First, the good news is that it has been an amazing year for peppers. The plants are bearing heavily, and I am giving a lot away. I made stuffed peppers a day ago, and I will need to start freezing them. The Cubanelle peppers are almost identical to the Shishitos and don’t resemble the ones in the store. I have never seen such a great pepper crop in all of my gardening days. The Gypsy peppers have been amazing. In most cases we’ve been letting them ripen to bright red.

The bad news, of course, is that the groundhog destroyed much of the garden. He ate zucchini, cucumbers, peas, beans, okra, kale, celery root and likely many tomatoes. He also did a little trimming on the eggplant and killed a couple of the tomatillo plants.

The tomatoes started out well but stopped ripening after the first bunch. I think the groundhog is eating some and there seem to be a lot of San Marzano tomatoes missing. Now the plants are all dead.

I planted the fall plantings on August 26th, which was probably late, and here are the results a month later. August was hot and dry, and it turned cool and rainy a few days after Labor Day. That is helping the greens but probably slowing down the zucchini and cucumbers. The groundhog or other critter devoured the bean and pea seedlings.

I contracted with EcoShield for their wildlife control service. They will spray monthly, using Wolf Pee. I assume it is synthetic, since it is unlikely there is a captive herd of 100 or so wolves trained to pee into a cup… Over time, this should keep them out of the yard. I will have them spray around the blackberries to keep the rabbits from eating the bark off of the canes during the winter.

The extra fencing I put around the beds did nothing since the okra, zucchini, beans and peas keep getting trimmed. I’ll use the fencing for its actual purpose and install it around the barn. The tines go down a foot or so, which should keep them from digging.

They will do trapping if necessary. The groundhog destroyed about half my crops this year, and I need to solve the problem if I want a productive and useful garden next year.

I have always wanted to plant fall crops but have never had my act together enough to do so. This year I did but got some of them in later than I had planned. So, this is an experiment. It will help me set planting dates for future years.

Last week, on August 22nd, I planted peas and beans. A couple of weeks earlier might have been better, but we will see.

Yesterday, I did the plantings in the planters. I Planted Arugula in the first planter next to the onions. In the second planter, Crimson Giant radishes, Cherry Belle Radishes, and Bloomingsdale Long-Standing Spinach. In the third planter, Butter Crunch Lettuce and Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce. The Fourth planter got three hills of Burpee Heyday Hybrid Cucumbers. I’ll let them crawl on the ground, as the frost will hit before they have a chance to climb. I planted a few hills of Burpee Zucchini in the second bed where the original zucchini was and Pak Choi in the first bed where the original beans were. I fenced that in to protect it from critters.

The zucchini and cukes are supposed to mature in 40-45 days, but I should have had them in near the beginning of August.

Like I said, it is an experiment.

I went out today to prepare the planters for my fall planting. I knew a few onion bulbs had grown from the green onions that expired in the heat in early August. I had no idea how many there were until I started raking through the soil with my fingers. I pulled up almost a colander full. Most were pearl onion size, but nevertheless quite usable. Besides that, I found enough sprouts here and there to plant four rows of green onions. Benedicamus Domino! Abundance!

Maybe next year. I’ll purposely plant onions for fall harvest!

This morning, just as a thunderstorm was about to hit, I picked almost 14 pounds of Early Girl II tomatoes for the St. Anne Food Pantry. This was my first picking from that patch, and almost a month later than my first picking last year. All tomatoes were late this year. I am not sure why, maybe because of the cold weather in May and June. There were quite a few tomatoes that I had to throw away as they were starting to rot from the bottom.

Noe & Company came this morning and removed the buckthorn behind the container garden. Then they cleaned up the weeds and put down mulch and steppingstones. I’ll finish with some new plantings and whatever else I come up with. I am hoping this overhead shot lets me work out some ideas.

I have mostly been focused on Early Tomatoes in my garden. Because of the damage from my groundhog, I am looking at cucumbers and zucchini I can plant now and still get a harvest before the first frost. I found these two on Burpee’s site and ordered them. I’ll try to get them locally to save a few days.

I need to think about this next year for second plantings or replantings of failed crops.

Burpee’s Heyday Cucumber
48 days to maturity.

Burpee’s Best Squash
40 days to maturity

Finally, we have lots of ripening tomatoes. There are Early Girl II, Champion, Lemon Boy, and a surprisingly large number of Cherokee Carbon. I hope to take a batch to the Project Hope Food Pantry early this week. I was able to make pizzas with the garden vegetables for FWG on Friday.

The groundhog or other critters are eating the tomatoes, so I am picking them before they are ripe and letting them ripen on the kitchen counter which only takes a couple of days.

All of the peppers are producing heavily. We have been eating Shishito and Gypsy peppers for about a month. The Cubanelle peppers look identical to Shishitos. Hmmm. I picked a couple of red Jalapenos for the pizza, and they were extremely hot. Even Natalie thought they were extremely hot. I wonder if they are a different variety than last year. I have just started picking the green peppers. The Poblano peppers still need to grow a little. I have a bunch of red Serrano peppers.

The fencing has arrived; I don’t know if it will do any good… I am hoping the narrow gauge will be too unstable and uncomfortable for him to crawl over. Only time will tell. We did have a face-to-face encounter this afternoon. I saw a squirrel descend from the power line and go into the garden. I followed. He ran out, but then I had an encounter with the swine groundhog! He is large and looks very well fed.

I watered the tomatoes and noticed he has significantly trimmed the Tomatillos.

This is the new fencing around the Zucchini bed. I don’t think he can get over it. I ripped the old plants up as they were dead and planted new seeds. I hope I am not too late.

I fenced in the okra and zucchini bed. The plants are alive, but the odds of recovery are not good. I also fenced the pea beds and the cucumber and gypsy pepper bed. I will probably plant beans in the second pea bed where the Celeriac and Kale were. The Swiss chard has been trimmed a little. If this fencing doesn’t work, I’ll put in taller fencing like I did around the zucchini bed.