Embattled Collards

Last year's exuberant collard greens were an unqualified success in the garden. A. was delighted and declared we will grow collards forevermore. Accordingly, he bought six collard starts in April and we planted them out.

Then it didn't rain. Like, at all. 

It's interesting that not all water is created equal for plants. Our garden plants will, grudgingly, survive when watered by a hose with well water, but they don't really thrive. They want rain water. I'm guessing this has something to do with the minerals in our well water? I don't know, but I do know that there are definitely some seeds that won't even germinate on well water (notably, root vegetables like carrots and beets), and that the garden doesn't grow well until it actually rains.

The collards were displeased by the well water and just kind of sulked there, waiting for rain.

Then it started to rain! Hooray! 

And then the harlequin beetles showed up, right on cue.

Behold, the destroyer.

The harlequin beetles arrive in great numbers at the beginning of June every year, and brassicas are their favorite plants to eat. They're not that hard to get rid of, it's just that there are so many of them. When the infestation is the worst, I use a bucket of soapy water and drop them in there to drown. Thereafter, I just inspect the plants whenever I'm out there and squish the ones I find.

Incidentally, if you ever have to hunt harlequin beetles, it's helpful to know their habits. When they sense you hovering, they'll scuttle to the underside of a leaf to hide. If you grab at them and miss, they'll drop to the ground, where they can be squished quite easily. They never fly, which is helpful.

Anyway.

The rains also came with two separate nasty hail storms, about a week apart, that were particularly detrimental to the big, spreading leaves of the collard plants.

The end result of all of this is, well, sad.

Not a picture of health.

However! The nice thing about collard greens is that they grow new leaves from the center, so even when they look like that, there is healthy new growth coming. 

Of course, I'm also starting to see the first small grasshoppers coming as well, which will be the next wave of attack on these hapless plants.

Will we ever actually eat any of these collard greens this year? Stay tuned to find out.

Free-style Gardening

A few years ago I did a whole series of posts where I walked you through my gardening season. It started when I planted the seeds for cabbages and kohlrabi inside and ended with the first frost in the fall. I explained all about the seed-starting equipment I use, the grow lights in the bathroom, the milk jugs and rocks I use outside when I transplant the seedlings . . .

So where am I in that process this year? 

I have three tomato seedlings. 

In February, A. and I finally planted the garlic that should have been planted in October. I planted some arugula and lettuce seeds outside that have sprouted. I put some cabbage seeds directly in the ground a few weeks ago in the hopes that they'll just germinate out there and I can put the milk jug greenhouses over them without having to do any transplanting.

While my family was gone last week, I filled a couple of containers with potting soil and stuck in about a dozen basil seeds and a few dozen tomato seeds. I put those behind the woodstove to germinate, and now the tiny tomato seedlings are on the liquor cabinet by the window. Since it's pretty late already, I'm thinking I can transplant those seedlings out when they're still quite small if they go under the milk jugs.

Basically, I'm trying to avoid having to set up the whole light thing in the bathroom, which means a lot fewer plants in the house. 

It will probably also mean a lot fewer plants in the garden, but given the past few years of grasshopper depredation, our ongoing drought, and the overly warm temperatures this winter that are making me think we're going to have a hot summer, I'll probably want a lot fewer plants in the garden.

Gardening is different every year, so we'll see how it goes.

Here We Go Again

Last spring, about this time, A. came home with a pack of collard green seedlings for me. There were nine seedlings in the six-cell pack. I planted all of them.

We got quite a bit of rain early in the growing season, which made them grow very quickly.

Even though the grasshoppers got after them, they couldn't kill the collards. The plants were already pretty big, and the grasshoppers ate the bigger leaves towards the outside, leaving the new growth in the center that kept the plant going.

I cut greens for months, sharing them with anyone who wanted them. The cold that made the grasshoppers go away didn't phase the collard greens. They kept growing into the new year, even more luxuriantly without grasshoppers gnawing at them.

When we had our very cold spell, I harvested the rest of the collard leaves, but I left a few of the stalks in the garden. I wanted to see what would happen.

Well . . .

Can't keep a good plant down.

That's the one where I left the smallest leaves in the center. It's growing quite quickly from that center. The other stalks where I pulled the whole head off are actually sprouting new leaves along the stems. 

