Vegetable Gardening and Me (#5)

As I mentioned in my first post on gardening, I want to make this a weekly post. I am not an expert gardener, and I have made plenty of mistakes, but my adventures may help others have more fun and success. 

A very short update.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional. All my posts are for informational and entertainment purposes only. I reserve the right to change, edit, or correct any of the content found on the blog at any time without notification. Use at your own risk. 

I have little to share concerning my garden at this time. It has been a week, and I have accomplished nothing. Well, almost nothing. I have managed, for now, to keep this little monster from eating my young tomato, pepper, and eggplants. But I have not finished making the rest of the fencing. And I certainly have not completed (or started) a plan that includes planting schedules and layouts.

However, it’s not too late. My zone’s growing season can run as late as early October for some of my plants. And if I act within the next two weeks, I should be able to get at least two harvests of cucumbers, and several successive harvests of summer squashes. Also, I am okay with my tomato and pepper plants ripening late August and early September. But having a plan in place, especially an organized list of days to harvest, would be a big help. Even better would be a map of where to plant everything.

That would require sitting down and putting it to paper (or, in modern terms, filling out the spreadsheets). I have not committed myself to the task. The irony is that once I do all of the planning, it will be easy to reuse it in the future, especially since everything is digital (as long as I keep a backup copy in several safe places).

In the end, it’s on me to sit down and do it. I cannot blame the furry little pest hopping around my lawn, the quarantine, which is slowly being lifted, or anything else. 

Yet, I do take some comfort in knowing that most of the stuff that I am growing will be canned, or put in the freezer for storage. Or possibly dried—I have some beans I would like to try leaving on the stalk and letting them dry out. Surprisingly I have had success processing the tomatoes, cooking them up, putting them in bags, and freezing them. The same goes for the pepper and bean plants.

But it is the canning, specifically, the pickling, that I find the most rewarding. If I want those empty jars sitting in my basement to be filled with delicious bread and butter flavored pickles, I need to get moving. Damn they were good last year. My mouth is watering just reminiscing about them.

And I have only recently discovered the pleasures of relish. What a great way to store the bumper crop of summer squash I manage to grow every year!

Now, if the prospect of shelves filled with cans of freshly made pickles and relish ain’t incentive enough to get my act together, I don't know what is...