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well, winter is here- i miss my fresh vegetables !

971 views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  longwinters 
#1 ·
all my plants are brown and dead now.
i guess it's time to clean everything up and get
ready for the next go-round.

i hope everyone had a good season
 
#2 ·
Ours was a mixed success. Couldn't make a stand of okra for anything. Tried three times and it just fizzled every time. Our corn did really well and put up quite a few gallon bags in the deep freeze. Tomatoes didn't do very well until we hit Fall and they started making. Green beans were decent as were blackeyed peas.



After your report on the yard long greenbeans we plan on giving them a try this spring.
 
#3 ·
I miss just walking out to the garden for a tomato.
Mine did very well this summer but my tomatoes became overripe so quickly till Sept. then they were more normal, i.e. if you picked one it did not get nasty within a short time sitting on the shelf.
Chiles did the absolutely best ever in thirty years.
Broccoli was the only absolute failure. All kinds of plant next to zero florettes.
Lettuce seemed to be a non-arrival then far later than normal enough popped up to make some salads and use on sandwiches.

The early hard freeze up here meant I did not get the South garden turned over by hand which is not absolutely necessary but makes roto-tilling in spring easier.
 
#4 ·
I agree that I really miss eating “real” tomatoes out of the garden instead of the tasteless ones from the store. As I said in another post my raspberries and blueberries had a tough year. Tomatoes were ok, I always lament that there don’t seem to be many tomatoes on the plants and my wife says “you always say that and there are plenty of them when harvest time comes”. She is always right. Broccoli was good this year. Last year the plants were nice but no heads, and the few that did the heads were very small and flowered almost immediately.

Squash this year was a surprise. We don’t have many bees here so we pollinate the blossoms with a q-tip. This year I didn’t do that and amazingly we had lots of winter squash.

Tried pumpkins for the 1st time since I was a kid. Only did 2 hills. Had 4 nice size pumpkins but they were ripe by the beginning of Sept. Of course by mid Oct the bottoms were rotted...no clue why they would ripen so fast. Anyway I won’t do pumpkins again since I have no use for them.

Had a major highlight...bell peppers!! We live in town and have a small back yard. My “garden” is 6 raised beds that are 4 x 16. I also use some grow boxes, plastic containers where you put the water in the bottom and they self water. I always used potting mix for growing the bell peppers in and always got blossom end rot on many of the peppers. This year I went with ‘garden soil” and very little blossom end rot. I had tried Epsom salts etc (which if you spray it diluted on plants will give you lots of peppers), but had also put that or calcium in the soil and still got blossom end rot. So I’m thinking it must be the potting mix. The plants must take up too much water with that and so the calcium issue.

Anyway it was a typical growing season, some good and some disappointing.

Long
 
#7 ·
the further we get into winter the more i agreee with the above posters ---- I miss tomatoes. Every night 20-30 cherry tomatoes while working the yard. JUmp the fence and eat a few and back to work.
i did add some frozen green peppers to our spaghetti sauce the other night. I cut, vacuum sealed and froze them during the summer. A little sauteing and they're perfect. the smell alone when I opened the bag makes me look forward to spring.
 
#9 ·
Even out in Northwest Arctic Alaska we do fresh greens.
The local extension agent hosted a grow your own greens workshop.

It was pretty simple and informative.
sprouted seeds and beans for a source of protein and lots of vitamins. Bean and seed sprouts are a significant source of B Vitamins, Vitamin K, Vitamin C, Iron, Folate, and especially fiber.
Sprouts are actually one of the best prebiotic foods you can eat because of the fiber and nutrients that make it to your gut microbiome.*The easiest, affordable and eco-friendly way to start sprouting seeds and beans is to create your own seed sprouting jar! It's REALLY simple and we love upcyling some of our used Cultured Guru Fermented Food jars to make them!*
https://youtu.be/DHp45rZQ_IM
https://youtu.be/9h1ADMsKQTg
 
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