Thursday, October 9, 2008

Weather Report

(note the drooping tomato plants in the background....so sad. kinda looks like cooked spinach.) Up front is the zucchini and pumpkin plants.



These are the tomatillos. I explain about the husks and fruit below...




Pullman current temp 26.1°

Hi: 49° F

Lo: 29° F
Mostly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of rain showers...

Do you know what this means? Well, it means that it's been freezing here, and that my garden is now dead. I picked all the peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins and zucchini. I had been fantasizing about how I could cover it all with a tarp again, or build a green house, or dig up all the plants and keep them in the house in pots...but I think it really is time to let go. It's gone, all gone. Tomorrow I will sort through the tomatillos for the good ones. There's at least 100 on the two plants, but a lot of them are too small still. They grow a husk first, and then the fruit grows into the husk. That means I have to hold each one and give a little squeeze to see if the husk is empty or if the tomatillo grew into it. Today it was just too cold and raining, so I left them for tomorrow. Hopefully it will be sunny and a little warmer while I sit out there.
I'll take some pictures of the food I harvested today. It was kind of fun see it all at once. We got a lot of peppers, and so many tomatoes! I don't know how many will ripen, but I tried to get most of them. I cut them on the vine, so they can continue getting nutrients from the vine and ripen in the window. The cherry tomatoes looked like little bunches of grapes. They grow mostly in bunches of about six or seven.
I talked to my garden expert friend. He gave me words of comfort, and told me what to do with my vegetables. I carved one of my pumpkins at mutual last night, but I'm thinking I will bake the rest of them and can it. That will make good pumpkin pie later. We decided to have a garden planning party in December when his seed catalog comes. I can't wait! I'm excited to put together my next garden, after learning so much this year! We haven't even had Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I can't wait for winter to be over so I can start my new garden!

3 comments:

Granma Faye said...

Yeah, Holly, time to let go. :( I did a close-up on those pictures. Wow, lots of tomatoes still out there. The vines look pretty sick, though. Yuck. It really got COLD there! Brrrr.... It's colder here, too, but it's in the 40's, with rain and a little bit of sunshine. Let's face it: winter is very near. I'm not wanting to go back to the cold, gray days. September was perfect and I'd love to have a couple more months like that. Cool mornings, warm days. Nice. But, so much for sandals, shorts, ....and gardens. ♥

Ali said...

You are one PASSIONATE gardener. You should teach a gardening class or something. I wish we lived closer so I could reap the learning rewards! :)

Summer said...

yeah, our garden is dead too. it snowed here yesterday!