Where has the time gone! Apparently, I have been slacking on updates and stories for the month of September. Though, I have been busy working on the yard and processing all the delicious food. My downtime for writing however has been taken over with teaching a new course this year. Reading a text book and writing lectures has definitely monopolized my time. Anyways, enough of the excuses! Here we go.

As you can see, the average temperatures of both August and September were almost bang on from 2023 to 2024. The weather patterns however were slightly different. We had more cloudy days in august last year, but more cloudy days in September this year. I don’t think the weather is our full culprit for some of our lower yields this year so far though.

Beet greens are a bit of a usage pick, similar to herbs. It just depends on what you are making or processing as to how much you are picking. I can tell you that this year we have a lot more beets than previous years, meaning we have more beet greens. However, we were clearly eating more salads last August, hence the higher harvest of the greens.

Similarly, I would say that our beet harvests were also dependent upon when they were needed. Our garden is full of beets that I can go and pick at any time, but it all depends on what I am cooking. I’d rather not pick them to go soft in the fridge if I am not using them. Clearly, we have used more beets this September, and were heavier on our beet consumption in August last year. It will be more interesting to see what our October harvests will be when we clean out the garden. That will give us the overall for the year, which will give a better indication of our overall yields.

These speak volumes. Our broccoli plants this year were terrible. The plants themselves grew quite large, but barely produced heads. Most of what is harvested is the little off-shoots. Apparently the plants just skipped the main head this year, focused on growing large and sending off little shoots of florets. I think the culprit on this one was poor gardening practices. We turned in a lot of new soil to the beds and I thought we would be safe putting the broccoli and cauliflower in the same spot so that I wouldn’t have to adjust the irrigation. That would be an incorrect assumption! Lesson learned, or rather lesson proved since I knew it was a risk.

The butternut squash was not ready in August. That would have been impressive considering it is a fall harvest. However, this year we did get quite the harvest starting in September. Last year, we didn’t have butternut squash ready until October. I think I finally have the squash figured out though because it is extremely happy and has a lot of squash growing. The 17 lbs this September are from 4 squash. They are not only producing, but the squash is large and very tasty!I’ve already had some delicious butternut squash soup, and plan to make some butternut squash risotto soon.

Easy to compare the cabbage since last year the ants killed all my plants shortly after I planted them outside. This year, I did ok with the squash. No large heads, but decent size medium heads on the green squash. I also tried letting them do the smaller shoots after harvesting the main heads, which worked well. I managed to harvest a few mini-heads before the aphids found them. The mini-heads were larger than brussel sprouts. They were about the size of a baseball.. Good for tossing into a dinner.

The red cabbage, which is the one I wanted the most of, was mediocre. The heads didn’t really develop tight and solid. Rather they were somewhat loose and not very big at all. Next year, I am going to focus on the red and only do one or two green heads. We are also going to cover them with netting to keep the cabbage moth off them. We really battled them this year, and I feel like it had an impact on the heads. I will unfortunately be buying at least one head this year to get some rotkohl made for the winter. I’ll likely buy that from the nursery that I purchase some of our plants at in the spring. They have a great farm and a delicious taco stand to grab lunch at!

We are doing well with the cantaloupe. Not as well as last year, but we will see what the final yields are. I have a few that I have been hoping will get golden, but now that the weather is chilling quite significantly, I am going to have to pull them a little green. Like many of our plants, it just seems like our cantaloupe was about a month behind this year. Our main harvest last year was mid-august, and this year, it wasn’t until mid-September, as you can see from the above comparison numbers. We did pull some in October last year, so we will see how the ones this year compare overall. Either way I am happy with our harvest this year and have lots of cantaloupe frozen for enjoyment over the winter.

The carrots have been great this year. As mentioned in previous comparison posts this year, I was supposed to have long, uniform, cylindrical carrots, and instead ended up with uniform, large, fat carrots. They remind me of a chinese carrot that you can buy in most grocery stores. However, the ones from the garden pack a bunch of great flavour into them, so I am still quite happy with them. Basil is also quite happy as she has been getting to enjoy quite a few chunks herself. We still have half our carrot bed to pick, so I think we will have a nice harvest to see us through part of the winter, which will be great. We didn’t have a lot to enjoy over the winter last year.

I think we have the celery figured out. This was my last kick at the can for celery. If we didn’t get some decent size stalks, I was going to throw in the towel and just go back to buying it. Well, apparently the key was not growing it under the shade of the cucumbers. This year, I just did a small row next to the cabbage and they thrived. They weren’t as big as store bought stalks, but they were definitely close. I was able to use it in salsas, soups and I also froze some for more soup making in the coming weeks. They will be back in the garden next year since they worked out well this year. We did pull all the plants in September since our garlic patch is now where the celery was.

Swip-Swap. As you can see, like many of the plants, September was our month for good growth and harvest. A month behind last year. Overall, the cucumbers this year have been fantastic. They are proper long-english cukes. I have only had 2 that I missed seeing that ended up a little fat, but otherwise they are the skinnier cucumber with very few seeds. We will definitely be planting this variety again!

The leeks are a new addition this year, strictly so that I can make potato-leek soup from our garden. Though, now that I have successfully grown some, I may need to grow a few more next year so that I can do some cheese and leek quiches for winter enjoyment. I’m quite happy with how they turned out, though they aren’t as thick as the ones I usually pick up from the store, but are still a really nice size. Some room for improvement in next years crop!

