Garden’s End

As we were in Maine for a month I gave up on trying to keep my garden going while I was gone. I harvested everything I could before we left, leaving dozens of cucumbers for friends to take.

When we got home I was not surprised to see that most everything was too far gone, with the exception of the peppers. Today Russ and I harvested what was left, four butternut squash, five tiny Yukon gold potatoes, a couple of green peppers and hundreds and hundreds of cayenne and lemon drop peppers.

Then we proceeded to pull everything out of the ground, the zucchini plant that had grown eight feet outside its bed, the okra plants that reached ten feet in the air with inedible pods eleven inches long, and tomatillos that finally produced hundreds of fruit.

I was amazed how much had actually survived and how much failed this year. The tomatoes were the greatest disappointment followed by the jalapeños, which were both big successes last year. Next year I only need to plant two cucumber plants and probably no cayenne as I will have plenty still left over from this year. Russ is thinking I can make Chili crisp. We shall see.

My two passion fruit vines flourished as plants, but gave no fruit this year. They are considered evergreens so we shall see if they survive the winter and produce anything next year.

I am considering putting a couple things in for fall, but as long as it is this dry I am holding off. No reason for fall heartbreak after summer.