Good morning everyone and welcome to SMGB, End of Summer Edition. It's Ed in Montana guest blogging for our esteemed hostess Ms. Frankenoid.
Cottonwood Leaf
It's been a pleasant but somewhat short Summer here in the foothills of the Northern Rockies. After a record breaking wet May and June, Big Sky Country warmed up and dried out in July and August. It warmed up and dried out enough to get several worrisome forest fires and even a few juicy ripe tomatoes, two things we didn't get in the cool and wet Summer of 2010. But the tomato killer frost is just a few cold nights away and many of the squash plants have already withered with just an early morning temperature of 36 degrees F.
September is a good time to take stock of what we have accomplished in the garden and the outdoors this past season before the steep plunge back into the depths of Winter.
A fire sunset from the front yard
As you might imagine, gardening on the edge of the semi-frozen Northern Great Plains (a place Nature intended for just Bison and Wheat to grow) is never easy. Each summer sees some veggies flourishing while others languish, and it is near impossible to have success with everything you plant.
One of many trays of frozen raspberries
The raspberry patch rebounded from a dismal state in 2010 to produce one of the best years on record, yielding four of five gallons of the tart berries. I would rate it a solid A for this Summer's production. Note that I can only roughly estimate the actual volume of the yield since it is impossible to measure the amount the two giant labradogs ate, as they chomped and slurped their way through the patch following behind whoever was picking that day.
An assortment of squash
The zucchini and assorted squash deserve at least a B+ having survived the cold wet June weather to flourish in the hot and dry skies of August.
Frost nipped squash leaves on Labor Day
Likewise the onions did incredibly well, with some of the bulbs equaling the large size of those plants we only see in the Farmer's Market in Missoula. Unfortunately, they are all Walla Walla Sweets, which are great eating but will need to be canned to preserve them for any length of time. It could have been a great season for snow and sugar snap peas, but I was so traumatized by the horrible beating our peas took from the early season weather in 2010 that I decided to avoid them planting any this year.
Being a tomato-based life form, my primary crop is tomatoes and my three dozen plants did okay, but not great. I would rate the production a C at best. We are getting a good number of golf ball to tennis ball size ripe fruits, mostly from the ten Sub Arctic Plentys in the garden. The food drier has once again proven very handy for preserving these smaller fruits.
Dried Sub Arctic Plenty Tomatoes
The Big Earlys and Beefsteaks haven't produced anything of any great size. I can see that I won't have enough volume to make tomato sauce without augmenting the yield with some large ones form the Farmer's Market. The last several seasons have seen poor tomato production, and it's hard to determine why. Has it been the cool wet weather at the start of the season, or some nutrient deficiency in the soil? I can't tell but will need to do something about it next year.
On the wildflower hunting front it was certainly a mixed bag. Last March, we saw a modest wildflower bloom in the Mojave Desert, but we completely missed the local wildflowers here in Montana around town. The cold wet Spring delayed the local bloom enough to push it into our garden planting time in June, and that combining with work, trip planning and basement remodeling used up all the time available in those long, long days at the solstice. There simply was no time to stop and smell the flowers! Local wildflower viewing gets an F.
Fireweed at Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory
Cow Parsnip at Kanaskan Lake Provincial Park, BC
Indian Paintbrush, Jasper National Park, Alberta
Our great Northern Tour to the Yukon and Alaska had lots of wildflowers, but mostly of a handful of species like Indian Paintbrush, Fireweed and Daisies. I would have to rate it at least a B+ just for the sheer volume of wildflowers seen.
How would you rate what's happening in your gardens?