July. And when it cooled down, they picked up again. Plumb full of blooms and little peppers again, but didn’t have time or weather to grow very big. My thoughts? Peppers like spring and early summer and a lot of heat slows them way down. I kept mine watered good as did a buddy and we both got a second crop I reckon you could say, altho smaller in size. By far the most and prettiest ones were in before the furnace came on in middle of summer. Earlier is better and cooler is best.
wd – that’s interesting and pretty much opposite of my experience. Summers in southern Ohio were hot and humid – heat index consistently in the 90′s and low 100′s – and the peppers grew great. They’d start coming in strong in August and produce all the way until frost. Lots of them and big to boot. I had them in my garden in full sun, getting baked all summer (although they were watered regularly) and they grew with very little effort from me. Here, the yield has been disappointing.
KH, my pots are up against the back of the house with cedar siding exterior facing due south. I think I collect and store more heat than say an open garden space. Therefore my “earlier is better” comment. I’m probably ahead of others by 2/3 weeks. That probably factors in with my late bloom also.