It’s time to put my beds to bed. I have been putting it off for reasons other than the cold and the tangled mess of refuse it will create. I just don’t want the gardening season to be over.
But my squash vines are unsightly and dying. The tomatoes are not ripening. The bean vines long ago stopped producing in any meaningful way and have lost most of their leaves. All my potatoes are harvested. The celery root is ready to come out of the ground.
I cleared out the first bed two Sundays ago by picking the last of the Swiss Chard, a double bale. The stems were narrow and tender, and the colors were far deeper than seen earlier, likely due to the cold weather and the fact that I left the leaves out for so long in the false hope that my garden could survive the winter. The Kentucky Wonder bean vines covering those trellises and winding up the gutter pipe managed to put out one last pound of beans. Not bad for four or five year old seeds planted “just to see” if they’d grow. Some beans dried and went to seed, so I collected those seeds for use next year.
The tomato vines have grown rattier with each passing day, yet they were still completely heavily laden with fruit, all green. We collected each possibly usable tomato and placed them in paper bags to ripen indoors. The brown and cold-injured fruits went to be composted. I pray the tomatoes will ripen in the bags and I can squeeze out one last panzanella from them, as they are largely Sungold and black cherry tomatoes. I’ll let you know what happens. The larger mortgage lifters, black Russians and my daughter’s yellow tomatoes did not fare well once the cold set in.
One and a half pounds of pattypan squash emerged from the squash bed, which started look a bit ratty during Labor Day weekend. The buttercup squash vines had long since died; the pattypans, a summer squash, gave a good fight. The butternut vines, however, keep pumping out flowers, even in their unsightly condition. They also bear two new squashes – little as they are, I’m keeping that area untouched, in the hopes that they will mature before a serious frost. Hope springs eternal.
It does, actually. Due to four days of rain in the forecast this past weekend, I decided to leave my celery root in the ground in the hopes that each will plump up just a bit more. I left the chili pepper plants alone, since those peppers stand on the ends of the plants like firecrackers – a bit of red-hot cheer in the shortening days of autumn. A girl can dream, can’t she?
Eco-Nomics:
Double Bunch of Swiss Chard: 2 lbs @ $2 = $4
One Last pound of beans @ $.99 = $.99
Pattypan Squash: 1.5 lbs @ $1.50 = $2.25
The last Zucchetta Trombolina: 1.5 lbs @ $.99 = $1.49
Total: $8.73
Last Eco-nomics posting: $177.32
This harvest tally: $8.73
Ahead by a Total of: $186.05
“Whole Foods” Pricing: $x 3.5 = $651.18
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