Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello again!  Well, here we are...Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2011.  Lois and I have tons of stuff to be thankful for - each other, our home, our friends, our health and so much more. Not surprisingly, we also are thankful for our garden, which gave us so much bounty over the past nearly nine months. And the bounty continues, if only in a small way, as we brought in some fresh sugar snap peas this morning from the garden. That's right...we still have peas coming in on November 24. This is the very latest, by at least three weeks, that we've ever had something fresh to pick from the garden. We've had no hard freeze yet in the city, but I would suspect that many areas out in the county probably have. The picture below was taken yesterday when we got a sudden and short lived break in the clouds at mid-morning.

                                               Sugar snap peas on 11/23/11

We froze quite a bit of what we grew and some will be served tonight - the green beans in the g. b. casserole,  and the fresh peas on the salad. We used much of the zucchini to make and freeze the "Poor Man's Crab Cakes" and have 34 pounds of tomatoes frozen for soups, sauces, and stewed tomatoes, etc. (but not on tonight's menu). The only thing we canned this year was green tomato relish. I can't say we miss canning - the vacuum freeze system we have makes life a whole lot simpler. And, of course, some of the berries went into making ice cream. And speaking of berries, the raspberries are still producing small amounts. I picked a fresh handful just a few days ago.

                                      The small freezer we use for tomatoes.

Of course, I can't neglect to be thankful for Little Squirrel who provides constant entertainment with the antics she goes through to let us know she wants more peanuts. She did everything but knock on the kitchen door yesterday and only got out of the way when I opened it. She also climbs to the kitchen window sill, sits up on her haunches, chatters a bit and stares at us. The blue jays are gorgeous to watch, but certainly aren't as social as Little Squirrel.

                                       Little Squirrel waits for a peanut

 We've already begun planning next year's garden. We'll be using spaces then that we haven't used in the past to grow vegetables. And we really have to wait to see whether the cherry tree decides to produce ripe fruit....because if it doesn't, we're going to have to do what a young George Washington did to his!

Again, Happy Thanksgiving!

The End of Our Gardening Year

I hung on as long as possible, but finally gave in to the fact that the 2011 gardening season is over. It was a long run, though. On Feb. 17, the temperature in Lancaster was 71f  which got me outside to fertilize the asparagus patch and spread black plastic in between the rows to help the ground heat up a little earlier. We started the lettuce seeds in peat pots on March 2 and bought/planted some starter lettuce plants directly in the garden on March 15. The first asparagus came in on April 20 and the first lettuce picked on April 22.  April was very wet, though, with 17 days of at least some rain. July was blistering hot which caused some loss in the blackberry production. The last of the harvest came in when we picked the broccoli on November 11. The total produce for the season came to 313 pounds with the most productive week being August 8 - 15 counting for 62 pounds.

We're planning some changes for next year. Our experiment with the county park plot was definitely a one time only effort. The soil is poor, full of weed seed, and the area attracts an incredible number of squash and stink bugs. The 5 plots closest to ours were all abandoned and overgrown by mid-July. We will change one of our backyard beds from flowers to butternut squash, grow the pole beans in a different area and so on. In 2010, we had a total of 312 pounds of produce, so the loss of the park plot wont affect total yield.

In just over 3 months, we will be starting the 2012 garden. I CAN'T wait!