For a plant that apparently grows like a weed, I have been struggling this year. Well, technically I have been struggling with the ones I intentionally planted, which grew to a small size and haven’t really done much since. I did however, have a volunteer plant, which is impressive considering there is landscaping fabric under these plants. But one seed managed to wiggle between the fabric and the rock wall so it is just on the edge and flopping over the side of the bed. It however, is big and producing a lot…just behind schedule. I definitely won’t have the same harvests as last year, but I will at least get enough for a batch of jam, which will be good, because I think it is now one of my dad’s favourites. October will hopefully be a good harvest month for these.

These are again subjective, based on what I am cooking or processing. I will likely have some good numbers for October since I plan to make some sundried tomato pesto soon and will be harvesting all of our basil. I will also likely be cutting back a lot of the herbs to dry them for winter use so October numbers should be good.

I definitely utilized the greens on our onions a lot more this summer. However, by September, there wasn’t much left that was worth using. It looks like that may have been the case last year as well. I did notice that there are a few onions that have started sprouting in the last few weeks, so a bit of a delayed start. I will likely pull those, but I do plan on planting a bunch this fall again for an earlier harvest next year. It really worked out well this summer. I do want to make some changes though, because we aren’t getting very big onions. I may try to mix some straw into the soil to offer a looser pack to the soil in the hopes that the onions are able to expand better. This seems to work for potatoes, so I will experiment.

Our onions overall have done better this year, but that is mostly because they are not being suffocated by the potatoes this year. Last year they didn’t have a chance because the potato plants flopped over on top of them and there was no changing their direction. We learned and made sure that wouldn’t be an issues this year. Still, I would love to see some larger onions like we used to get out of our raised beds.

A sad year for our peppers, though mostly due to my poor planning. I planted them in with the cucumber and squash plants thinking they would grow tall enough for the vines to just go around. Nope. The vines grew quickly and towered over the little pepper plants. I did manage a few sweet peppers, but that was just lucky that the cucumbers thinned out a bit around those plants. Next year, I will put them on their own again and hopefully see some better harvests. I have heard from a few people that this year was just a tough year for peppers regardless, which definitely didn’t help my situation.

This is another selective picking plant. I didn’t pick any in August or September this year, but will likely do a good harvest in October. There will be quite a few that will have to go to compost because they will be woody, but I looked and there are tons of new shoots, so I will be able to do a harvest and get some rhubarb chutney made. I have been meaning to make this for a few years now, and never find the time. I will this year! I have a week off to get the garden sorted out for the winter months, and will also be processing a lot of what is left during that week. Chutney is on the list!

Overall, we will have a lower harvest of zucchini this year, which is a-okay with me. We luckily, only ended up with one plant which was so much more manageable. Plus it was easier to monitor, so we didn’t get many of those gargantuan zucchini that somehow sprout overnight. We tended to harvest the zucchini earlier this year while they were still on the smaller side. They are much juicier and have a better texture when you catch them at a small to medium size. I am going to aim to only have one plant moving forward. It is the perfect amount.

We have had great harvests of strawberries, with rich, red berries all the way through. We are however, seeing smaller harvests than last year, but I’m not complaining. It is still a really good amount that we are growing and I am very happy with our patch. We did lose about 5 plants over last winter, but managed to plant a few runners in those spots, so hopefully they will well enough established now that they will last this winter. We didn’t mulch them last year, which I may end up doing this year. Not a lot, but just a bit of straw around each plant to hopefully help them winter better. Then I will uncover them in the early spring to let them get nice and big again.

We have less big beef plants this year, but also the plants we do have are slow to produce and not really producing a lot. I think we are actually going to scrap the big-beef next year. We don’t actually use them for much other than on sandwiches or burgers. I would actually prefer to use romas even on those items because they aren’t as juicy and don’t make the item soggy.

Our “cherry” tomatoes are not really cherry size. They are actually the size of small romas but in the round shape. It’s quite impressive actually. I have learned that they may actually be a variety of “cocktail” tomato which generally grows to the size of a golf-ball. This would be accurate for what we are picking. They are great and quite versatile. They peel really easily and have a nice flavour to them. We did quite a few of these plants, and will likely do 50% of these and 50% romas next year.

We don’t have as many roma plants this year, instead planting a few more of our cocktail tomatoes instead. However, we are still getting decent size harvests for the plants we have. I did notice in mid-August, 2 of our roma plants started getting brown leaves, and have partially died now. I am not sure the cause, but when we pull them, I’ll be able to get a better look at the plant. We also didn’t prune the plants as much as we have in past years, which we wanted to experiment with. I do think it may have affected the romas, and would like to go back to pruning those better next year. The cocktail tomatoes didn’t seem to have any issue with the lack of pruning. Perhaps it is just a variety issue.

The watermelon did not do great. We managed 2 small melons, but they weren’t great. The plant itself looked like it was struggling all summer with sharp looking leaves rather than nice large leaves. I am going to give it one more go to see if I can get them going before I throw in the towel on these. I have tried them a couple times now with no success. This year was the closest we got, and did have some fruit to eat, but late in the summer and not to the size I was hoping for. I’ll have to do a little more research on growing watermelon and see what I might be able to do to encourage them to grow better next year.

That brings us to a close for August & September. October will be a final harvest of all our items, including our potatoes. We actually harvested our potatoes last year in August, September & October, so when I do our next set of comparisons, I will have to make sure to note that difference. I considered it a few times, but August and September just seemed to fly by and I didn’t have a chance to peek into our potato patch. Hopefully we have a big harvest later this week or next.