Yesterday, Kiln Guy stopped by and picked the rest of the ripe paste tomatoes {and some green ones too}. This was the second round of tomatoes we’ve been able to share with him this season {the first round was about 30 pounds, this one was closer to 55}.
A great way to start Mid September Gardening Zone 6a in Coastal Maine
We still have some cherry tomatoes trickling in {about a pound a day} from the volunteer plants out in the lasagna garden, but other than those, I’m happy to report that tomato season is pretty much over here at Camp Butterfield.
We planted 68 plants in late spring and so far have harvested over 450 pounds. Talk about crazy!
Another thing we’re done harvesting for the season is corn. We only got about 28 good ears this year {hardly worth it if you ask me} with the good ears coming out of the lasagna garden and all the duds coming from the religious family sized garden.
Better soil {in the religious plot} is what we need.
So we’ll work on that this fall and hopefully next summer get a better crop.
The second round of beets is still coming in nicely though.
And we just picked round #5 of the green beans.
Round #6 is just starting to flower.
And crawl up the front of the house. 🙂
In the garden bed in front of the beans we have lettuce, broccoli, round #3 of beets, parsnips and Purple Lady boy choy growing.
The bok choy is beautiful and I’m hoping we get to harvest some before the bugs do too much damage.
The one thing we’re swimming in right now though, is peppers.
Especially the Jimmy Nardiello peppers. If you haven’t grown this sweet pepper variety yet, be sure and put it on your list for next summer. We’ve been picking a baking sheet or so worth of peppers about every two days lately.
I’ve frozen a few bags of mixed peppers, but mostly I’ve been dehydrating them because we’re just about out of freezer space with all the garden goodness we’ve been packing away for the winter months ahead.
Gardening season, we’re beginning to see the finish line. And it feels good. 🙂
How are things at YOUR place? Did you try anything new this year? Do you have any fall crops planted? Or are you pretty much done once the tomatoes and cucumbers are finished?
Have a great day everyone,
~Mavis
Joely says
Your garden did amazingly well this year. Way to go!
Janet says
I use Miracle Grow every 2 to 4 weeks on my pole green beans. They will produce until mid or late October. I plant one round only. When the beans slow down a bit, fertilize and they will come back growing.
Margo says
Didn’t plant much corn in my little square foot garden beds, but learned a lot this year. Like they need to be closer together to pollinate. I was laughing when you said 28 ears isn’t hardly worth it…..compared to the 5 that I got, well, sounds pretty great! Oh well, better next year! Congratulations on your tomato haul!
Elle says
Can you feel the jealousy spewing from the NW? The heat has been hateful to my garden. 10# of tomatoes from 26 plants. Of course, it is cooler now, the plants are again flowering and we’re just weeks away from first frost.
Ugh, the long detailed post has disappeared with an unknown key-stroke. Suffice to say, I am far from breaking even on this year’s investment of seed, soil, plant starts and the cost of city water. 2 years in a row of record heat.
I will not give up. I’ll be trying again in 2023. Fortunately we do have a bunch of organic veg vac-sealed in the freezer from our generous CSA this year and I did get 20q of blackberries and 7q of ratatouille put up. The freezer should be EMPTY by June and that’s a good thing! Right?
Mavis Butterfield says
Yes! 🙂 I am jealous of your 20 quarts of blackberries. I have zero. 🙁
Cheryl says
Would you mind doing a post about dehydrating and how to do it with different fruit and veggies. I recently started and could use some pointers especially since I really want to dehydrate apples for baking and snacking.
Elaine says
Just a thought- in my area we can take a soil sample from our gardens to the local LSU agri center where they will analyze it and tell us what kind of amendments we need to put into our gardens. I don’t know if Maine has that kind of program or not but it’s something to consider.
Sue D says
We’re still working on the great terracing project in the back garden, so haven’t been able to plant a lot of veg. I’m using fabric grow pots in the front, and planted 2 each of Roma, sweet 100, and what I thought were beefsteak tomatoes. They aren’t, but are prolific…25lbs so far. Romas have been 10lbs so far.
Amber says
My tomatoes were terrible this year, unfortunately. The okra that we grew was new to us this year, and it will. not. stop. haha. My peppers are doing fairly well but starting to slow down. Beans did well, but we had some bean leaf beetles attack one of the GreenStalks, so I salvaged what I could (and will 100% consume some of the less damaged beans), and pulled the remainder from that. We still have lettuce going, and a few eggplant chugging along. We’ll see how those go. I told my husband we need to plant 68 tomato plants and he laughed and laughed and laughed. Hmph.
Jeanine says
Try this with your extra peppers. I use them in salads, sandwiches and on pizza.
https://afarmgirlskitchen.com/pickled-sweet-peppers/
Emily says
How do you use your dehydrated peppers?
Mavis Butterfield says
Soups, quiche, any recipe really that calls for peppers.