I decided to tabulate the dates of the first tomato and the end of the garden. Herbs and Kale can be harvested through January and I have a kale plant that is gorgeous that is from last year. It wintered over.

I hadn’t been outside in a while, but I needed to talk to RT this morning and took a final stroll through the garden. I picked enough for an omelet tomorrow morning. The garden just gave the finger to the rabbits and forces of nature.

Today is November 15th, we still have not had a hard frost, and the nighttime temperatures are above freezing at least for the next week. This is definitely a late harvest record, and I have a couple of large nice green tomatoes in one of the deck pots. If they turn just a hint of pink, I can pick them and they will ripen in the house.

As it was getting cold outside and they were predicting frost, I changed into a shirt and sweater and picked the few remaining vegetables in the garden. It was like pulling the scab off a wound as I said goodbye and good riddance to my failed garden. I would have cursed the rabbits, where the blame really belongs, but the Lord God, made them too damn cute. C’est la Vie.

I picked three or four nice eggplants and a bunch of small peppers. I also picked some tomatoes off the pot by the deck that were just getting pink. Those will ripen in the house. There were several nice green ones. I’ll take my chances on those, as they need a little pink to ripen in the house.

I am officially calling the garden a failure and have given up for this year. The Rabbits ate the tops off most of the green peppers I planted at the end of July. They eventually eat all of the blossoms and small peppers off the new plants.

Cucumbers are long gone and most of the heirlooms are dead. The garden is an overgrown weed patch. With all of my other activities in August, I didn’t have the time eo salvage or restore it. We had no rain in August, so there might not have been much that could be done. The animals ate all of the Roma tomatoes and plants.

I am going completely to raised beds next year, although I don’t have a concrete plan yet.

So, in short, the garden declined in August because of the lack of consistent rain and the time I spent trying to clean up the porch and finish the cooking deck.  Cousins week and the trip to St. Louis kept me away from the garden for two weeks and sealed its fate. I got a few things done in August’s last couple of weeks but gave up on the garden.

Earlier in the week, I went out and picked tomatoes. Many of them have bites out of them, and some are up too high on the plant to be rabbits. Do I have a coon? Chipmunks? Squirrels? A significant portion of the heirloom plants have disappeared.

I need to water the pots, but I don’t have time. Also, the mosquitoes are fierce in the garden. I am totally frustrated as the garden is a disaster and I don’t have time to take care of it. . Thank God it rained as the plants needed water in the worst way.

I planted the 16 green pepper plants that had been sitting on the deck for the past month. I p ut them i nthe first bed where the greens had been. This will replace the ones that the rabbits ate.That took me up to almost 6:00. I hoped to get more done, but I ran out of time.

I checked the weather, and we got around 1.25 inches of rain overnight in addition to the 1.5 inches from Saturday night. My garden should be loving it! Depending on how much rain we get tonight, outside work will be halted until Wednesday or Thursday. Severe thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon and evening.

Depending on how much rain we get tonight, outside work will be halted until Wednesday or Thursday. Severe thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon and evening.

I made a Heirloom tomato, cucumber, and red onion salad. I made dressing with vinegar and oil, Emiril’s Italian seasoning, and some new hot smoked Spanish Paprika. New paprika made all the difference in the world.

Then I started on the zucchini pasta; Natalie had already grated the cheese. I went out and picked another zucchini, basil, and mint. I had dinner ready at about 7:15. We ate on the porch as everything on the deck was wet, even though the rain stopped and the sun was out.

After dinner, we went outside from the porch. We sat for a while and then went out to pick vegetables. We got a load of tomatoes, some zucchini, and a couple of cucumbers.

I went out around 11:00 and started trimming the blackberries and cleaning the old canes. I pulled way more out than I thought I would. I picked a few ripe berries. I think they and everything else will be early this year. I’ll be picking some Cherokee Carbon Heirloom tomatoes today. They are exceedingly early. I also weeded the rest of the mint garden.

I planted the cucumber plants and then another hill of Cocozelle Zucchini. Then I ripped out the old pea plants and weeded that bed. Then, I succession-planted Lazy Housewife pole beans along the trellis. This is about two weeks earlier than I planted them last year. Last year’s crop got eaten once they started climbing.

We had about half-an-inch of rain a couple of days ago, but it did little to dampen the parched soil. My plan was to water the whole garden today, but we received over 2 inches of rain during the night, so I don’t need to go out and water. It’s a little too wet to weed, so I’ll do that tomorrow or Tuesday.

The rabbits ate a clump of Black-eyed Susans down to the ground, and are now starting to attack the okra. I will be re-planting the peppers and I guess I’ll need to do more fencing.

The past two days I was cleaned up the gardens along the back of the house. It took several hours to pull all of the dead flowers out of the chives, but that will make harvesting much easier. Toby helped.

These pots were planted on May 22. I’ll plant the next two pots in a few days. It looks like a month separation between plantings might be close to optimum. I am hoping I can just alternate between the two sets of pots.

I planted Genovese Basil and Slow-bolting Cilantro from Terroir Seeds in Arizona.