It's Snowing

So it's snowing here. Since I don't normally mark the date of the first snow I'm not sure how early it is (if it's early at all). I did read yesterday that some CO resorts are opening up earlier than they have in 40 years. Some Idaho schools are already calling in snow days. If this is a sign of things to come then we might have a pretty heavy winter. I don't mind too much. I'm kinda surprised that global warming hasn't completely destroyed our chances of ever seeing a snowflake again, though.

It's been getting pretty cold at night so I went ahead and ripped out most of my garden the other day. My squash plants were all dead. My zucchini exceeded all expectations and I've been drowning in it all summer. I canned some of it, gave some to neighbors and friends and ate a ton of it. I also found out that my dogs love it. I made quite a bit of dog food out of it. I just mix 1 part zucch with 1 part rice and 1 part meat (usually scraps or meat that's starting to go bad in the fridge/freezer). I also planted some patty pans a bit late in the season and managed to get quite a few of them. They were still exploding when they got hit with the first freeze. I'll plant them earlier next year.

I think that I harvested a grand total of 3 pickling cucumbers all season. My armenian cucs didn't even so much as sprout. It's too bad because those things are awesome. They're like a not so sweet honeydew. My lettuces are out of control. I left those in since all of the varieties that I planted are pretty hardy and don't mind a little snow. My broccoli plants are huge but I only harvested one small head from each of them. I also harvested a ton of radishes, turnips and carrots. My peppers did pretty well all things considered. I still have about 5 lbs of jalapenos left that I keep meaning to can up. I thought that I was going to be disappointed with my cayenne plant but it made a last minute recovery and that plant is now drying out in my kitchen with about 10 peppers hanging off of it. My bell peppers did much better this year. They actually got as big as the supermarket bells.

My tomatoes were a pretty big disappointment. They just refused to ripen. I did manage to get about 25 lbs total out of 9 plants, though. By the time the freeze killed them off there was another 25 lbs of green tomatoes still on their vines. Hopefully some of them will ripen up. I'm also planning on making some green chili out of them.

Next year I'll be doing 3-4 3 sisters plots if I'm not too busy with everything else. It looks pretty effective from what I've read. I just need to figure out what varieties of everything that I'll be planting. I'll probably go with popcorn or some kind of indian corn, some scarlet runner beans and some zucchini, butternut squash and pumpkins. If anyone has any better suggestions I'd love to hear them.