ok.. went away for long weekend and lots of catch up reading to do..

I have the plant led lights that I use in house only for plant starts.. works great.. does use power! always at least a ten dollar bump per month when I start my early plants. and you would need a lot more for a green house as I am running thre long shelves

second nikki is awesome, we are facebook friends, I have friends here in Ottawa area that she as interviewed for her radio show, you have to have the plants started at a certain stage and they git dormant mode dec-jan and first half of feb, then the sun light angle changes and you get growth starting again as long as you keep the snow shovels and or swept off. cole has a great system where you do the covered crops in ground with hoop house in a double layer that works like a trick!

third.. high hoe came this weekend and dug the 19 by 19 by 3.5 foot base for my big old storm garden-food producing permaculture berms around it, also clears some more trees around my main garden area.

Grapes are done for the year. that's crazy soon.. We had our first hard frost on SEPT 9th! that's five weeks early compared to the stat norm in our area.. and the weather temps are all over the place.. 43c last week, less then a week later hard frost and now at moment we are in below normal temps on the cooler side..

Very hard weather on the garden and plants.

Having said that.. pasta sauce batch put up.. so many peppers, grape juice put up, grape jelly put up.. Zucchini Relish done for the year..

First winter turned to summer without spring and now summer to winter without fall, must have 6 inches of snow in my yard!

wow, I knew you had snow coming but not six inches.. let me know if it melts or if that is it.. winter is there
Did you get everything off the garden?

I’ve had 2” now for three days straight. Supposed to get to mid single digit and maybe melt down today, possibly mid tens this week. I still have half my potatoes in the ground, some beets and been plants who are now obviously dead...

Greenhouse is kept warm with a small heater and I still have tomatoes going strong there.

We had about 5" of wet snow. As of today (Monday) it is mostly all melted. Now there is more rain forecast. We are getting all the moisture now that we didn't get over the summer. The forecast for here is for a couple of nicer days then back to colder weather. Still have chard, carrots and beets in the gardens. Have the onions and garlic hanging in a shed drying, but they are taking forever with the cool weather and no sun. Finished digging up all the potatoes just as the rain and cooler weather started. Pulled all of the tomatoes and now have them on ripening on the kitchen table. Will be canning the ripe ones this week. Have already made green tomato pickles, mincemeat, green tomato jam and some red tomato jam.

Thanks for the update Learner, They said we were going to have frost this weekend but it missed our farm so things are still trucking along.. I did another batch of salsa, ground cherry jam and Mock (zuccinhi) pineapple fruit.. We don't have much left on tomato's.. they are in the final push which is fine, they have been producing well since end of july..

Its fall today at a cold wind with a temp of ten.. I am glad to hear your snow melted.

sadly, I got almost nothing this year.... over 24 dozen tomato plants and it has only been in the last 2 weeks that there has been tomatoes on the plants. It looks like I will be doing up a few "mini greenhouses" to see if I can get the tomatoes to keep growing.

Others that I have spoken to had the same kind of issues - lots of flowers, lots of bees but not fruit setting.

Killing frost coming this weekend here. Over the last couple of days have gotten over half an inch of rain. Plenty cold here.

In the middle of summer didn't think there were going to be much on our tomatoes, lots of flowers, but no fruit. Then, all of a sudden there was all sorts of tomatoes growing. Ended up with a decent crop in the end.

Fianlayy had flowers on tomato plants but only had fruit in late September. Picked them all off on weekend and all still hard green.

Carrots were limited in quantity and are stew ready / so short they don’t need cutting.

Beats are tiny.

No beans or peas grew.

No green thumb but I have had far better success with less effort in the past.

While not gardening, deer and turkey populations are the worst I have seen on the property since 1995. Same comments from farmers nearby. Going to have to rethink approach and efforts for next year.

Thanks for the overview Clarence, that was not a good garden year for you, it was a hard year for most of us.. interesting about the deer and turkey, we did not have a bad year this year, the farm dogs do a good job on keeping the larger out and the farm cats do a good job on the smaller, including the tree rats..

Are you going to age the tomato's til they turn red or are you going to make relish with the green ones, and don't forget fried green tomato's (so good) or stewed green tomato's. I have to admit that I use a lot of green over the season because they are the first ones ready

Well, it is almost the mid of oct and I guess I should give a "overview", the season is not fully done yet so there will be a final round up.. my local area is consider in a level two drought, we got 60 percent less rain then normal. We had late frost in the spring, we had a heat wave with no rain at the timing for seeding time in early aug for fall garden harvest and we had a early hard frost with a longer extended fall with high winds, and a mix of crazy heat and then cold..

Some of the thing we would normally grow this year did not get planted due to planned reno's in the main garden, as I knew we would need to bring equipment in, other area's that were planted and did grow well but was run over and ruined when we needed to have the big tree's taken down.

having said all that.. what we did get planted in regular garden did very little, they struggled from the start.. however everything that was planted the hugelbeds, or the permaculture raised/compost gardens or in the food hedge row garden beds, ROCKED it and are still either producing food that we are eating now or are finishing growing out seed for next years garden.

The stars of the year.. the perennial of course and like most hard years, its the soft fruits that outproduced the hard fruits pound for pound. Overall, we are down several thousand pounds of produce.

So total we brought in between 1500 to 1800 pounds so far and I hope that we will get to that 2000 pound mark. we will see, I am having a second wind in the yard that was cleared with the tree's and was able to seed out a good amount of fall edibles and we are covering some things with the hoop house to extend those crops and yields.. we still have a number of fall root crops that are growing well and will not be harvested till the final push!

We will be working very hard on getting the spring gardens ready for as early planting as possible and gearing up for a outstanding 3 season garden season next year!

In the last little bit since it got a bit cooler, I now have swiss chard and tomatoes finally. I am already looking at seeds for next year, taking down & reworking the raised beds

and I told my neighbour I am cutting down all the parts of her tree that hangs over my fence 😈

Thanks for the overview Clarence, that was not a good garden year for you, it was a hard year for most of us.. interesting about the deer and turkey, we did not have a bad year this year, the farm dogs do a good job on keeping the larger out and the farm cats do a good job on the smaller, including the tree rats..

Are you going to age the tomato's til they turn red or are you going to make relish with the green ones, and don't forget fried green tomato's (so good) or stewed green tomato's. I have to admit that I use a lot of green over the season because they are the first ones ready

Will let them redden up. I want my tomatoes to put on bacon and lettuce sandwich 😀

My root veggies were good-except for one type of potatoe. Winter surprised us so our potatoe harvesting was touch and go, waiting for a sunny day. My squashs did really well-except for the spaghetti squash(likely a water issue). My corn grew better than most years??? My greens were lovely but went to seed too early of course. Tomatoes were numerous but with huge amounts of water needed. We had smoke in the air from BC most of the summer-so not the most enjoyable summer I've had. Bee's alive and well-so that's good! Glad it's over really 🙄
But...boxes are put to bed! Ready for next year! Going to add some sand to the boxes next spring and the compost was added just prior to the snow! Ug...Winter
On a side note... Not surprisingly- Hay was hugely expensive this year 😈