December Check-In

December Check-In

It’s been a few months, hasn’t it? I’m not gonna lie – the last of the season was rough. Our wet, cool weather continued and, alas, harvests were not what I had hoped for them to be, despite a promising start.

Fortunately, I got some seed from each variety. Some varieties/plants I got quite a bit of seed. But many of the tomatoes I got small quantities, which means they’ll go right into the bank for another regrow in a year or two.

I had mountains of green tomatoes by the time the first killing frost hit. That was September 26th – which actually isn’t too bad for my area. An early frost is in the first week of September, average frost in the 2nd-3rd weeks, and a late frost is the last week of September to the first week of October (October almost never happens).

Mountains of green tomatoes mean – green tomato salsa! It was my first time making the recipe, and while there are some things I would change (I vastly underestimated the amount of heat to put in, so it’s not spicy enough for my taste), I was by far and large quite happy. Mostly happy that all those green tomatoes got some use. Pair that with my batch of regular salsa, and I got about 20 jars all tolled. Which for us, means we’ll maybe make it through the winter without having to purchase store-bought salsa.

We eat a ton of salsa in this house.

You may have noticed the message at the top of the screen – I’ve taken the shop down temporarily while I go through stock and sort through what I can put up for distribution this year. I plan to have that all up back and running in the new year, so stay tuned for that.

Now that the end of the year is upon us, I’ll be updating the wiki more heavily as well within the next few months with growth notes and more thorough pictures.

This is a short but sweet update – stay tuned for January/February when the site will be totally updated with seeds for distribution, an up-to-date listing with what’s in the bank, and the beginnings of my 2020 growth plans. That last one is a bit tricky, because we may or may not be moving house, which of course leaves me with an unsure feeling what to do exactly with the garden.

Gardening is such an in-grained aspect of my yearly cycle, it’s a little disconcerting to have that upset. There will still be gardening, but it may have to be on a much smaller (read: container only) scale for 2020.