It has been a while since my last update. The fall and early winter is always the busiest time of year. Gardening tasks have been a small part of my life lately and football and parties have taken over. This has been the best harvest season that I have ever had as a backyard gardener though. I still have lots of garden failures but many more successes this season. Here is an update on what has been going on.

Harvest
We have had and still have a great crop of Juliet and Cherry Tomatoes. I have not been keeping tally on our harvest but lets just say that we have been non-stop eating tomatoes and I cannot see the end in site at this time.

From Garden

From Garden

From Garden

The tomatoes are taking up most of one of my square foot gardens and a large part of the second one. In spite of this, I was able to harvest a couple of other vegetables. We got one very nice eggplant that we ended up giving to my mother in law at Thanksgiving (we haven’t got an update on how it tasted). We also harvested a couple of small green peppers. I have always struggled with green peppers. There is something nutrient wise that they are lacking and I have not done research to figure out what that is. Figuring out how to grow better green peppers may be my springtime project.

We also have collards and kale ready to harvest. Here is a picture of one of our collard plants.

From Garden

Squashes are not really growing well either this season. It seems like we have better luck when my husband randomly drops squash seeds throughout the yard than when I actually attempt to plant them in a garden. To their defense, I have not been hand pollinating them. I guess sometimes you cannot rely on nature to do it. We do have one acorn squash that looks promising, but that is one my husband randomly planted.

From Garden

Baby it’s cold outside
Last winter we had unseasonable cold temperatures and it looks like this winter may be following suit. We have already had at least one night of freezing temperatures and there are more to come next week. Typically we don’t see freezing temperatures in central Florida until at least January or February. I have and plan to continue to cover my square foot gardens for as long as I can but I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. Some of the vegetables won’t mind the cold temperatures but the tomatoes will definitely die off if I don’t protect them.

From Garden

Future Plans
I am getting ready to start seeds again for some cold weather crops. I might be too late for some of them but I am going to try anyway. With my Juliet and Cherry Tomato success, I might try to grow some Roma tomatoes as well…..we’ll see……