It's not over 'til it's over

I had a post all ready to call an end to the garden season.  We had a week in late October that was downright frigid, with freezing nighttime temps nearly every night, and with no sun at all during the days of  maximum 50's temps. We even had snow covering the ground for two days, and I didn't go outside, much less to the garden, which I figured was already toast by then.

Much to my surprise, when the weather came back up above freezing, only some raggedy remaining basil had been damaged!  The tomatoes looked fine, the peppers looked fine!  Bizarre, and pleasing.

This was the last, I figured just before the dip, of the roses:
And, these were the vegetables I gathered that were still edible the day before the first dip below freezing:

But, take a look at the tomato plants a week later, after the freezing temps, when I went back to the garden:

And the peppers:

Unreal.

These were the tomatoes I had harvested in the couple of weeks before the dip.  They were much nicer than any I'd been getting earlier in the season, which often had large cracks and some feeding damage.  These look like I sprayed them with pesticides, which I didn't:

I had planted arugula, which I expected would be okay, and it was.  Just hardly any bigger than the week before:

The lettuce I had planted kept growing, which wasn't a surprise.

Even the little cucumber plants, which I knew at the time I planted the seeds were a long shot, didn't die.

This little Cherokee Spirit echinacea didn't even bat an eye:Unsurprising, though, are the cabbages.  They can take a good deal of cold, and they look great:

'Primo Vantage'

'Omero'

My latest attempt to get a red-stemmed rhubarb, 'Kangarhu', is in.  Fingers crossed that the stems will be red when they're harvestable next spring.

This was my immediately previous purchase, which did have red stems when I bought it last spring, and is what has happened to each and every other of the several varieties I've tried.  So disappointing.  They taste just as good as red-stemmed rhubarb, but aren't as pretty in a pie.

The roses had a bad year, but they did have one beautiful surge the first of October when it wasn't so humid.

'South Africa'

'Poseidon'

'Shazam!'

'Neptune'

Happy Halloween!  Wear your masks.  You know what I'm talking about.  The Covid-19 pandemic is about to meet the regular flu season. 

And VOTE!  

UPDATE:  Later that same day...

NOW it's over.  The temperature dipped to 29 overnight.  What a shame, after all that last week, and the hope that tomatoes would still be harvestable for a little while longer (the rest of this week is supposed to be warm and sunny with night temps in the upper 40s and low 50s).  

Alas, it's not to be.  The fruit that's there is thawed from frozen, and turned to mush.  The leaves are the same and won't recover.

The little cucumbers are dead as doornails.  Some of the peppers may yet struggle on, but it was the tomatoes I was looking forward to.

But there's yet a happy note: the saffron crocus I planted are coming up!

UPDATE:  I set up a post to be published in August with pictures, but forgot to finish it, so here it is, out of place.

Going into Autumn

'Blue Spire' perovskia in the perennial garden

backed by Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta)

July was so hot and wet that only the most rugged plants managed to grow and produce, which excluded most vegetables.  The roses were plagued by petal blight due to the humidity, with the exception of a couple of weeks in late August.  

The garden spiders were at their peak, however.  Everywhere I turned in the wildflower garden and perennial bed there were big fat yellow and black spiders - Argiope aurantia - on big fat webs.

One vegetable that thrived throughout the whole ordeal was the okra.  This year, I planted a variety new to me - 'Carmine Splendor'.  I'll be saving seed from it to plant the next time I plant okra to see if it does as well in future years as it has done this year.  It's another red variety, which I like because of its ornamental value.  Others I planted didn't start producing pods until they were 3 feet tall or so.  This one began producing at about 2 feet and is now 5 feet tall and still very prolific.

(At least that's how I remember it.)

I love the blooms.

Nothing in the cucurbit family (melons, cucumbers) made it past the end of July.  I got two very small melons off about 18 plants!  My experiment to plant them with a perimeter of marigolds to discourage raccoons will have to be repeated next year.  The marigolds themselves did fairly well, but they, like the roses, suffered from petal blight.

Off the two vines I had growing on the compost pile, I got one pumpkin that quickly rotted.  This is what they looked like at the end of July:

It was just too wet.  I did get a few cucumbers before the vines gave up, but I had to pull them all up a good two weeks before I would have expected them to die out.  I recently planted some more seed, and they're up.  If the weather cooperates, I might get a few small ones before it gets too cold.

Tomatoes started out gangbusters (except for the favorite 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' which had the lowest production ever), but by the first week of August, they all looked to be on their way out.

late July harvest

In fact, I pulled up five of the nine plants and left the remaining four that seemed to still have a few green tomatoes on them.  They resumed growth the last week of August, and they're now starting to have some ripening tomatoes.  This week the temperature took a dive to the upper 60s and low 70s.  Hopefully we'll see more tomato ripening weather before the late October frosts that will put an end to them.

I had a new tomato pest this year: tomato fruitworm.

They eat deep holes in the tomato fruits, which makes these pests more objectionable than even the hornworms that eat the foliage.  Fortunately, they're killed by the same safe Bt pesticide, so if I would only be vigilant in spraying, I could save the frustration of finding a beautiful tomato spoiled by drilled holes.

