Well, this one’s always kind of a bummer. We’ve taken down the greenhouse for the season. Our heating systems were kicking on pretty regularly, fighting against overnight temperatures in the 30’s. Plus, tomato ripening has slowed to a crawl. So, it was time.
The main reason for the tear down, though, is the temperatures. We’re starting to get to the point where there’s just no warm days left. All of these containers need to be dumped and washed, we do not enjoy doing that in the cold. It’s absolutely miserable washing out buckets with cold water when it’s flirting with freezing temperatures. It looks like Wednesday may be our last “warm” (50F) day until next summer, so it’s best to be prepared.
We were simply amazed at how well our greenhouse produced this season. Some of it was certainly the warmer summer, but a huge part of it was those nutritional and pH related changes we talked about earlier this year. This thing pumped out an insane amount of tomatoes, basil and cucumbers that we’re still dealing with the excess!
We had surprisingly few green tomatoes we need to force ripen, at least compared to what we’ve seen in previous seasons. Though we always have some, since we’re eternal optimists that “hope” there’s enough time left, we’re left with surprisingly few. Many didn’t even make it to the breaker stage, though, so they may be a wash anyway. We probably should have been more aggressive with culling fruit that had no chance. It’s tough.
The good news is, though, that this now gives us storage for our long winter. We store most of our gardening essentials in our greenhouse. This gives our gear a chance to dry out (and sometimes thaw if we screw up our timing) and generally helps to keep things in good working order from season to season. Gear, exposed to the elements, just doesn’t fare as well in the subarctic.
I’ve been collecting my final thoughts on our nutritional and pH related changes this year. You can look forward to a new article this winter where I’ll dive deeper into my learning process and discoveries, which you’ll of course find on our website. We may announce it when it’s finished since many of you don’t necessarily stop thinking about gardening just because the snow starts flying!
Things are definitely winding down here. We’ve got only two crops left that “have” to be harvested, carrots and Brussels sprouts. Both are just fine going into winter. We’ll be covering the massive flurry of things we’ve been up to over the coming days and weeks, though. But, it’s looking like our season may be fully wrapped up by this coming weekend.
This point in the season is always a bit bittersweet. We miss the days of carrying our gardens into October like we could down in the lower 48. But, we’re also looking forward to some rest. We’re certainly looking forward to enjoying the many fruits of our hard work with practically every meal we have in the coming months!
But, we’re still not done yet! We’ve got a back log of things to discuss and so I suspect we’ll still be doing dailies for at least another week or two!
