A Sad Gardening Day in the Neighbourhood

The weather has turned cool here so the organic pickling cucumbers I was hoping for haven't materialized although there is still a slim chance.  I've been keeping a close eye on my garden.  It is a bit sheltered so can tolerate a bit more adverse weather conditions.  We are quickly approaching our ADFF but most gardens should still be going fairly strong and if fall crops were planted they should be coming up by now.  With all the weather problems late blight still hasn't hit the tomatoes so I took several cuttings for my indoor continuous garden.  They are nice and healthy looking so I have a fair amount of hope they will perform nicely.  As I tended the garden I could help but notice that our neighbours two and three doors down has stripped their gardens to the bare soil.  Everything is gone.  Then I took a basket of tomatoes over to another of our neighbours and noticed their garden which is a very impressive raised bed system was also completely cleaned out.  Mine is the only garden still going full tilt!  I told them to help themselves because I have more tomatoes than we can use.  These are the beautiful big slicing heirloom tomatoes, brandywine.  One slice fills a slice of toast for toasted tomato sandwiches.  What I couldn't give away I brought in along with any other tomato I could find then ran them through the food mill for a raw smooth sauce to be frozen until I have enough tomatoes to can the sauce up. 

So many home gardeners are calling it quits this year and perhaps a bit too early.  I'm of the gardening school that I will hang on no matter what until the first hard frost hits.  It seems a bit too early to be tilling the garden under.  Heck local farmers are just harvesting soy beans and tomatoes here.  That will continue through almost mid-October so there is still plenty of time left for home gardening.  It was sad to see three gardens reduced to soil today.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
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