To read more about how my garden is growing this season check out my past Garden Journals from this season:
Hello and welcome to the November garden! In this post I’ll include how the garden wrapped up for the year as well as my goals for certain crops for next year.
Cucumbers
I wont grow many or any lemon cucumbers in the coming season. They just got too crazy and didn’t actually taste that good. I enjoyed the fact that we had one raised bed of cukes, that worked well. I’d like to grow more pickling cucumbers next year. I made a small batch of pickles that came out very well.
Tomatoes
Between what I started as seedlings and what came up as volunteers we great quite a few tomatoes. I canned quite a bit! I have said it for years but I really need to find a better way to trellis the plants. No more tomato cages for me! This was the first time I have saved the seeds to plant next season and I look forward to seeing how these seeds germinate for me in the spring.
Broccoli
I’m debating on not growing broccoli next season. This year it did pretty well but the worms made it hard for my family to enjoy. I had trouble getting to the garden at the right time to catch the heads before they bolted. The yellow flowers were beautiful and I loved hearing the bees enjoying the blooms but I wont try to grow enough to freeze long term. I’ve read to use a row cover to help with worms but we will see. The photo below is of the wheel barrow full of the bolted flowers. It took several trips to the compost pile!
Cabbage
We grew a few nice heads but they didnt store well. I wont grow as many as my family and I dont enjoy sauerkraut enjoy to preserve it and eat it through the year. I wish we did!
Yellow Beans
We grew a good crop of yellow beans and I canned them. I’ve grown them in the past and frozen them but we dont love using that method. Canning seemed to be a good way to go.
Potatoes
We grew a ton of potatoes! Our newest bed was full of potatoes and weeds. I plan to can some potatoes as storing the amount we grew will be a challenge. Next year we plan to work on some better weed control methods.
Onions
Our onion harvest did very well. We grew yellow and red onions and they enjoyed the new rows we made.
Garlic
The garlic harvest did well and I just got next years crop in the ground. I had the cutest helper! We put in 132 cloves this year and used a landscape fabric to keep the weeds at bay.
Squash
The two plants I grew gave us exactly what we needed for zucchini. I shredded quite a bit and tucked it in the freezer. Butternut squash grew ok but got stunted by squash bugs. I also need to keep their area weeded better. Spaghetti squash did well but also suffered from squash bugs. I plan to burn the pile of spent vines and such to reduce the number of squash bugs on our property. I saw this recommendation online and it made a lot of sense as opposed to putting all of the dead vines in the compost pile.
Pumpkins
I grew a handful of pumpkins, enough to put on the stairs next to some corn stalks to decorate for fall. I manged to grow my largest pumpkin ever, 37.5 pounds! Its a big guy! I’d love to try some white pumpkins or flat stacking varieties next year.
Flowers
We enjoyed a wonderful year of blooms! The sunflowers were humongous and the tallest I’ve ever grown. Dahlias did well, though I plan to make more of a trellising system for them next year. I also have my eye on some different varieties of the Dinner Plate Dahlias. I will also make sure to plant more zinnias in multiple spots. They require very little effort and have a long vase life to enjoy and share with others. I really love blessing folks with fresh flowers!
There are still plenty of tasks to do to tidy up the garden and flower beds but overall the big jobs are all done. Now it’s time to rest and dream of next years garden!
