Monthly Archives: September 2026

September Review

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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.

This is the largest yellow pepper I’ve ever grown.
Jalapenos ready for freezing.

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.

All of the tomato plants are dead. They all look like this. It is possible that I didn’t water enough in August. It might be disease, and the groundhog likely helped. I will need to prune a lot heavier next year.

Fall Plantings – At One Month

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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 picked some arugula a couple of days ago, and it is ready. Unfortunately, something is making holes in the leaves.
The radishes have a lot of green growth, but the bulbs don’t look good. I will have some spinach in a week or so.
The cucumbers are growing well, but it’s unlikely they will set fruit in this cool weather. I am hoping we get a warm week or two in October.
The Zucchini is doing well, even though the groundhog did a good trimming about a week ago. I hope the EcoShield yard treatment will send him packing. But with this cool weather, I don’t know if we will see any fruit.

Thwarting the Groundhog…Outside Help

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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.