Thanks to my new planters I am on schedule with my spring planting.

Here are the new raised planters that I got from Lee Murdock’s brother. I know that these will be rabbit-proof, but I hope that hey don’t become convenient feeding troughs for the deer. Fortunately, I have only seen one deer in the garden all the years that I have been gardening here.

I contracted with his landscaper to have them delivered and fortunately the weather cooperated. He had emptied them and put the dirt in his trailer, so we wanted to place the planters in their final locations. I made a quick decision and decided to put one where the composter is and three along  the walkway where I had planted the eggplant. We moved the composter out of the way and he brought the first planter.

The planters are about 16 inches off the ground and the box is 12-14 inches deep. The area is 2 X 4 feet. They appeared to be manufactured, rather than homemade and made of 1 inch thick cedar with 2 X 2 cedar legs and framing. They’ll need to be re-stained as they are well-worn, but in structurally good condition. While he went back to get the second planter, I trimmed the pine tree to make room. We got the second planter and then he thought it best to fill these two before bringing the others. He filled them with the most beautiful black soil that I have ever seen.

We got the other two installed and filled and I thought we were done, but there were two more planters when I thought we were getting four! I needed to figure out where to put them very quickly, and we installed them in the middle bed. I will remove the wood from that bed, and will likely just increase the size of the other two original beds and fill them to the top with soil. I’ll probably add soil and compost to each one to increase the depth and I am ready to plant spring greens and other early crops without having to worry about the weather.

In the off-season my garden becomes a vehicle for story. I wrote a story about how on certain nights with a full moon, the garden path transforms into a moonbeam path, and you can walk on it into the magical land of Lunaria. I recorded the story with my granddaughter, Annabelle.

I created the image below from a photograph of the garden path from a few years back and picture of the eclipsed moon that I took several years ago. The starfield came from a NASA photograph. Thank you, Photoshop!

I have started seriously thinking about my raised bed garden this year and finally got my seed order into Terroir Seeds today. Here is what I ordered:

3 – Slow Bolting Cilantro
3 – Genovese Basil
1 – Cocozelle Zucchini
1 – True Lemon Cucumber
1 – Crystal Apple Cucumber
1 – Cucamelon/Mouse

I checked on the chives and they are sticking up an inch or two, maybe about a week or so behind last year.

Mild weather this fall allowed this final, final harvest from a potted plant next to the deck. They were labeled as cherry tomatoes, but I got an heirloom plant. I picked these when they were still green, just before the first hard frost, and they have been ripening on the kitchen counter for a couple of weeks. This is my latest tomato harvest ever. What a way to wrap up the year – a mostly failed garden, but the earliest and latest harvest heirloom tomatoes that I’ve ever had.

At least the herbs did well this year. I’ll be picking them into January. My back door bounty, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme.

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.