It appears that collards, like carrots, have a two-year life cycle, meaning that these plants should produce flowers and seeds this year. It remains to be seen if the leaves that are growing will be good to eat, or too bitter to bother with, but it's been fun to watch their resurgence.

Plants and Things

When we got back from our five-day trip to Colorado, the flowers that had been on the table were wilted and sad-looking. I was quite busy getting dinner and unloading the car, but I made sure to dispose of those sad flowers and find a couple of lilies to put on the table before we sat down to eat.

Simple, but at least not wilted.

Later in the week, I managed something a bit more involved.

We're waiting on the sunflowers. In the meantime, I mostly have a lot of clover and grasses.

These flowers I had on the big bookcase in our living room.

The ornamental sage is starting to bloom, yay!

I actually grabbed that vase and brought it with me to church to put it on the altar by the lectern. I figured it might as well decorate the church during Mass and then I could just bring it home again. There are no other services at our church during the week, so there would be no point in leaving it there.

The hollyhocks in the garden are blooming profusely, despite being extensively damaged by the grasshoppers.

Very cheery, as long as you don't look too closely and see the holes in the flowers and the stripped greenery.

The grasshoppers continue to ravage the garden. They target weird things. Things I didn't even think were edible. Like rhubarb leaves, which are supposed to be toxic.

Obviously not toxic to grasshoppers.

They also ate all the leaves on the garlic plants, of all things. Luckily, the plants were pretty much done growing, so I just dug them all up.

They got to a pretty good size.

The grasshoppers did at least provide some entertainment for Poppy and her friends, who spent some time running through a field to watch the thousands of grasshoppers fly ahead of them.

These are some easily entertained kids.

The beet that is going to seed continues to develop. I discovered as I was bent over weeding around it that the beet seeds have a very sweet smell.

If this actually sets viable seeds, I'm going to have a LOT of beet seeds for next year.

Or maybe the grasshoppers will eat all the beet seeds. We'll just have to wait and see.

A Very Vegetal Mother's Day

I had many surprises on Mother's Day. The first was actually the day before Mother's Day. A. had brought most of the children to fish at a lake about an hour away. As they were driving through town to the lake, they came upon a small backyard plant nursery and, of course, stopped in. 

So when they got home, I was brought outside to see the "magnificent Mother's Day present" they had bought me.

Behold, the Pink Peace rose bathed in celestial glory.

A. was very excited by this rose because he had just the day before created a new garden bed outside our front door. Knowing we have a lot of bulbs that need to be separated and re-planted in the fall, I chose a spot for a new bed and A. outlined it with rock, dug it all out, and added many wheelbarrow-loads of manure from the horse pen.

The new garden bed is flanked by two posts, so A. wanted to get a wisteria--a climbing vine--for one post and a climbing rose for the other. This is why he considered it divine intervention that the very day after he had made this flower bed for which we had no flowers, he literally just happened upon a nursery that had a giant climbing rose for sale.

Coming soon to the other post: wisteria.

It was very appropriate that A. should bring me home a giant live plant rather than a dozen roses from a store or something. He knows me well. As does the son who brought these flowers home for me.

It's wildflower season, hooray.

And the daughter who made me this:

Also salad season, more hooray.

Poppy always (since last year) has made me what she calls my "summer salad." She forages in the garden for the ingredients, then makes ranch dressing for it. Last year's first attempt at making the dressing--which must be done in secret, so she's totally on her own--was pretty good, although she forgot the garlic powder and mayonnaise. This year she remembered all of that, and then she found lettuce, asparagus, a radish, and some green onion in the garden. She also added some grape tomatoes that were not from the garden.

This was my morning salad. I got another one in the afternoon, along with other gifts. The younger children got all whispery and secretive, insisting that I not come in the kitchen, so I knew something was up. After a few minutes, they called me in to this:

A Mother's Day table.

Another salad contributed by Poppy, who also made that drawing, plus a little bowl made by the youngest boy--that's the little object above the salad--and a frame of flowers courtesy of the older boy. I was very touched.

I was also impressed by Poppy's drawing after she showed me its secret.

Backlighting reveals hidden hearts.

I'm not sure how she discovered that trick, but I thought it was pretty cool.

I was also the recipient of a motivational bracelet that was given to the middle son during basketball last year. I guess he figured I could use the motivation more than him now.

A good reminder.

The best part of this day was that my family knows what I like--plants and salad, obviously--and gave it to me. Feeling seen and known is an important part of feeling loved, and that is exactly what they did.

