Our summer gardening season has come to an end, just as quickly as it began.
As August progressed, and we continued to reap veggies and fruits from our garden time took her toll on our little backyard haven. Bugs abounded, and became more than just a nuisance. Giraffe was getting bitten upwards of twenty times every time we went outside. The pumpkin plant took over the yard, and under the massive umbrellas of its leaves millions of six legged, two winged creatures thrived and multiplied.
The cucumber was the first to go. Our pumpkin plant choked it out. When it was clearly no longer going to produce, husband pulled it out of the bale for me. We found one final cucumber, about eleven inches long, and relished eating it. :) In all, though we would have loved to have more cucumbers we were greatly satisfied with the 9.5" to 11.75" size we saw in the cucumbers we did harvest.
Then something else happened. My tomato plants fell over! The beefsteak and the heirloom tomatoes which were booming like you've never seen - healthy, beautiful tomatoes - fell right over, cages and all. The bales were composing so well that they simply could not take the weight of the fruiting plants.
Ahh... so this is why they say to stake and wire the straw bales at the beginning of the season. This is why I do not really find pictures of tomatoes in bales growing through cages. Natch. Never mind. The tomatoes on the porch fell over and continued to grow. These will also.
Then my cherry tomatoes began to taste really bad. I mean really, really bad. I have no clue what happened here. They were still producing in great quantities and great size, but they tasted like dirt. In fact, they tasted dirtier than dirt. I figured that was as good a sign as any that time was up, so I went ahead and pulled those myself.
Next my broccoli bolted. Yup, you read that right. It up and bolted! lol You can see here that the new, large broccoli heads that I was waiting to get 'just so' burst into flowers right before my eyes. I hit Google to see why this would be. It turns out that when we hit our hot streak, the soil overheated so the plant took that as a chemical cue to flower and go to seed. Who knew?
Then another tragedy struck. This one felt malicious, and caught us off-guard. Our pumpkin plant, which had produced nine pumpkins total (six of which made it to fully ripe), suddenly began to die. When we moved closer to examine it, we could see that some unscrupulous person had come into the yard and pulled it completely out of the bale. :( :( :(
This felt so unkind and thoughtless! I do not know if it was some random neighborhood child. We do not live near anyone specific, but people and children from the neighborhood behind us sometimes cross through our yard. I also wondered if it was the mean lady who lives behind the fence. In the first two years we lived her, she deliberately mowed down every plant I planted in MY yard. The truth is, I honestly do not know who did it. I just know that it made Giraffe cry.
You can see in the same picture what I meant by the tomatoes fell over... they genuinely fell over onto the ground. lol Staking never was an option for us, as we had promised the homeowner's association that our garden would be temporary, and we'd remove it at the end of the year.
These various things indicated to us that the end of season was, indeed, upon us. Choked out cucumber, bolted broccoli, pumpkins ripped out and left to die, tomatoes on the ground... yeah, it was pretty much over. Husband took an hour or so and ripped out the plants - allowing me to harvest the last of the tomatoes so they could ripen in the house. In spite of the many swarms of bugs now living in the composting straw, and even a bumblebee nest in the tomato bale, he worked hard and got them torn apart. We took the torn up straw and used it for mulch at the back of the yard against the treeline. At one point, hubs found a mouse! It did not squeak, but I pretty much did! lol
The very last thing we harvested was the celery we had left to grow in the shade up by the house. I had mistakenly forgotten to blanch the celery plant, so it was a bit bitter to the taste. You can see it was HUGE!
I cannot tell you the sheer number of slugs and pill bugs we found in this thing, either! I am not even kidding. Giraffe was excited, too. lol She got containers and was gathering bugs and slugs like nobody's business. She is back in home school, and one lesson suggested that the student might enjoy making and tending a bug zoo. Which, incidentally, is exactly what it sounds like. Various containers filled with backyard bugs that will inevitably meet their demise inside my house. haha Giraffe looooves bugs, and our yard has certainly had more variety this year than ever!
So anyway, that is how our season ended as quickly as it began. Four bales placed into the yard and treated with care and even affection. Four bales ungraciously ripped of their guts as plants were pulled, and then hand-shredded into mulch. Four black spots on the lawn, laid bare and waiting for new grass seed to be scattered, and grow.
It was a beautiful summer. Our garden was such a source of delight for us. More than that, it was an ongoing science lesson for my children. :) We made friends with bees, where we were once so afraid. We learned deeply about each of our plants, and how they grow and produce. We harvested cucumbers that were just shy of a foot long, where once was a three-leaf plant. :) We successfully raised six small pumpkins. We nearly drowned in tomatoes, albeit mostly very small ones at the end. We had a head of broccoli and decided we like it better steamed than fresh. :) We had our own celery, and decided next year we probably would not do the celery or the yard-encompassing pumpkins again.
Finally, our little watermelon seeds grew. :) We have one single plant left of our garden, and from it a vine with a few small watermelon flowers peeking out.
Husband kept the half-bale of straw the plant is growing out of, and set it atop the now-vacated planter on the patio. The planter which held and sustained twenty-six fully grown beefsteak tomato plants through a period of several months, and brought us such lovely tomatoes once we got the knack of watering them correctly. :) The sheer amount of bugs at the end made us say things like "We will NOT be doing this again next year!" Not two weeks later, I am already thinking fondly of the experience we had and saying to myself,
"Maybe... just maybe..."
