What I learned this year

Well, all that rain was pretty hard on the yard, and last night with a risk of frost in parts of Saskatchewan, it feels like fall although it is the end of August. What a short season! All in all, it has been the worst gardening year I can remember. But the year has taught me a couple of really important things.

• I have learned that we were under watering our tomatoes and our carrots. None of my tomatoes have the blossom end rot they some times get, and my carrots are more plentifully than they've ever been before.
• If I am not going to use any chemicals on things like kohlrabi and I see the white butterflies, I have to cover the rows with mesh. By the time I see the caterpillars, the plants are done.
• My squashes and melons don't do well on the back fence. Even when we take the tree out, there just won't be enough sun.  I need to save that spot for peas and beans.
• The south side of the house did really well for cucumbers - I have never had so many, even with so little sun. I think I will put in a one or two foot square foot bed up the south side of the garage to see what I do with cucumber there next year. However, I would keep them in the greenhouse much longer and acclimatize them better. They were fried once and cold-stopped once.
• The green house peppers didn't get pollinated nearly as well as the south side ones, even with doors and windows open. We need pollinate in there by hand or move all plants except basil out.  The basil, bu the way, was awesome, even with no real sun.
• My rhubarb by the clothesline is not getting enough sun. I need to move it into the front if I am hoping it will produce as well as my other plant.

Today I puttered about my yard pulling spent plants and picking for about three hours. I made myself bouquets of flower and picked a large ziploc each of beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and corn. I also picked our last apple, more Merlin-free strawberries (my nephew who even eats the white ones), lots of peppers, some zucchini, and dug some more carrots. We'll need to buy milk products next week, but not much else.

This weekend I still want to pick rhubarb and freeze more herbs, but my day reading a book in the hammock and puttering around the yard is the most relaxing time I have had in weeks.