The garden is down.
The garden is officially down and 2025 outside is done, done, done.
We have had a few "light frost" nights and for those we brought some potted plants in from the deck and covered the larger planters and the vegetables. But Sunday is bringing rain changing to snow and temperatures down in the 20s.
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| The vegetable garden covered |
No amount of covering is going to stave off temperatures in the 20s. In short, the 2025 gardening season is over.
I tackled taking down the vegetable garden. We had already taken down the Hej Garden back in August, so at least that was out of the way. Given all of the demands on our schedules this fall, and given my currently working through depression, I thought throwing myself into some basic outdoor work would do me good. And it did. I worked an hour and a half on Thursday and two hours on Friday, with good results both emotionally and garden-wise.
I started on the wild jungle of tomatoes. Originally, I had planted three (3!) larger tomato plants and four (4!) cherry tomato plants. Easy, right? Way less than in recent years, right? What I did not count on was all the "other" factors that impacted the garden: my hospitalization in June, for example. Nor did I expect the cherry tomatoes to go hog wild and grow up and over and around EVERYTHING. The three larger tomatoes, in the front row, became lost in the cherry vines. Even with both careful pruning and wholesale hacking on my part, the cherry tomatoes took over everything they could, going all the way over to the garage wall in their exuberance. So I knew before starting that I had a bit of a chore ahead of me.
"A bit of a chore." There's an understatement.
I also knew before wading into the garden that there were still cherries ripening and coming on, so I took along our dishpan to put them in. It filled up:
I also knew this project would generate a lot of yard waste and I was not mistaken on that front either:
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| The first of two containers |
At the end of the Thursday afternoon session, I figured I was about halfway through the tomatoes with the peppers and basil yet to go. I had been at Justice Bus from 9:00 to 2:00 that day already, so I was pleased I had enough energy to get even that far. I also knew I wanted to finish it off on Friday, and so set my sights on getting an early start.
At 7:45 the next morning, I went outside and surveyed the scene. What if I start on the peppers first? I had planted 14 plants back in May, 13 of which were still intact. (The 14th? I had stepped on it way back in the late spring.) As I had with the first attack on the tomatoes, I made sure to pick all the remaining peppers from the vines. Let's just say there were a lot. A. LOT.
Peppers!
Plant by plant, I picked and pulled. The stakes piled up. So did the yard waste.
But I finished the peppers and yanked the basil. That left the remaining tomatoes. Again, I gathered many of them, red and green. (An aside: Why the green ones? Two reasons: (1) some of them will ripen inside, and (2) I may (may) make green tomato relish again this year. Maybe. We'll see.)
There were a lot of tomato vines:
What made me smile the most was coming across several vines still putting out blossoms, letting me know that hope springs eternal even in a tomato plant:
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| Blossoms on the tomato vines |
By the end of the two hours, I had completely filled both yard waste containers. In fact, there was some plants, mostly the basil (which died earlier, even covered; basil does NOT like cold temperatures) that I will go out later today and bag up. While I out there working, I took down the wind chimes and, of course, brought in the ceramics from Ben and Sam long long ago.
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| The chimes on the deck waiting to go inside |
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| The ceramics ready to move inside |
(In case you are wondering or remembering, the pottery fish that got broken back in June after a storm has been gracing our kitchen table ever since.)
Next week, after the initial cold blast is over, I will go back out and rake things around. The zinnias and the agastache I will leave until the early spring, but everything else is gone gone gone.
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| All that is left to bag up |
Over the next few days, I will look through my gardening notebook and make some notes following up from my earlier decision to rein in the gardens and just do the kitchen garden in 2026. Things to think about, things to remember, things to swirl around in my mind. I have peppers to cut and freeze. I have to make a decision about the green tomato relish.
And I will enjoy every last bite of every last ripe tomato, grateful for the very last tomatoes until next summer's garden.
P.S. After I wrote the above words, I went outside and finished bagging the vines, basil, and miscellaneous stalks, filling a yard waste bag. I then brought in the remaining gardening and summer items on and around our deck: the watering can, two stray pots, the deck chimes (not to be confused with the wind chimes), and such. I carried them down to the basement, making multiple trips. There are four pots of flowers we are wintering over inside, so I made room for those and brought them in; the other four pots (two LARGE deck planters make up half of that) will stay outside and end their season in a few days. The bees are gone; I have not seen one, despite the sunshine or warmth of the day, for over a week. As I type these words, Warren just mowed the backyard one last time.
Time for winter.
