In Farmer Joe's Garden: The It's November and Stuff's Still Growing Edition

Am I the only one that finds it strange that we are bringing produce from the garden into our home in mid-November? Joe has slowly been bringing the last of the crops in this week. The weather has turned colder and it appears that the end of the growing season is finally here.

This morning he came in with four beautiful green peppers. With more time they would have turned red, but they still made delicious stuffed peppers for dinner.

This weekend he brought in the last of the hubbard squash - some small, green and warty, and others large and pumpkin-orange.

The pumpkin crop was plentiful in numbers, but small in size. We only had one baking pumpkin survive. We'll see how it tastes in some bread and pie in a few weeks.

Another pumpkin of note is the one wedged in our trellis in the backyard. It has literally grown itself into the trellis. I'm not sure what measures Farmer Joe will take to remove it from the trellis, but it's sure to be interesting.

He's already at work on next year's garden as we recently purchased some different varieties of baking pumpkins at a Pumpkin Patch. We've already been enjoying the pumpkin in a variety of ways. We'll see how the seeds hold up through the winter and spring.

The final analysis from this years' garden is a mixed bag. We enjoyed a TON of good produce from the garden. Lots of tomatoes (some are in my freezer now), lettuce, carrots, green beans, field pumpkins, and two varieities of squash. We would have had a good amount of spinach, but I'm pretty sure some Farmer pulled up the spinach seedlings before they could have a fair chance. A few plants did survive and produced delicious spinach.

In addition to small field pumpkins, we seem to have a few other problem areas: slugs in the lettuce, only a few peppers despite several plants and lot of babying, cucumbers have not done as well as we'd hoped, two varieties of peas over two summers have produced almost no peas, and melons and baking pumpkins were also limited in production.

Herb growing has not gone well, either. It seems the person responsible for the herbs has a habit of planting the seeds in early spring, and then forgetting about the herbs until July. When she finally makes her way out to check on her herbs, all she can find is a weed patch where her herbs were supposed to have been. Curious, very curious.

Farmer Joe will have the winter to scratch his head over what's in store for next year. While he plots, we'll still be enjoying some squash and tomatoes from the freezer in our soups and stews. Aliyah is working on the last of the pureed carrots and soon we'll get to work on cooking up the pumpkins. Before we can start on the pumpkins, however, we'll spend a weekend or two raking the 1,000,000 leaves in the yard and finding places to composte them. One thing is for sure, if Farmer Joe could grow produce like our trees grow and shed leaves, he could quit his day job and we'd be in business. Until then, I'm off to find a rake.