We’ve had a couple of hard frosts now, the first one last Friday morning and another the day before yesterday. The growing season is certainly winding down quickly, as it always does.

With the exception of the butternut squash, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and a couple cabbage, everything is done. I pulled up the tomato plants last weekend, and also removed the peppers and eggplants to the compost heap.

The last of the herbs, Italian Parsley, has gone through the dehydrator, yielding a stuffed gallon zip lock bag. Many folks think parsley has no flavor; they’re wrong. Among other things, my wife makes an excellent carrot dish using this dried herb, and it adds flavor and aroma to the food. The parsley joined the oregano, rosemary and thyme previously dried and now ready for use over the winter. The dill weed seed clusters have been cut and they’re in a paper bag. There they’ll finish drying out and we’ll have a batch of seeds to use for pickling next year.

The brassica is looking really good right now, and I think we’ll be starting to harvest it this coming weekend.

Between the two beds, there are at least ten heads of broccoli ready to be cut now, and perhaps a dozen more coming along. The transplants definitely outperformed the ones directly seeded, but both beds are producing.

We’ve been taking sprouts for quite a while now. The plants put out in May still have a lot left to harvest, and the new plants may have enough time to produce some more. Brussel sprouts plants will grow right into hard freezes.

The late transplanting of cauliflower is starting to show results. The bed direct-seeded has not, though the plants did grow. There may yet be enough time before the freeze for some production there. The two cabbages planted late are also getting there.

There are perhaps six, and maybe more Waltham butternut squash hiding out in the tall grass. I plan to pull them out this weekend as well, as they can finish curing down in the cellar. 

I’m thinking there will be two more Garden 2022 posts. One next week, so I can show off the broccoli and Brussels sprouts we harvest, and then a final post recapping the successes, failures and lessons learned of this year. That will bring us into November, which means it’ll be time to plan out next year’s garden and pull the seed order together!

I hope your spring and summer was as enjoyable and productive as ours. Thanks for dropping by!