Kelly's Vegetable garden

Adding a journal entry so I can post a picture.

The slugs seem to have abaited and allowed for some squash to finally pull through. I’m going to have so much squash I’m not going to know what to do with it. Should be enough to keep us through the winter if they are good keepers.

I’ve heard they are good keepers, but I’ve heard other people say they aren’t, so we’ll just have to see.

Pictured is one of the ripest ones. There’s about three in this stage, with at least another five younger ones.

These peppers have had a little trouble ripening, due to the dappled shade they get in the late afternoon, and the fact that I set them out WAY too late (damn, my fault). They were all germinated and ready to go, I just didn’t get them into the ground early enough for my liking.

I think in a week or two I’m going to uproot these guys and bring them indoors. Hopefully they won’t wither and die in process, but I’d like to get a few more peppers this season.

I’m looking out the window today and I just know the season is going to come to an end soon enough. The official first frost date for my area is Oct 13th, but I’m hoping it’ll be a bit more warm this autumn for just a little bit longer. Hell, it was 30-35 degrees almost every day for three months, you think the weather could just indulge me a bit longer and wait for a few more of my tomatoes to ripen, along with my peppers and those little baby tomatillos that took so long to actually appear.

Hundreds of blooms this summer from that tomatillo, and just a few weeks ago they actually start to turn into fruit. What’s up with that? I had stopped trying to hand pollinate by that time, so my only idea is that maybe there were a bust of bees (what?) that made their way to my tomatillo since everything else was already fruiting and ripening.

The Delicata squash is coming along quite nicely as well, the slugs seemed to have eased back, although I’m not sure what caused it because I didn’t get the eggshells or beer out there. Tons of little squash now, and two that are looking almost mature. Although the leaves are covered in powdery mildew (thanks to a long hot summer then all of a sudden rainy rainyness), that doesn’t seem to actually be affecting the plant. I’ve been hearing conflicting stories as to whether or not this squash is a good keeper or a bad one. I’ve read and heard both. I guess we’ll just have wait and see.

See, this year I decided that I was sick of not being able to get tomatillos here in town (except sporadically at the grocery store that I barely go to), so of course, I wanted to grow my own.

Well, I’m usually a big fan of research before doing my garden. I’ll go to great lengths to make sure I know exactly what the plant needs if I’ve never grown it before. This time, however, for some unknown reason, I decided not to do that.

So, much to my dismay, I find out that tomatillos really need to have two plants in order to pollinate. While I have read it’s not completely necessary, it’s probably the case without those two plants that you won’t get any tomatillos. I tried pollinating by hand, didn’t work. So I resigned to thinking I’d get some nice big flowers this year, but no tomatillos. Lesson learned.

Well, when I went to check on the garden this week I see a bunch of these guys (see picture included with post). Tons of ballooned (for lack of a better word) husks that are not now falling off, but growing inside tiny tomatillos.

Yipee! Imagine me doing a happy dance in my garden with the neighbours looking on confused.

I’d hazard a guess that there’s at least 10 of these guys, with more potentially on the way.

Of course, now we have a problem. I’m in zone 5, and the nights are getting cooler. Now I’m worried that before these guys mature the frost will kill them off. So not only did I not do my research, but I waited a little late to plant this year to boot!

I will be happy this year if I get one, just one damned tomatillo. But I am enthralled that now they’re actually showing sigs of life rather than the flowers just withering and falling off.

Slugs have not proven to be a very large problem in my garden, but for some reason they are just attacking my poor squash. Three squash have now succumbed to the slugs appetite, but I say, what about my appetite? I want some sqaush too, damnit. It might be time to break out the beer and place it strategically around the base of the plant to coax the buggers to drown miserably rather than feast on my squash.