A Garden Update

So half the tomato transplants died, as did most of the peppers and some of the basil.

Why? I do not know. The carrots never came up, either, which is pretty standard for here. I only have a single parsnip, too.

But let's focus on the good things, shall we?

I had almost given up on them, but the beets have finally sprouted. There's hope yet for Aunt Belva's Pickled Beets.

There were two volunteer tomatoes in this box bed:

In the shadow of that giant volunteer sunflower, which is coming out as soon as I get some flowers from it.

You can see some very healthy-looking tomato plants behind that bed, too. Those are the ones I found the tomato hornworms on this week. I pulled off five of those nasty things, which means we are on High Hornworm Alert from now on.

I actually still have twenty tomato plants, despite the attrition, so I would really like to keep them all from being decimated by the hornworms. Or the army worms, which are sure to show up any time.

This year is also the first year I've been seeing cabbage worms on the brassicas. Luckily, they're all almost all at the harvesting stage, so a few holes aren't a big deal.

Or a lot of holes.

I've started harvesting cabbages in sufficient quantity for preservation to begin.

And by "preservation," I mean "sauerkraut."

And the many peaches on the garden peach tree continue to grow satisfactorily.

Of course, these could all still be destroyed by hail or insects or another disaster, but at least there's a chance of fruit this year.

As usual, I'll just keep weeding, watering, and praying that all of these things produce a harvest for me.

Garden Time

I've been very lax about garden photos this year. Maybe I don't want to jinx it, since last year was the worst year I have ever had in my gardening life, and was also the year I documented it every week.

Things look pretty good so far, though, so I'll just have to hope we don't have any insect explosions or significant weather events that destroy everything.

Let's tour the garden, shall we? Starting out the back door . . .

Down the steps A. made for me, and there's the asparagus back there by the fence behind the clothesline.

Along that fencing on the left of the photo is a row of sugar snap peas, and to the left are three rhubarb plants.

The next bed has more rhubarb, three raspberries, and one tiny strawberry plant that you can barely see on the left.

Over the low stone wall is the garlic and shallots. Plus the apricot tree, which survived the hail last year but isn't going to fruit this year.

Recently planted cabbages and a few tomatoes, still in their milk jug greenhouses. In that sunken tub are green onions protected by a milk jug, and a lot of dill.

This box has a few lettuce plants and some self-seeded calendula.

Lots more cabbages and kohlrabi. There's a row of turnips in there, too, I think. The beets, carrots, and parsnips have not yet appeared.

Radishes, spinach, and something I forget.

Green beans in that trench that haven't come up yet, which are right next to . . .

The peach tree that has weensy little peaches on it, yay!

And the bulb garden, which at the moment only has decorative alliums blooming, with the asiatic lilies still to come.

Still to plant are the rest of the many tomatoes, basil, squash, and cucumbers. Then to water, weed, and pray it doesn't all get flattened by hail.

Growing Food: Aunt Belva's Pickled Beets

Okay! I failed last week to give you this recipe, but now Aunt Belva's recipe for pickled beets is going global.

Or as global as this blog gets, I guess.

Aunt Belva was not my aunt. She was actually the aunt of A.'s uncle by marriage. He (the uncle) is from southern Indiana, and so, presumably, was Aunt Belva. I got this recipe from A.'s aunt. The one that's married to the uncle. Who was Aunt Belva's nephew.

Got all that? Yeah, never mind.

In any case, this is an excellent recipe for pickled beets. One of the different things about it is that it uses equal amounts sugar and vinegar. I had never tried making any other kind of brine for pickled beets, so a couple of years ago I tried a recipe from a newer canning cookbook I have* that promised a much less sweet pickled beet, using about half the amount of sugar.

They certainly were less sweet. They were also almost inedibly vinegary. I managed to finish them by using them in very small amounts in salads, but it was not enjoyable. Lesson learned: Equal amounts of vinegar and sugar make for much better pickled beets.

I didn't have enough beets from the garden to pickle this year, because they, like everything else, succumbed to the hail and grassphoppers. 

Chickens in the garden, but not in the beets.

However, my sister brought me three big beets from the store when she visited a few months ago. I decided the best use for them would be to pickle them, so I went back to Aunt Belva's recipe. And I found I love them just as much now as I did when I first tried them. They have plenty of vinegar in them, too, but it's balanced by quite a lot of sugar. They taste just as pickled beets should.

