My garden's toast...

[Deleted]

We had our first frost last night. Down to 26, so it was a hard frost. I had a bunch of bell peppers that I was waiting on

(it's really hard to type - there's this THING on my foot that's biting the crap out of me!!!)

the peppers were just turning red, and there was another crop of jalapenos just about ready to pick, and of course the rest of the tomatoes and absolutely SCADS of basil that I had wanted to harvest and dry. I should have done this last week, but I was gambling, and I lost. After today, the temps are supposed to go back up into the 80's for another couple of weeks, and I thought maybe I could get the rest of my tomatoes and peppers to ripen properly. Oh, well, now at least I don't have to do any more canning.

I think if I want to have a garden here it will have to be in a greenhouse. I just wish we could afford to build one that's big enough to grow what we need and would withstand the winds.

Sometimes (like today) I wonder why I keep trying. Bullheaded, I guess. Out of 4 summers here, I had a good harvest one year. The next two years I got nothing. This year, I got a little bit, but not nearly what I expected. I just want to be able to grow enough to can and put away for winter, but I seem destined to have to continue buying imported junk from the grocery store. I have such a huge beautiful garden space - it's such a shame I can't seem to get it to work out!

OK, I'm done whining now. Sorry, but I had to get it out!

~Lannie

[bbird]

I hear ya Lannie. Maybe you could try to find some old windows and make a greenhouse out of them. They would stand the wind better then the plastic greenhouses and they look cool.

I'm not a gardener, I've come to realize. I love it, I enjoy it but the talent for growing is not there. I know to be successful we would have to cut major trees down to let the sun in, but I don't want to do that either. So, I watch to see when Hood River has pears, apples, and peaches and buy those there. I try to buy the veggies locally to can. I am lucky that way that there are a lot of farms around to buy from, so I don't have to buy from the store, but I also realize how much money I spend buying someone elses stuff to can. It sure isn't economical.

[Kathy]

Lannie, sorry about the garden but you can still salvage some of your produce.

The peppers both hot and sweet can be picked, washed and frozen. Even if the peppers are quite mature, as long as they're at least 50% of their full size they will be tasty.
The tomatoes can be made into a green tomato pickle or relish.

I have no idea what you can do with frost hit basil. I'd be inclined to pick it, wash it and make some kind of sauce that requires a lot of basil.

Have you thought about building a hoop house green house out of cattle panels and 8mil-10 mil green house plastic sheeting?
It's much cheaper than building a regulation type green house but will protect your plants and give you a place to start seedlings in the spring.
Put 55 gal barrels in that have been painted black-they'll absorb heat in the daytime and release it overnight. Plus you have a handy water source right in the green house.

[Deleted]

Kathy, ICK! Wouldn't frozen peppers be mushy when they thawed? I'd have to cook them in something, I guess, but Rich won't touch them, so I normally eat them by myself, fresh. I guess I'll just try to eat as many as might be still edible in the next couple of days. Or maybe (I don't even want to hope), the damage won't be as bad as I think. I haven't actually gone out there yet to see, because the full extent of the damage won't show up until everything's warmed up and thawed out.

I tried to tell Rich about the hoop house idea once before, but he said it was too expensive. The cattle panels, new, aren't that cheap, and the only time I ever saw used ones was at that auction we went to last summer, but there was a bidding war going on between two guys and I think one of them ended up paying more than he would have if he would have just gone and bought new ones! LOL!

Then there's all that plastic, and the lumber to frame the bottom.

I haven't been able to get him to pop for enough lumber to make me a couple of raised beds yet. But maybe by next year, when all our construction projects are finished, we can do something. We still have to build the pig pen, but I think that's the last of it. Unless the barn falls down.

It's OK, I have a new baby calf to look forward to in the near future, and lots of fresh milk of my very own, so that kind of takes the sting out of the garden freezing.

~Lannie

[Kathy]

I freeze about 2 bushel of peppers each year for winter use. They work fine in recipes such as marinara sauce, sauteed with onions & mushrooms, patted dry and put on pizza and for stuffed peppers. They are softer than fresh but mine aren't really mushy.
I dice some, slice some and freeze some as halved peppers for stuffing.

When I checked out the price of frozen peppers in the store-$1.99 for a 12 oz bag, I decided to do my own.

Hopefully, the freeze didn't hit you as bad as you're anticipating.

Oh, I'd trade the end of the garden season for a new calf.

[Deleted]

Everything's dead.

The tomato fruits are OK I think, but 99% of the little peppers are just total mush. There are a couple of squash I can salvage, but ALL the basil bit it. It's all black and limp, like the tomato and pepper plants. I'm bringing in what I can, and the squishy stuff I guess will go to the chickens or to the compost pile.

The weeds are all fine, though. And I still have carrots, turnips and rutabagas (not many) that should be OK but I haven't dug them up yet. They can usually take some frost.

Back to work with me...

~Lannie

[Kathy]

I'm so sorry. I don't understand why weeds will still look so perky and alive while everything else is destroyed.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry about your garden, Lannie

I get frustrated because I have to leave my garden to fend for itself when I travel. Sometimes it fares well, sometimes not.

I try to think of gardening as a therapeutic pasttime and not focus so much on the (literal) fruit of my labor - or lack thereof.

Then one or two or a thousand mosquito bites later, I've snapped back to reality and realize that I garden because I'm insane.

