Yeah, well my garden was not very special this year, hence why there is not too much posted on it this time. There has not been too much exciting about it until now. The remains of the Japanese Tyhoon Pabuk did a number on us here with 5+ inches of rain and high winds of unknown speed. The weather guys said we were supposed to get 45-70 mph gusts. I figure it was somewhere pretty close to the highest amount due to how far our neighbor's beehives got tossed. Thankfully our hives did not go anywhere.
My corn was flattened to the ground. Only an inch or so kept it from the mud.
This is the extremely difficult to get "Yukon Supreme" 45 day sweet corn I was growing out for seed. I may manage to salvage it yet. Only two seed companies had it. Three years ago one had a crop failure and the other went out of business.
Jerusalem artichokes were leaning against the fence or down. The Cosmos and Zinnas were flattened. Tomatoes were off their stakes and on the ground. Jerusalem Artichokes were leaning like the Tower of Pisa or worse. My pea trellises stayed up.. and so did half the peas, but the top halves fell over. This could be a good/bad thing. There is some mildewing (see photo) happening already on some varieties that I was saving for seed production, but in opening them up, so far it seems like it is only on the outside.
There is good news out there in the garden however. Squash and pumpkins are looking great. Not looking 'autumnish' on their leaves at all. No yellowing or browning at all. The bright orange ones are "Golden Hubbards", which are new for me this year and pass with flying colours. They will get planted again next year. They grow under adverse conditions, are rather pretty and are prolific. They seem to be about 15-25 pound fruit. I shall see how they taste.
I forgot to post it, maybe I will tomorrow, but with 3 days of wind and rain, there were so many butterflies zooming about in the garden on the fallen flowers between showers. They must have been very hungry. They were quite lovely and I enjoyed them.
Offhand I suspect that this is a "Potimarron" and a "Cheyenne Bush" pumpkin. Both of these varieties are doing rather well too.
The 9-10 varieties of carrots are looking good. I will dig up the two kinds of potatoes we grew this year and get them into the root cellar as soon as I offload some apples out of there making juice and then canning a bunch of them. I think I should have a couple hundred pounds of spuds.
The two varieties of romaine lettuce I set to seed are doing well.. although have not set seed heads yet. I may have to pull them and hang them upside down for awhile to see if I can get production out of them that way. I have seed in reserve as I never plant it all out each year, so try, try again next year if I fail at getting seed from them.
I did not grow out my favorite lettuce this year however. These ones needed conservation much more desparately.
And the pole beans. I need to pull the bush beans and hang them in the woodshed ASAP (but still have to time it as long as I can) to dry, but the pole beans seem to have come out of the storm unharmed.
The kale will come back even though it looked like moose trampled it even though it was just the rain that pounded it. I think my Cosmos and Zinnas are toast. The celery, beets, Asparagus peas, mangel beets and some other things will survive, like this lovely row of patty pan squashes below.
Soon I will dig up and put tomatoes into buckets for the winter. Hopefully on a dry spell this winter, I will be able to get the greenhouse up and running.
Our garden was nothing to really write home about this year until now when there was something eventful which happened it it.. the storm. It did not help it was a month and a half late getting in due to having to get it fenced. Then the wacky hot, cold, long wet cold, really super hot, back to no sun again for a week at a time. That is what this year was for. Experimentation out there to see what worked and what didn't in this first year garden in the mountains. I know I have blackberries and Deadly Nightshade to destroy between now and next spring. It will get there, it will get there... Rome was not built in a day and a farm/garden is never done.
Cedar