I have to note here, as this is a canning recipe, that this is not the vinegar ratio approved by the USDA for water bath canning. All the recipes for water bath canning pickled beets use twice as much vinegar as sugar, which is similar to the newer recipe I tried and didn't like. 

This recipe does, however, have the same amount of vinegar per pounds of beets to be canned as the approved recipes, it's just that it also increases the sugar a lot. I don't have any problem canning it in a water bath. Neither did A.'s aunt, who always canned hers in a water bath. If that makes you nervous, though, you can just skip the canning and store them in the refrigerator, or pressure can them.

Aunt Belva's Pickled Beets

Ingredients for Brine

2 cups water

2 cups sugar

2 cups cider vinegar

1 teaspoon ground allspice (I don't have this, and have never used it)

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

Method

1) The recipe I got didn't specify an amount of beets, but A.'s aunt told me it's for about three pounds. I typically roast them whole, then peel them and cut them into a dice. I like them diced because I use them in salads, but you can also leave them whole or slice them.

2) Heat all brine ingredients together until hot, either in a pot on the stove or in the microwave.

3) Put the prepared beets in clean, sterilized, and hot pint jars, cover with the hot brine, put on the lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath for 30 minutes at low altitude. Or, in my case, for 40 minutes, because I am not at low altitude.

* It's called Canning for a New Generation. I've tried a couple of recipes from it, and honestly, I was not all that impressed with them. It's a fun book to read, but I can't really recommend the recipes. It's a little too modern for me, I guess.

Growing Food: Thanksgiving!

It's coooommmmminnng! This Thursday is The Big Day. Well, for all Americans who are into food and do their own cooking. I know that's not everyone. But it is certainly me.

Up until three years ago, I had never made a traditional Thanksgiving meal. I don't actually like turkey myself, so I was not motivated to cook it. However, I finally bowed to pressure from my sons, who insisted that Thanksgiving must feature turkey. And gravy. And mashed potatoes. And dressing. And pumpkin pie. But most importantly, all of these must be in enough quantity that the bottom of the serving dish is never seen the day of feasting.

My favorite part of our Thanksgiving feast is the green beans with bacon and onions. Unfortunately, the terrible garden season this year meant I didn't freeze any green beans. The "fresh" green beans I saw at the grocery store last week looked disgusting, and I refuse to make it with frozen green beans. They're just not good enough.

So no green beans this year. Sad.

But! I do have two stubborn parsnips that weathered everything thrown at them this year, so I think this year I'll make roasted parsnips and carrots instead of green beans.

I will also make a green salad. The lettuce will have to be from the store, but the tomatoes in it will be from the garden. Or rather, from the garden tomatoes still hanging out in their box on the floor.

The last ingredient from the garden that will grace our Thanksgiving table will be the squash I use for the pumpkin pie.

And there it is!

We only got four squash from the garden this year, but all I need for the pie is one. That one up there made six cups of pureed squash. That's enough for two pies according to this recipe, which is the one I'm following. Except I use the MiL's recipe for pie dough. And I reduced the ginger a bit. And I will not be messing around with the beans for blind baking the crust.

I did mostly follow the instructions for the filling, though. I roasted and pureed the squash yesterday. Then I decided to just go ahead and simmer the squash with the sugar, maple syrup, and spices. That way, all I have to do to finish the pie is make the crust, add the dairy ingredients to the filling, and bake it. 

Spicy squash.

I would like to do this on Wednesday to get it done ahead of time, but I'm not sure there will be room in my refrigerator for this pie. Especially because one child insists that he is going to make a lemon meringue pie this year, and that will definitely need to be done on Wednesday. I've never made one, and I do not want to be scrambling to get that done on Thanksgiving morning.

Anyway.

I'll miss the green beans this year, but I am thankful to have the parsnips, tomatoes, and squash. And thankfulness is what it's all about, after all.

Growing Food: It's Garlic Time!

Did you know that garlic is actually planted in the fall? It is! And we did it! Let's talk about that, shall we?

First, I have to tell you that El Rey de Ajo has been dethroned. Due to many events of an unfortunate nature--most recently a filthy thieving (literal) rat that carried away every single bit of A.'s garlic seed stock--we didn't have any of our own garlic to re-plant this year. So I bought some, and we're going to start over.