/Via

[momo]

That's the only bad thing about fall...the inevitable freeze and the death of the garden.

[Deleted]

Via has the right of it!

I'm trying to make it replace as much processed food as possible, and I have this goal (probably an insane thought) that I can one day harvest and put up enough to last me until the next harvest.

I'm stubborn (or stupid), so I'll keep trying. One of these days, I'll succeed, and it will be another milestone on my journey to self-sufficiency.

I did get a large mixing bowl of stuff out of there yesterday afternoon, though. 3 large spaghetti squash, 2 straightneck squash, a couple of pounds of edible tomatoes, 3 sweet peppers and a large handful of jalapenos. The jalapenos (and 2 of the sweet peppers) aren't very firm, but I'll pickle the hot ones and try freezing the sweet ones. Not much, but it'll be a good experiment.

I also picked all the green tomatoes I could find that weren't mushy and I think I have enough to make a quart or so of green tomato relish, so I'll work on that today. I pulled a few of the carrots and I still have a bunch more of those, plus the rutabagas and turnips, and my parsley bed, which is fine, so there's still something going on in there. I did let the chickens in, though, so they could have all the icky tomatoes and any of the weeds they wanted. They spent the whole afternoon in there, clucking and finding interesting good things to eat. Most of the mushy or bad tomatoes have been eaten now.

The amount of blossoms on my sweet peppers and green beans was totally insane. If we'd had just another month before a freeze, I would have had a bounty! There were hundreds of little green balls on the pepper plants and tons of flowers on the beans. Even the squash had a goodly number of baby squash that were only a few inches long. They froze completely through, though, so they were translucent and all mushy. I gave them to the chickens, too.

Oh, well, next year will be another opportunity to try again!

~Lannie

[Deleted]

OUCH!! Sorry to hear that Lannie!!!
Here's a couple links to build yer own greenhouse...
*hugs* Better luck next year!
Anyway you can lay plastic strips over the rows next year toward the end of the season in case of early frost??


www.laspilitas.com/garden/howto/greenhouse.html

users.adelphia.net/~sdculp/Greenhouse/Index3.html

Kaza

[Deleted]

www.innerexplorations.com/simpletext/green1.htm

Check that out!! how COOL!!!

Kaza

PS: their whole site is pretty intresting!

[Deleted]

kazahleenah said:

Anyway you can lay plastic strips over the rows next year toward the end of the season in case of early frost??

Not unless I wanted to retrieve them from Nebraska the next day!

Seriously, no, plastic is out. The wind is too strong here. For example, in June-ish, we were expecting a thunderstorm with rather large (golf-ball-sized) hail, so Rich and I went out and covered the tomatoes that afternoon with tarps. The setup is two t-posts driven into the ground on each end of the beds, with welded wire field fencing stretched between them for the tomato plants to climb/be tied on. The tomato plants were still small then and we took 2 big tarps and tented one over each fence, securing them all along the sides with tent stakes. We never got the hail. When I went out the next morning to uncover them, I saw that they were already uncovered. The tent stakes had been ripped out of the ground (they were the long metal stakes) and the tarps had bashed the bejeezus out of all the plants and ended up against the fence on the south side of the garden. Every plant was broken, but not fatally. They grew up from there, but I didn't try covering them again.

The problem with any kind of plastic here is unless it's some kind of heavy vinyl with NO seams anywhere, stretched tight enough to not flap, and no tiny little hole the wind can get into, they'll be shredded. We bought two (very expensive) tarps 3 years ago to cover the hay we bought that year, and the store guaranteed they would not shred in our South Dakota wind. We took the remains back a couple months later and got a full refund. We lost the hay, though, so that was a total waste of money. After that, we had to put the hay in the garage and park the truck outside.

Rich says the only thing that he'll consider for greenhouse material will be that fiberglass or polycarbon (whatever it's called) corrugated panels. That second link you posted, which I skimmed but didn't read in detail, sounds a lot like how it is here. Big hail, bad wind, ground heaving (our water pipes are down 8 feet so they won't freeze). I love it here, but the weather is not kind. There are a lot nicer places to live, climate-wise, than South Dakota. I remember living over in the Valley (in Oregon) where if the wind was more than 20 mph, we considered it was a STORM! LOL! Flowers in March, no snow till after Thanksgiving. If I was going to seriously garden, it should have been when I lived there.

Maybe it should have been a clue to me that there's only one other person that I know here that has a garden, and that's the lady I get my milk from. She has 14 kids and three separate gardens. That way if the deer get one, or two, she has a backup. And she has help - some of her kids are teenagers now. But besides her, I'm the only other person stupid enough to try growing a garden. Everyone else goes to the store. Now I can see why! LOL!

Well, one of these days, I'll figure something out. Right now I'm bucking for raised beds. If I can get Rich to make me some of those, I have a chance. He made me a little covered "hat" for my cabbage last year, out of some scrap wood for the frame, chicken wire stapled over the top, and covered with floating row cover (also stapled on). It lasted most of the summer, but the wind finally tore the floating row cover, and once it got a foothold, the rest of it soon followed. I still have the little frame, with shreds of white cloth hanging off of it in places! LOL! But I thought if I could get him to make me a couple of raised beds, then maybe a few more of those "hats" I could tack down to the raised bed edges... it might work. That way, at least I could have a couple of spots that would be a bit more protected (not much, but a little).

It's a work in progress...

~Lannie