Article by Jan Green
WE’VE BEEN ROBBED-tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, luffa, figs, and more! We were robbed of the opportunity to grow produce for those in need. . And we know exactly who the culprit was. I believe you know him as well. This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with him. Every year about this time, we fear that old man winter will make an ever so brief visit early in the season, killing plants, forcing us to strip all of our produce prematurely. Sometimes it’s just the fear of the forecast. We strip the produce just in case it gets as cold as predicted. Some people like green tomatoes, so off they come. Peppers don’t have to grow to the big grocery store size to be flavorful, so off they come as well. If it does get as cold as predicted, well it just takes one cold night to wipe out all of the warm season plants and damage the produce, robbing us of so many more days, maybe weeks, of production. It’s always a tough call. Should we leave everything as is and possibly lose it all or save what we can in case the forecast was correct?
Up until the last couple days of October, harvest had been going pretty well at the community garden. The peppers were enjoying a slight relief from the intense summer heat- warm (not blistering hot) during the day and cooler nighttime temperatures. Boxes of peppers, mostly bells and jalapeños, were harvested and donated week after week. Those plants were showing off and not yet ready to quit.
This was an unusual year for tomatoes. Typically, they put on a bountiful second crop in the fall in addition to what they produced earlier in the season before the summer heat arrived. The Celebrity tomatoes did that to an extent, but the Whopper and Purple Boys acted more like determinate tomatoes. They produced in the early part of summer and then decided they were done. The hot days of summer set them packing, and they never really made a comeback. We’d get a few tomatoes here and there but no big fall crop. So different from previous years, and so very disappointing.
As has been mentioned before, we’ve always struggled with growing squash, any kind of squash. Things were different this year. Yes, we still struggled with zucchini, yellow, and patty pan squash. But we tried again to grow Tromboncino which tends to be more resistant to the pests that so often attack our squash plants. Our first attempt was a struggle, and those plants were riddled with vine borer holes, but these are really tough plants, and they just were not going to give up, and amazingly they survived! Right before this cold snap, we were excited to see that these plants had more baby squash than they’d had all year long, but we soon faced disappointment as we realized they would probably not be able to grow to maturity due to old man winter. On Monday before the cold arrived, a 42 inch long Tromboncino had been harvested, and we were counting on harvesting many more of the same in the coming days.
By the end of the month, okra was already slowing down and was not long for this world, but the fig tree still had lots of green figs waiting to ripen. Our half bed of green beans had only recently started to produce, but the number of plants was limited, so no major loss there. Eggplant was about finished, so that loss was minimal as well.
Every year we seem to have one plant that stands out as the garden superstar. This year was no different. It was actually a plant that was more of an afterthought. Someone wanted a few luffa sponges, and so we managed to squeeze in two plants, never really expecting a great deal- five or six sponges would be plenty. This is a huge plant and can grow 50 feet or so. Before long 50 to 75 young luffa were being harvested per week. In fact, as many as 32 were harvested in just one day from these two plants. Well, it didn’t take us long to realize we did not need that many sponges, and knowing they are edible when young, started exploring that possibility. We came to realize there are many ways to cook luffa. Thrilled that none of the usual pests attacked this plant but knowing we were taking a chance, we planted two more plants late in the season. We had the seeds so what did we have to lose? Well, we lost exactly what we knew was possible. They were just starting to produce (Three were harvested the night before that cold snap and that thief robbed us of that crop along with many others.) They went down, never to produce to their full potential.
That’s how things went in the garden this year. We got hit with cold weather at both ends of the gardening season, robbed of our plums in the spring due to cold temperatures when the trees were in bloom and robbed of all sorts of warm season crops in the fall. We know it’s always a gamble on either end of the growing season, but we also know that if you don’t put that seed in the ground, you definitely won’t have any possibility of a harvest. So we go for it, knowing at least we have a chance, and we try not to be too disappointed when things don’t work out as hoped.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we want to give thanks for our many blessings this year and especially the following; a board that works together to keep the community garden going forward, volunteers that have given so much of their time to make this endeavor reality, and organizations that believe enough in what we do to support us financially. We are so thankful for everyone’s part in Brownwood ‘s Community Garden.