The heads of seed garlic I bought ended up giving us about three dozen cloves to plant. That's a very small planting for us, but the nice thing about garlic is that each of those cloves will produce an entire head of garlic next year. That means that every year, garlic at least quadruples itself.

A., as always, did all the shovel work for our planting.

Well, this is actually the hoeing part, which he also did.

It had been some time since this bed had gotten a good application of manure, so he also added layers of horse manure to each row. He put it both underneath the garlic cloves before they were covered, and then on top of the whole bed.

The garlic was much more obvious in real life than it is in the photo.

We also had a dozen shallots that I think A. brought home from the MiL's garden. We planted those, too. And then we covered up the whole deal with cattle panels, because the dogs and chickens just love freshly dug soil and would almost certainly dig all of that bed up without some kind of deterrent there.

One nice thing about gardening here is that the ground never really freezes. At least, not in the sunny parts of the garden. The sun is too strong and the soil is so light and dry that it just can't really freeze hard. This means that we can plant all winter if we want to.

We might put in some potatoes next. We never get very many to harvest from our potato plantings, but they're fun to grow anyway.

Growing Food: Post-Freeze Tomatoes

I suppose I should change the title of this to "Grown Food," as we are definitely in the past tense of anything growing in the garden. But I do still have that food grown in the garden in the house, mostly in the form of tomatoes.

Before the first hard freeze, I strip the tomato plants of all but the tiniest tomatoes and bring them in to ripen slowly in my kitchen.

I have read many tips on how to do this, ranging from wrapping them individually in newspaper to laying them out in single layers separated with cardboard to putting them in a paper bag with an apple to speed the ripening.

I do none of this. I put them all in a big wide box, dump the box in an out-of-the-way spot on my dining room floor, and let them do their thing. Every few days, I pick through the box and pull out the ones that are starting to get red. Those go in a big colander to finish ripening.

Green box and red colander. Christmas-y!

When the colander is full, that means it's time to roast the ripe ones. One colander equals two half-sheet pans of tomatoes. And when those are pureed, that's around four pints of pureed tomatoes. Those jars will fit in my larger cooking pot with water enough on top to water-bath can them. This is convenient, because then I don't have to haul out my big canner. 

Sometimes I'll add the garlic to roast on the pans and make a batch of roasted tomato sauce. That goes in the freezer, though.

So I just roast, puree, and freeze or can in these smaller increments until I don't have any tomatoes ripening anymore. 

I'm always surprised at how many of those totally green tomatoes will ripen. Most years, I don't end up with enough green tomatoes to do anything with. This year, given the slow start the plants had in ripening at all, I suspect I will have some. I made some green-tomato salsa already--not as good as red-tomato salsa, but it'll get used--and I got a recipe from the MiL for green-tomato mincemeat. I'll probably use any remaining green tomatoes for that.

But not until I'm sure that none of them are going to ripen. That probably won't be until around Thanksgiving, maybe later.

We shall see. But it's comforting to know that even in a bad year, the garden always provides some food.

 

Growing Food: Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween!

It was twenty degrees when I got up yesterday morning, so my growing season is definitely at an end. And the Halloween decorations on my table aren't strictly food, either. But they are fun! Let me show them to you.

I already showed you the calendula blooms I salvaged from the two remaining plants before the frost. I got these calendula seeds from the MiL a few years ago, and they are a very appropriate orange. 

Perfect for a Halloween table. (The parsley did not go on the table.)

We don't grow true pumpkins, but we do get some squash that are round and orange and look enough like pumpkins that we can carve them into jack-o'-lanterns. In past years, we've had enough for each child to have one to carve. This year, while we did get some pumpkin-looking squash, we didn't have enough to sacrifice any for Halloween decorations*.

We did, however, have one tiny, mostly orange squash that I designated as our Halloween pumpkin this year. It was immature, and that meant that the flesh was very soft. A nice change from our typical squash with skin as hard as metal. Carving our home-grown squash is usually a workout. This little one was refreshingly easy.

It had some scarred skin on one side, so I carved the scarred side with a "scary" face (a very mild scary) and the unscarred side with a happy face. It had a point on the bottom and wouldn't sit securely, so I had to set it inside one of my glass candle holders.

Stick a candle in there and . . . 

So cute!

And that's the story of how I grew my very minimal Halloween tablescape. I find this sort of thing very satisfying, so it was a nice way to close out what was a very disappointing garden season.

