I hope you’re comfortable, because I’m going to be long winded…

I’m in the mood to take stock.

Our summer is largely over. There are still sweet potatoes in the ground, and we’re still harvesting peppers, and it looks like we may get a few more tomatoes off the two remaining (half-dead) plants, but that’s it. I pulled up the yellow squash plants today, and we’re having the last squash tonight for dinner. The yellow squash did get vine borers, so there goes my theory about sparing it by setting it out in the garden late. The beans have had it, the nasturtium is gone, and even a few of the marigolds seem to be heaving their last breath; victims, I suspect, of a combination of weeds, sweet potato vines, and a few very heavy rains of late pounding the heck out of them.

This is OK with me, as I have other things to occupy me. But before I start blogging too much about the fall garden I do want to take a moment to reflect on Spring – largely to help me shape my goals for fall.

So, did I meet my goals this spring?

Pretty much.

Goal number one was to produce more food than I did last year; ideally so much that I am forced to freeze, can or dehydrate food to preserve it. Gosh knows I have done that. I should have made goal number one to have a blast, because I sure did do that.

I bought and learned how to use a hot water bath canner. I’ve made BBQ sauce:

Spaghetti sauce:

I've stewed tomatoes:

I've made salsa:

I've made pickles:

And relish - which I don't seem to have a finished picture of.

All of that, and I completely stopped ordering from my local organic produce source because I had all the produce we could eat and them some.

So I’m going to call number 1 an unqualified and resounding success.

My second goal was to not make the same mistakes I made last spring. My main mistake last spring was to crowd my plants in a small garden plot, and I definitely didn’t do that. And yet I still did have some plants crowded out this year. Remember how my once-robust zucchini shouldered this poor Ichiban eggplant right out of existance?

I also did things that I hadn’t even considered when I wrote those goals. I started some plants from seed, and got over my seed-sprouting apprehension.

I tried crops I’ve never tried before and they turned out great.

I met a few enemies....

And a made a few friends!

I’m ashamed to say that my biggest failure is the same as last year - WEEDS - and I can't even bring myself to show you a picture of that. :0)

My biggest lesson has been that a plant’s got to eat! By which I mean that they need certain nutrients in the right proportions, and if they’re not getting them from my garden soil, then as their host, it falls on me to oblige.

So here’s my arsenal – for fall, and for everything that is currently in containers. Left to right it's tomato tone, an organic liquid fertilizer, fish emulsion (most of what I'm growing in fall is greens), sulphur (don't even ask me what to do with that because I don't know, but I found it laying around in the shed), and bone meal. Up top, L to R, is the water meter, a couple of misters, and in the tray are a spoon and gardening gloves for myself and my daughter.

You’ll see I’m getting organized. I’ve had this little “lawn buddy” for years. I’ve just been moving it around out of my way, and lately my daughter has been playing with it. I didn’t even mean to buy it – I thought I was buying one that was much bigger, and when Lowe’s delivered it to me along with 25 evergreen trees a few years ago (yeah, you’ve seen shots of my yard. You surmise correctly. The trees all died.) I thought, what the heck is that? I thought I was buying a wheelbarrow. (In case you missed it, that was my “dumb blond” punch line.) Anyway, I bought fish emulsion the other day, and I assembled the various useful things I have around, and I’m ready! Bring it on!

So, with all of that said, I want to lay down some new goals for fall:

1. Acquaint myself with how to nurture everything that I have planted (nutrients, etc.). This is a MUST.

2. Keep out the WEEDS!!!!!! Another MUST.

3. Continue to fill my freezer – greens of all kinds, broccoli, Brussels sprouts – YUM!

4. Figure out how to “root cellar” vegetables, with or without a root cellar. (This goal being largely precipitated by all the beets and the few radishes that I didn’t eat fast enough and that perished in plastic bags in the bottom of my fridge before I figured out that I shouldn’t have washed them for long term storage, or stored them in my fridge that long at all.

5. Possibly get a pressure canner and learn to use it. We’ll see about that one.

Thanks for hanging with me through this spring and summer! I really did have a super time, and I am SO grateful to Cindy and to The Tasteful Garden not only for feeding us this summer but for the opportunity to grow more, and more quickly, both as a gardener and as a person, than I otherwise would have thought was possible. Moving on to fall! NO FEAR!!!!!