The rains have come to Oregon and our summer garden is winding down. Saturday was the last dry day, so it was time for us to harvest produce, remove dead plants, and roll up the drip hoses.
All my squash vines had bad cases of powdery mildew and were dying. My Jack Be Little pumpkin plant produced the most squash of any. It was a very bad garden year for squash. The next most productive variety was Carnival with four whole squash!
I seemed to have averaged one pumpkin or winter squash per vine with a couple of plants producing two. Pathetic! I’m not sure whether this was caused by the late planting, the very cool summer, or lack of pollination. It could very well be all three.
I have one very late green pumpkin that isn’t going to ripen in time. I left it out in the garden hoping for more sun. Most likely the frost or rain will kill it and then I will just feed it to the chickens.
I pulled out my Tiger Eye bean plants and shelled them. The beans did an excellent job drying on the plants. Someday we will grow enough dry beans to actually eat some.
Lee dug our two rows of potatoes. We planted them in late June (along with most everything else in our garden) and weren’t sure if we would even get a harvest.
We ended up with 108 lbs of potatoes from our 60 linear feet of row. That’s on par with past yields, and not too bad considering we planted third-generation potatoes really late in the season.
The popcorn is going to be a bust I think. I checked several ears of corn Saturday, but none of them were ready. We’ve had torrents of rain since then. I am expecting the corn to rot, as I don’t think there is much sun in the forecast for October. With the potatoes beds nicely tilled, I am going to plant garlic in them as soon as it stops raining. On a bad note, as we were digging potatoes we think we found a few symphylans. I am going to do the water soil test to make sure. If we do have them, rototilling and crop rotation seem to be your options for dealing with this pest.
My one cayenne pepper plant has turned red with peppers. I haven’t actually picked them yet as I’m not sure what to do with them. Does anyone else out there plant things without knowing what to do with them?
My Brussel sprouts are still growing. I tend to refer to them as “green balls” as I seem to forget their name 99% of the time. I actually had my first taste of Brussel sprouts this year, which was why I decided to plant some. It’s never too late to try a new veggie.
Our favorite cherry tomatoes, Sun Gold, are still chugging along. I actually have a lot of tomatoes that need to be picked, but I’ve been burnt out on canning for the last few days. As a final preserving project for the year, I’m going to can up some batches of stew tomatoes.
) that supposedly New Yorkers love. We like the fermented pickles you can occasionally find at the store, so we had high hopes for these.
