(HOST) It’s time to take stock of the garden year just ending, and commentator Henry Homeyer says that on the whole he’s had a pretty successful harvest.
(HOMEYER) The gardening year is pretty much over. We’re still picking our last batch of lettuce, and some beets and carrots remain in the ground. A few broccoli, the late ones I planted by seed at the end of July, are still producing. But our tomatoes and potatoes, the heart of the garden, were picked long ago. Our summer squash have been eaten, or put in the freezer. The winter squash are resting in a cool upstairs bedroom.
This year I tried a number of heirloom winter squash. I’ve decided that the reason some of them are not often grown is this: they don’t produce enough to keep commercial growers happy. I grew one called "Pomme d’Or", which means apple of gold, and that’s what I got: apple-sized squash. And just two, count them two, of those pretty gold squash from my one plant. To me, that’s not worth the garden space. In fact, most of my heirloom squash produced just two fruits. By way of contrast, a new type of delicata squash, one called Sugar Baby, produced half a dozen or more per plant.
I grew a few kohlrabi this year, something new for me. I started them early from seed, and was delighted by the results. They’re as easy to grow as radishes, and nearly as fast. They had deep purple outer skin, with a mild-tasting white flesh. They sit up above the ground, sort of like big radishes, but with stems from the base going up to the leaves. I used them raw in salads, and cooked in stews.
Our carrots were splendid this year. I grew them in a raised bed with 8-inch tall wooden sides. Last fall I prepared the bed, creating a loose loamy soil with no rocks and plenty of compost. I planted early in the season, and -this is key – I thinned them early. Carrots need space to grow, and those tiny seeds make it difficult to space them out well. But I thinned every week, and they rewarded me. I was finally able to meet my goal of growing foot-long carrots.
Each year in the garden is different, and try as I might, I’m unable to predict how my plants will do. This year I grew three purple cauliflower plants. Of the three, only one produced a head of cauliflower, while the other two grew big leafed-plants, but nothing edible. All three had the same start, the same growing conditions.
So don’t feel bad if your garden wasn’t perfect this year. They rarely are. I’m not ashamed to admit that our tomato crop was minimal, even though some of my friends had bumper crops. I crowded the tomatoes and they suffered more diseases than usual. So I ended up buying a bushel of canning tomatoes this year to make sauce. But I’ll do better next year. Of course I always believe that – and sometimes I’m right.
Henry Homeyer is a garden writer and columnist. His new book is "The Vermont Gardener’s Companion: An Insider’s Guide to Gardening in the Green Mountain State".