Two Weeks Early — Janet Szabo

We usually let the garden go until the end of September, covering the tomatoes as necessary, but everything was about two weeks early this year because of the heat. We have all we need and it’s time to start cleaning up. I went out yesterday morning and pulled up cucumber vines and rolled up hoses, then turned my attention to the tomatoes.

They are looking weary:

I cleaned off whatever Dirty Girl tomatoes were ripe or close to ripe, then pulled those plants and stacked the cages. I didn’t take a picture, but the ripe Dirty Girl tomatoes pretty much filled the Little Tykes wagon, so I went and got the John Deere tractor with its wagon. Getting it into the garden took some maneuvering. The tractor itself isn’t hard to manage, but it has an attachment on the side for collecting grass clippings, and that makes it much wider and bulkier. I am going to have to change a few things in the garden layout next year to better accommodate it.

I left the paste tomatoes so Marcie could get what she wanted from them. I had basil planted at the far end of this tomato patch, so I went and pulled up all of those plants. There was a lot of basil. Back around the beginning of July, I stopped in at one of the nurseries to see what they had on sale. They had basil—tables and tables of basil plants for a dollar apiece. I bought five and stuck them in by the tomatoes. Every time I was out in the garden, I pinched off the tops so they would bush out, and bush out they did. I had so much basil that I had to fill the bathtub with cool water and put the plants in there so they wouldn’t wilt until I could get to them. I used about half to make pesto for the freezer, Marcie took some, and I texted Ali, Elysian and Mike to let them know the rest was up for grabs. Ali stopped by on her way home from work to get basil, saw the wagon full of tomatoes and asked if she could have some (yes!), then came back with her son and their wagon to get paste tomatoes out of the patch. She is planning to make sauce this weekend.

The pigs and chickens will get whatever is left, although I will wait to see if we get a frost tomorrow morning. If not, anyone else who wants tomatoes can come and get them. I am not going to wait too long, though, on garden cleanup. The husband is getting me a load of rotted straw bales from a farmer friend. Those will be used as compost along with the chicken manure, and I want that down before too much longer.

Putting the garden to bed takes almost as long as getting it ready for planting.

My first batch of tomato seeds is done fermenting. I rinsed them yesterday and put them out on paper plates to dry.

I’ve got another batch going in today. The Dirty Girl tomatoes turned out to be fairly popular and I want to make sure we all have enough seed. All of this year’s plants and all of the seed for next’s year’s plants came from the ONE SEED Susan gave me in March 2020. Gardening really is a succession of little miracles.

I am about ready to get back to quilting, too, although I have a stack of knit fabrics that needs to be turned into some winter tops. That will be first on the to-do list once the co-op sale is over. The schedule should ease up considerably in October.