As the weather starts to cool down there are a number of things you learn in the garden. Depending on what you grow.
You start to question yourself about some things. Like, where did that squash plant go? It was headed in that general direction, but it seems to have gotten away. You know there were flowers on it and were hoping for actually squashes, but if they existed they are hiding in the weeds somewhere.
If you’re new to gardening, you may already have discovered, no one needs that many zucchini. It doesn’t matter how many you planted. No one needs that many. When it comes to zucchini, one plant is too many. This could be a project for later in my life. How to plant half a zucchini seed. Or maybe a quarter seed. If I can ever figure it out…
If you have root crops, you should plan to start digging them up shortly. Don’t do it yet. Wait until after the full moon. I’m told that if you harvest things like potatoes when the moon is waxing, they will rot. If you harvest on a waning moon, they will dry. Not sure if this actually works, but it usually seems that there is truth in these old stories. The full moon is Thursday. After that, you have two weeks to dig your potatoes.
I have seen a couple things on moon phases. Many might scoff. But still, a lot of these things work. The general rule of thumb seems to be if you’re trying to grow something, as in planting, do it on a waxing moon. Harvesting should be done on a waning moon. But as with most things, there will be exceptions.
And then there’s tomatoes. I try to pick all I can, but tomatoes seem to keep growing, even when they will never get ripe. It seems there are always green tomatoes left toward the end of the season. If they have started to turn ripe, they will continue to ripen. But there are still the green ones. You can make chow-chow, or something similar. My wife has a recipe very similar to chow-chow, but it has hot peppers in it. Or if you don’t have enough for a batch of something like that, there are always fried green tomatoes.
There are usually things you can do with those things that are still growing. If you have the time.
