2025 harvest

So, the costs from the previous post were a little over $300, but I'm pretty sure I got a few other little things—little flags to point to ripe stuff, fish fertilizer, replacement basil plants. Let's say a total of $400. And I bought a second raised bed for next year (a little under $100). 

I ended up with a LOT more plants than planned. I already had grape tomatoes, Lady Bell peppers, swiss chard (from seed), zuke and yellow squash (from seed). A friend gave me a BUNCH of tomato plants (3 Sun Gold, 2 Sun Sugar, 1 Juliet, 1 Mountain Pride, 1 Black Cherry) and several peppers (2 Ace, some lunchbox peppers, and a mildly hot pepper, not sure of the variety). 

The tomatoes over-produced, in a summer that was hot and dry, just what they like. I lost track of how many cherry and grape tomatoes we picked. The San Marzanos were also prolific and early; the Mountain Pride were not actually Mountain Pride, but some variety of paste tomatoes, less prolific and late, but really beautiful fruits. The Juliets were also late, but that could be because they were shaded by the more prolific plants. Really good flavor. The Black Cherries took a long time to ripen, but are prolific and really pretty. Not sure they're worth the space though, because the flavor is mediocre compared to either the grape or the Sun Gold (or Sun Sugar). 

The peppers weren't prolific, and several died off (or, really, I gave up on them when the plants showed signs of severe malnutrition). The two ACE plants did okay, and I really liked the Lunchbox orange pepper, but only got one fruit. I don't blame the plants for their poor productivity—they were overshadowed by the tomatoes and the weather was too hot for them at key blossom-setting times.

For nightshades in 2026, I'm thinking 3 grapes, 3 San Marzanos, 1 Juliet, 2 or 3 Sun Gold; and then 4 Ace, and 3-4 Lunchbox. I'm hoping to overwinter the 2 Ace and 1 Lunchbox I already have. Plus I need to get some Northern Lights swiss chard—it's just so much more fun to have all the colors instead of the standard green variety. One bed will be all tomatoes, and the other bed will be everything else. 

Nasturtiums were disappointing, and I'm not sure why. They grew a bunch of leaves but no flowers, and they were right next to a chard plant that did fine. The bulk of the swiss chard is still waiting to shine; they were overshadowed by the tomatoes too. The zucchini was, as always, scary productive. I made three batches (two leaves each) of zucchini bread, and I have shreds for 3 or 4 more batches in the freezer. Yellow squash was reasonable, perhaps a little light because of the drought. There were three plants, I think, and that seems about right. Maybe I'll do some sugar snaps next year, hoping to harvest them before the peppers need more space. Perhaps a few early radishes and small carrots too.

I managed to kill off the new rhubarb plants. Sigh. Unexpectedly dry/hot summer. Might try them in a whiskey barrel next time.

Basil thrived in the extra-hot weather. Garlic was mediocre due to insufficient rain. 

Alpine strawberries thrived, somewhat surprisingly given the heat/drought. I'm planning to expand their bed next year, since they were popular and there were never enough. I'm planning to buy a set of heavy-duty shelving to essentially set up a long, low coffee-table-like support for the grow bags on the deck. I've found what I want, just not in a huge hurry to spend the money. It can wait until spring. 

Nightshades

Purchased 24 Ace peppers, 6 banana peppers, 6 cherry tomatoes (variety: Sweet Baby Girl; decided that while I love grape tomatoes, I don't like the only variety available locally -- Juliet) and 6 Jetstar tomatoes.

All but the Jetstars were planted today.

Total cost: $16. Even.

Abandoning the early garlic variety

We planted at least 20 cloves of the early garlic variety last fall, and I just harvested about half that many heads. If that wasn't discouraging enough, none of the heads were very big, and some of them weren't even divided into cloves. It's possible that they were affected by a mini-drought that occurred at just the wrong time this year.

I'd just about decided we weren't going to keep planting them anyway, but now it's official. In the future, if we're desperate for garlic (and I was fairly desperate -- I'd run out of both fresh bulbs and pickled cloves) before the standard harvest time, we always have thousands of volunteer plants (from discarded bulbils) that can be pulled early.

As far as I can tell, the last few weeks of garlic's growth cycle is more about drying out the skins around the individual cloves than anything else. I pulled a few volunteers (of the German Extra-Hardy variety) last week, in the course of preparing the bed for other types of plants, and they were a good size, flavorful, and fully formed. The only thing different from the fully matured heads I've harvested in the past is that the skins, both on the outside of the head, and the wrappers on the individual cloves, were more like onion layers than the usual paper-y texture. They weren't easy to peel, and they probably wouldn't have stored as well as more mature ones, but they were fine for immediate use.

Skewed expectations

When I was getting our plants at the local nursery, I convinced someone to get Ace peppers instead of a more standard bell pepper. She mentioned that she'd never had any luck with peppers in the past, but was planning to give it one more try.

It sounded like her past problems were twofold: the wrong variety and skewed expectations. She'd been growing something like Cal Wonder (there's a reason it's called California Wonder, not New England Wonder), and was expecting it to grow as thick-walled as the ones in the grocery store.

I did warn her that Ace isn't intended to be thick-walled, but that it's prolific, and, when eaten fresh, has an absolutely amazing crunch that the thicker-walled ones lack. I do hope she likes them. If she can learn to love the smaller, crisper, thinner-walled varieties that grow well here, she'll have better success.

NPR's Science Friday had a segment on flavorless commercial tomatoes, and how the scientists think that, after extensively taste-testing heirloom varieties, they may have a better handle on the genetic traits that contribute to flavor (instead of the usual traits winter tomatoes are bred for: perfectly round shape, heavy production and the ability to travel undamaged). He's hoping to be able to breed commercial varieties that have both flavor and the commercially valuable traits.

I'm not as optimistic as the scientist seemed. Among other things, he mentioned that if a home grower planted one of the commercial varieties in a good soil, and let it ripen fully on the vine, she'd end up with a "good tomato, but not a great tomato." A lot of the flavor, he admits, has to do with the quality of the soil and, particularly, letting it ripen on the vine. I'm not sure how developing a more flavorful variety is going to help all that much, if the plants are still being grown hydroponically (or in depleted soil), and picked green for traveling long distances.

One comment he made, that really stuck with me and does give me some hope, was something to the effect of "There's no financial incentive for major growers to produce a more flavorful winter tomato; the financial incentive is to produce more quantity, regardless of the flavor quality."

And we, as consumers, are essentially doing exactly that. We're buying the ghastly, flavorless winter tomatoes, despite complaining. (I suppose a lot of home gardeners aren't buying them, actually, but are doing what I do, which is to eat fresh tomatoes only in the summer.) Why are they being bought, when everyone knows they taste horrible?

If consumers stopped buying the flavorless tomatoes and stopped expecting visual perfection (instead of culinary perfection), that might create a financial incentive for the major growers to grow better winter tomatoes. Or maybe our expectations would become more realistic, and we would do most of our fresh tomato eating during the warmer six months of the year, and skip them during the colder six months of the year.