Autumn blues

The days are getting shorter and cooler. The last full day of summer is reportedly this Sunday. It makes me get preemptorally depressed thinking about the cold winter getting closer and closer each day.

Warm, beautiful fall days are still ahead of us; plus, the changing colors of trees in the next month. I do love fall. But I'm still sad to see the garden start to wither up with each cold night.

This year's growing season was an improvement over the past two years. The biggest reason for improvement: having a dog. Sadie did an excellent job scaring the squirrels away from the garden. Two of the squirrels met unlucky fates. Still, she couldn't be outside all of the time and they did chew up countless tomatoes and just about every zucchini and squash. At least this year we got to eat some of the actual tomatoes ourselves!

I planted a full two dozen tomato plants last spring. We got a good crop, but I should have gotten more. Our garden plot is becoming more shaded each year by the giant ash tree in our backyard as well as neighbor's trees. Next year my plan is to move the garden plot to the side of the house, which gets more sun. I put four tomato plants, some beans, and broccoli there this year to test it out, and everything did pretty well except for the broccoli. I never seem to have success with broccoli, unlike the neighbors who get the most massive broccoli plants that produce enough shade to have a picnic under.

My favorite tomato varieties this year were the Cherokee Purple (heirloom), the Black Cherry, the Persimmon (heirloom), and the Celebrity. The Beeksteak did OK. The Pruden's Purple was good but didn't give much fruit and the Better Boy was the worse of the bunch. The Celebrity and Persimmon tomatoes have been simply delicious, the later being a beautiful golden fruit.

So next year, more of those, plus some more. I'll use manure and compost the plants more heavily. That, with the additional sun, will hopefully mean even more tomatoes in 2009.

Oh, and I'll probably plant some other veggies.