Fall’s arrival means ending summer gardening for me. It’s bittersweet for me, especially this year.
Many Challenges
Every year brings new gardening challenges. This year brought more than enough. It started with the spring crop of weeds as I didn’t get the cardboard and mulch down over the entire garden. The pathways were ankle deep by planting time.
Many of my crops didn’t come up. There is a black walnut shedding too many leaves, twigs and nuts over almost half of the garden. A wide variety of plants refuse to grow in such contaminated soil.
A new family of groundhogs moved in. So far I’ve eliminated four. The first one leveled the greens which did eventually grow back. The last one wiped out the okra, tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers and lima beans. Number five is working on the leftovers. Other leftovers were collected by a wood rat aka pack rat.
What damage the chipmunks and turtles did was masked by the groundhogs. Turtles do little damage and are easy to remove. Chipmunks are cute, for now.
Bright Spots
Cucurbits ignore black walnut. Groundhogs and pack rats ignore squash, monster squash and pumpkins. Leeks, onions and garlic don’t seem to be on their preferred list either.
This is the first year in a long time I’ve grown onions. It won’t be the last.
We will also feast on butternut squash all winter.
The goats will enjoy monster squash for months. These mysterious squash seem to be a cushaw/Tahitian melon cross. Some crossed with the yuxi, I think, judging by the shape. The one trait all of them share is size. They are big.
Ending Summer Gardening
The squash bugs have finally overwhelmed many of the cucurbits. The winter varieties are shelling even as the vines die back.
The tomato vines still look lush on top, but fall blight is creeping up. There are few tomatoes as they got carted off or eaten by groundhogs and wood rat. The flowers have no time to develop before killing frost.
Only one container of peppers and one plant still have peppers on them. The okra leaves were eaten along with the flower buds.
With the arrival of October, I will be officially ending summer gardening as I start clearing out the summer crops, laying down cardboard and mulching. Instead I will concentrate on the few winter crops growing in the raised beds.