Have a fun Halloween, whatever that looks like for you.

* Yes, it is possible to cook the carved pumpkins and save the flesh to eat, but I didn't really want to do that. It's a pain, what with trimming away the charred bits and having to peel and chunk it all to steam it. I don't want to do that, so I didn't.

Growing Food: The Swan Song (and a Story)

Our forecast is calling for three nights of hard freeze this weekend, in the mid-20s. That means that Friday will be the day I do all the final harvesting in the garden. These last couple of weeks have been key in letting the tomatoes at least start getting ripe, so that I can bring them in green and they can finish ripening in the house. 

They're not as good this way as they would be if they had ripened on the plants, but this year, I'm definitely taking what I can get.

I will be very interested to see if this watermelon is any good.

And now, unrelated to my garden, I just have to share with you a very funny story.

One of the things I do in my job at the school is tutoring high school English students that are in our online program. I do this by meeting with them on Zoom. One of my students had told me he would be working with his neighbor this week, gathering cattle for shipping. He thought he might be done in time for his meeting, though, so I wasn't too surprised to see him join at his scheduled time.

I was kind of surprised when I admitted him to the meeting and saw bright blue sky behind him. I was even more surprised by the exchange that followed.

"Hi, Kai. I can see you're still working."

"Yes, ma'am."* 

Upon my noticing that he also seemed to be moving . . .

"Wait. Kai, are you on your horse right now?"

"Yes, ma'am." At this he turns his phone so I can see his horse's head. 

"Oh. What's his name?"

"Gucci."

"Like the fashion designer?"

"Yes, ma'am." 

So many unexpected things happened in that two minutes.

Needless to say, we did not do his lesson. The whole time he was talking to me, his head was swiveling around, quite clearly keeping track of the cattle he was moving while he was on his phone. 

It was incredibly funny, and was definitely the highlight of my day. A real "only here" kind of moment.

* This kid ALWAYS says "ma'am," as do many of the kids here. It's drilled into them from birth.

Growing Food: Frost Out on the Pumpkin*

Remember how I mentioned it was supposed to get right around freezing temperatures last weekend? It did, but I was so busy and exhausted from surgeries and sick kids and a guest that I just did not have it in me to fuss around with sheets and things to cover plants.

So the plants were left to their own devices. It never froze hard, but there was a little frost that settled right on the top of the plants. This meant pretty much the end for all the vined things.

Droopy calabaza.

Droopy squash.

The basil, which was planted right next to the house and therefore had some protection from the wall and eaves, survived with just a few leaves frosted, so I harvested most of it and made pesto. I ended up with ten cubes of pesto (I freeze it in ice cube trays), which is going to be the totality of the pesto to come out of the garden this year. Better than nothing, I guess. Which is pretty much my motto for this year.

Anyway.

The tomatoes also mostly survived, because they were so bushy that the top layers protected the bottom ones.

Frosted leaves on top . . .

But green underneath.

There were lots of tomatoes hiding under the foliage, and this week is supposed to be quite warm with no frost, so I have hopes for some ripening on the vines.

The remaining calendula plant doesn't mind the frost at all, and is very happy that the grasshoppers have been driven away by the cool weather.

Happy calendula.

We can have a hard frost at any time at this point in the year, so this might be the last week the plants have to produce anything. Fingers crossed, mostly for the tomatoes.

Tell me, my fellow gardeners: Is your garden still growing, or is your garden year at an end?

 * It's a song. And here it is. I just love YouTube.

Growing Food: An Early-morning Tour

Let's see what's in the garden this sunny and cool morning in October, shall we?

Tiny calabacitas.

A not-tiny watermelon.

Exuberant calendula.

Stripey squash.

Healthy basil trio.

New growth from the asparagus.

And lots of green tomatoes.

All good things. 

However.

Our forecast is getting perilously close to freezing overnight this weekend. Specifically, on Friday. None of these plants can take any kind of frost. This time of year always comes with decisions about covering plants versus letting the garden season end with a frost. 

Whether we cover them or not mostly depends on if the forecast after that one night looks good enough that it would be worth letting the plants mature for another week. This year, given the delay in getting any harvests at all, I'm probably going to be more proactive about covering plants in an attempt to salvage a bit more food out of them.

We'll see what happens on Friday. I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can always start looking up green tomato recipes. Got any good ones?