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final garden report 2015
Nov. 18th, 2015 11:49 amWe're putting the garden to bed this week. It was a pre'good garden, though there were some disappointments. On the good side, we had a ton of tomatoes -- I made sauce, paste, and salsa. Tonight I'm going to be making a green tomato and mango salsa with the last of them. One disappointment with the tomatoes is that the main crop was a lovely beefsteak that had a very citrus-y tone. This worked fine with salsa and as a base for chili, but weirded the flavor of spaghetti sauce. It was particularly fabulous on sandwiches, tacos and burgers.
This was my first time growing rutabaga/swedes, and they came out woody, with a lot of worms. Root maggots are a common garden pest. Steinernema feltiae, a beneficial nematode, is supposed to help and I see that they go after fleas, too. Definitely going to invest in some next spring. Also, I planted my rutabaga late in the spring, and it was hot, and I didn't water -- which is why they were small and woody. I'll do better next year.
My corn and quinoa were a complete flop, due to the kids, including mine, wrecking the plants. I guess that big plants are just too tempting. And my neighbor mowed down the quinoa, thinking it was lambsquarters -- quinoa is really just domesticated lambsquarters. I got zero quinoa and one ear of corn, which I ate and it was fabulous.
The potatoes in the tires did better than I'd hoped, given that I'd ignored them all summer. We got somewhere between ten and fifteen pounds out of about 20 plants. Next year I'll add more of a mixture of cut hay and soil.
I have a ton of broccoli seed because I didn't get out there to pick the broccoli before it went to seed. We made broccoli pickles out of a lot of the stems -- cutting off the woody part of the stem was a lot of work and though I think the pickles are excellent, nobody else will eat them because they came out really strong tasting. Very dill and garlicky, and with the punch that true fermentation adds. But really, they're amazing if you're into a very spicy, crunchy pickle.
Selfie of the gardener:
This was my first time growing rutabaga/swedes, and they came out woody, with a lot of worms. Root maggots are a common garden pest. Steinernema feltiae, a beneficial nematode, is supposed to help and I see that they go after fleas, too. Definitely going to invest in some next spring. Also, I planted my rutabaga late in the spring, and it was hot, and I didn't water -- which is why they were small and woody. I'll do better next year.
My corn and quinoa were a complete flop, due to the kids, including mine, wrecking the plants. I guess that big plants are just too tempting. And my neighbor mowed down the quinoa, thinking it was lambsquarters -- quinoa is really just domesticated lambsquarters. I got zero quinoa and one ear of corn, which I ate and it was fabulous.
The potatoes in the tires did better than I'd hoped, given that I'd ignored them all summer. We got somewhere between ten and fifteen pounds out of about 20 plants. Next year I'll add more of a mixture of cut hay and soil.
I have a ton of broccoli seed because I didn't get out there to pick the broccoli before it went to seed. We made broccoli pickles out of a lot of the stems -- cutting off the woody part of the stem was a lot of work and though I think the pickles are excellent, nobody else will eat them because they came out really strong tasting. Very dill and garlicky, and with the punch that true fermentation adds. But really, they're amazing if you're into a very spicy, crunchy pickle.
Selfie of the gardener:
