Happy Saturday!
This has been a strange garden season indeed. We’re approaching the second week of November and there’s still no first freeze in sight for me, although checking the forecast, there’s a potential for a freeze on the 18th but the long range forecast is not very accurate sometimes, so we’ll see. Still, strange indeed.
For one, my tomato plants are still producing. However, I will have to cut them down before the freeze turns them to mush. No one likes to be touching the mushy leaves. Last weekend, right before it rained the entire Sunday, I grabbed one of the many cardboard boxes in the garage and harvested all the tomatoes – ripe an unripe. Since then, several have ripened and I’ve found myself enjoying the Blue Beauty tomatoes.
This is a new variety I tried this year because I saw that it’s a crack-resistant variety and though it still cracked, it didn’t crack as bad as the other larger varieties of tomatoes I’ve tried.
If you don’t know, tomatoes crack when there’s a sudden surge of water/moisture and it’s too much for it to accept at one time. The skin doesn’t have the room to expand, thus cracks appear. This happens to me a lot because it would rarely rain in the summer and when it does rain, it pours a ridiculous amount, much more than the amount I usually give the plants via drip irrigation.
Anyway, can you believe this is only the second of these tomatoes I’ve had this season? I planted the plant in early May and I only got one ripe Blue Beauty tomato in around July. Then in late September, when I came home from my trip, I suddenly found there were at least a dozen unripe tomatoes on the plant. I think this tomato is meant to be eaten raw. I’ve been putting it in my sandwiches and the taste is so unique than any other tomatoes I’ve tasted. The taste reminds me of the Cherokee Purple tomato. Maybe fruity’s the word? My beginner palate is not sophisticate enough to summon a response.
As the day length falls below 10 hours, the growth of the plants will slow down and that’s when I’ll say the garden season is officially over even though I will have things growing over the winter.
I would say the biggest challenge in the 2026 garden were the insects and the rodents. I had aphids, earwigs, and the evil cabbage moth in the garden, not to mention, the mouse. It’s why I’m building the greenhouses with a permanent mesh roof and removable frames of window screens. I certainly hope these will work for me in 2027. I also hope that all these measures will help the plants to stay stress-free and happy since the mesh on the roof will provide a 33% shade and the window screens are supposed to block most of the sun’s UV rays, which, I found, is often the thing that cause stress.
One thing I am doing different this year is the chop and drop. Instead of tossing garden waste into the compost, I’m either ripping to shreds or taking a pruner and cutting it into small pieces and throw it back to compost in-situ. It’s been said this method will improve soil.
My hope for the 2027 garden is that I will find a way to grow more leafy greens in the summer instead of relying on kale, cucumbers, and tomatoes for dinner. I also hope to find a new way to plant sweet potatoes because the way I’m planting them now is not working for me. Not only the ground is so full of flower bulbs that the sweet potatoes don’t have the room to grow but digging them up is not doing my sore back any favors.
I also hope to try grow bag gardening again. The plants in the grow bags did terrible this year and I am blaming the soil I got. I tried having my soil deliver in bulk this year and though I paid a premium for those, the soil turned out to be heavy with clay instead of the stuff I saw when I went to inspect the soil. Unfortunately, there’s no return nor refund. I used all but a little bit, which is currently mixed in my homemade compost. I hope with a little compost, it should lighten the soil.
I hope you enjoyed reading my yammering about the garden. Thank you as always to Natalie hosting Weekend Coffee Share and for reading and have a great week ahead.