The cabbages held their own but didn't get very big.  Every year I tell myself not to plant cabbages in the spring, but so far, I haven't remembered not to.  I promise, next year I'll only plant a fall crop.

Those ground cherries that I tried for the first time were actually tasty little things, but they didn't lend  themselves to making jam.  They were like tiny tomato sacks of oodles of seeds and hardly any pulp.  I was expecting something less tomato-like.  I don't know why.  The taste would have suited jam well, as they had a bit of a mango flavor, but the consistency did not.

'Aunt Molly's' ground cherry

I planted lima beans in place of the spring peas, and they now have some pods.

Harvest now consists of peppers, okra, small cabbage, and basil.

Ripe jalapeños destined to become jelly

The cabbage varieties were new for me - 'Primo Vantage' and 'Omero'. Both were mild and juicy.  I'll be planting them again.

'Primo Vantage' (top) and 'Omero'

'Omero'

I don't know why my red raspberries didn't produce any fruit, but I have a feeling it's because I pruned them back too hard.  I'll leave them this winter to see if they produce next year.

The 'Fall Gold' berries did produce,  however, and they were as delicious as I remembered.  These little guys taste like they've been laced with honey.

'Fall Gold' raspberry

Last year, their first, I got one or two at a time, but this year, I got small handfuls every two or three days for a while.  Of course I crammed them all in my mouth at once.  Glorious flavor.

As I said, the roses have been plagued with petal blight which spoils them for cutting and bringing in.  Their blooms have been nice and big, but the petal edges brown and rotten-looking.

That is, with the exception of a couple weeks recently when the rains held off and the sun was hot.  At that point, they went crazy with beautiful disease-free blooms.

'Poseidon' (lavender), 'South Africa' (butter yellow), and 'Shazam!' (peachy pink)

'Grande Amore', which is supposed to be a 4-5' tall bush but generally gets to nearly 7' high, made its usual spurt a little later than normal this year.  It's reaching for the stars at about 8 feet at the moment.

'Domina'

The silly cat has managed to sprint up the grapevine trellis and hide out in the top.

Stay safe.  Stay home as much as you can.  Wear your mask in public. We'll get through this Covid-19 pandemic sooner if everyone will just do their part.  I feel very fortunate to live in a space where I can garden, especially during this trying time.  

Cactus zinnias

And the temperature's rising

Sooooo hot.  And no relief in sight.

Hey, Wednesday looks good by comparison.  Although the chance for rain is listed at 50%, and only .2 inch at that. * 

The oriental lilies don't care.  

Double Stargazers

'Casablanca'

Neither do the perennial plants.  They're quite happy.

Lima beans look good.  With little or no rain in sight, however, they may need to be watered before the week is through.

The cucumbers are going strong, and in fact, I managed to get some delicious pickles put up.  Here's the recipe if you want to give it a try:  Copycat Claussen dill pickles

Over on the compost heap, a  squash variety - 'Jarrahdale' pumpkin - is taking over.

In Michoacan, Mexico, where I lived, they used the flowers of squash family plants as food garnishes and cooked in soups and tacos.

I have two plants on the heap, and so far, all I've found is this one pumpkin.

The canteloupe plants are starting to produce.  This is 'Tasty Bites':

The tomatoes, alas, are not faring so well.  It's once again this year too hot for them to set fruit.  The 'Valley Girl' variety I got for its supposed tolerance of temperature extremes seems to be better  off than the other two varieties - 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' and 'German Johnson' - but it's a determinate variety and may already have done all its flowering and fruiting, while the others are indeterminate and still growing and producing.  Or would be producing if it weren't so hot.

All of them have been heavily attacked by tomato hornworms - less 'Missouri Pink' than the other two.  The worms are so hard to spy that inevitably some get by me, and they eat so voraciously that even one left on the plant will denude several branches in a day's time.

Tomato hornworm

Tomato hornworm damage

I wish I had sprayed the plants with Bt a week ago.  It's a forumlation that only kills caterpillars, and it does so by destroying their gut when they feed.  It doesn't instantly kill them, so they will still feed for a while, which is why I usually don't bother - just try to inspect carefully and pick off the offenders.  Obviously this year I missed them too often.

They stripped these cherry tomatoes about halfway down in a couple of days, and I only ever found three of them on the plants.

Although they mainly strip leaves, they also feed on the fruits and spoil the harvest.

This one left for dead was likely infected with a parasite - hooray for natural predation.  But it was of a size that it had probably already accounted for several stripped branches.

As if heat and hornworms weren't enough, something else - I don't know what - has been boring some of the fruit.  

There's a lot of green fruit on the vines (tomatoes only ripen between the temps of 50 and 80 degrees F I've read), but, with the exception of a handful of cherry tomatoes, I have yet to harvest one edible tomato.  And the raccoons have gotten much of the cherry tomato fruits near the bottom of the plants.  

I'll get some someday.  I hope.

Purple yarrow and 'Green Twister' echinacea

Stay safe.  Wear your coronavirus masks.  

UPDATE:  Well, it's Wednesday morning, and we've already gotten 1.6" of rain.  Hooray!  And it's forecast to rain again this afternoon.