Cool Season Gardening

This weekend has been a whirlwind of activity. The garden's denizens are now adapting to the cooler seasons. The tomatoe plants in Garden bed 5 are still growing as if summer will never end. My job is coax the most out of the plants before the first hard frost. The squash and cucumbers are largely gone due to the cooler weather. The bitter melon and pepper plants have taken their place in Garden Beds 2 and 3. The cool season beets are doing not so well in Garden bed 6, though the beans there are still producing abundantly. The beans this year has been badly damaged by both Hurricane Hannah and 2 species of pest beetles. Both the Japanese and Mexican beetles have ravaged my pole bean crop. Though unlike last year, the Mexican beetles proved to be the greater adversary. Still, the beans have somehow managed to survive and are producing abundantly. The onions and garlic in Garden bed 4 are now making a come back after the squash cover had died down. The asparagus plants are growing like crazy now, everyone of them is a small green bush. The sweet corn has done very badly. The beetles had stunted their growth already, and the hail basically destroyed half of the stalks.

My father and I spent hours harvesting from the garden. We picked 55 lbs of tomatoes, 34 lbs of beans, and 5 lbs of bitter mellon. This is a massive harvest by any standard. So now we have a couple of hundred pounds of vegetables in the refrigerator. We need to figure out a way to preserve all of it.