Fall!

Oooh, I'm embarrased that I haven't written anything since August!  Yikes!  We have been in a holding pattern of weeding and harvesting tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and squash.  I fry up the eggplants (most of them) and freeze them for eggplant parm during the winter, and I make sauce out of the tomatoes.  So that has been taking most of my time.  I halve the peppers and freeze them too.  The squash should keep as-is throughout the winter.

Some things we can say from this year:  the red plastic mulch seemed to work for the tomatoes, we had a good crop of them this year and they ripened in staggers.  The silver plastic mulch worked for the eggplants and peppers.  We had less of a problem with flea beetles this year.  We didn't care much for the black paper biodegradable mulch.  It breaks down too quickly, and dogs running through it pretty much destroy it!  We will probably go back to using hay to mulch around the plants next year.  It just seems to keep the weeds in check better than we can.  The best tomato sauce recipe we've found is Julia Child's fresh tomato puree recipe.  It is easy and tastes great.  We also found out that if the basil plants get too big and out of control, just hack them back to the 2nd or 3rd bud and they'll come back nicely. 

Last weekend we pulled out the fence and mowed down the back half of the garden.  We put down tarps to use the stale seed bed method to kill weeds.  Then in a couple of weeks, Pat will plow and/or disc the ground and plant some winter ground cover.  Next year we plan on orienting the garden differently.