Okay, so I haven’t made a post since August. My garden disappointed me this year. I did not get the usual yield that I normally would get. I think it was a combination of the extreme heat plus too much rain all at once. I also didn’t put horse manure in my garden in early spring and work it into the soil. Nonetheless, I did get two cantaloupes, a whole mess of hot peppers, some cucumbers, okra, tomatoes, eggplant, and yes…even carrots.

But, alas, it is time to put the garden to bed for the winter. I’ll add some soil amendments to it this coming weekend to replenish my soil’s nutrients for next year.

So I went out into the garden, which I hadn’t visited since late August. It was a mess…warning…this is not for the faint-hearted:

I told you it was a hot mess! I had a lot of work to do. I thought that I was only going in there to clean out dead plants, surely there was nothing left to harvest, right? Oh my garden friends, I couldn’t have been more wrong!

To start, I harvested some short, fat carrots that I had forgotten I planted. The tomato plants that I placed around them grew so large they totally covered the carrot plants. I went to pull what I thought were weeds and out came this:

I specifically chose a short, stubby cultivar so that it would grow well in my soil, which is not the most friable in certain spots even with digging.

But that’s not all my friends…yes there is more! Remember my habanero plants that refused to grow tall and were even more stubborn about sharing their blossoms? Well, there are little baby habanero peppers all over my plants! I am hoping that they will continue to grow and maybe I can harvest them by the first freeze. Here are the little darlins:

But wait! There’s still more. I found a few more tomatoes and even some eggplants!

This is what my jungle looked like after it was all cleaned out:

This is my garden trash that eerily resembles Madame Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock (don’t believe me…look at the comparison):

And this is what my legs felt like later that day after I took a bath:

But it was all worth it…and it will stop hurting when the pain is gone! LOL

My garden is now cleaned out. I’ll have to think of some things to blog about now…maybe I can still get some raised beds in and do some garlic and onions before it gets too cold.

Thanks so much for sharing my summer with me! It’s been a fun ride with ups and downs along the way.

Until next time, y’all!

Happy gardening…or happy garden thoughts…..