I haven't gotten around to thinking about Weekend Assignment #23 yet, but John's latest entry has prompted mine. Our garden was, with few exceptions, a disaster this year. Here in Southern Ontario we had an unseasonably cool, wet summer, and, in my specific neck of the woods, two severe hail storms. Most of our plants were completely devastated. Out of four different varieties of tomatos we planted, the only ones we've been able to harvest have been the cherrys. The Romas (sauce tomatos) were all diseased, and the other two never even made a single fruit. Our radishes never grew bulbs, they were all leaves. Our Zucchini plants rebounded somewhat after the hail, but never gave us as many as we are used to. (Actually, that turned out well. We had enough zucchini for our needs, but we didn't have to run around the block trying to foist off the extras on our neighbours.) The cucumbers turned out alright, but they came late, so we didn't get as many there as we were used to either. We will probably only get about a dozen hot peppers where we are used to getting about 50-60.
As well, tomato sauce canning time is coming up, and all of the local farms selling plum or roma tomatos have nothing but the smallest, scrawniest, unjuiciest tomatos I've ever seen. We'll probably have to buy 40-50% more tomatos to fill the same number of jars as we did last year.
Oh, well. There's always next year. Nature has a way of balancing out. Hopefully, we can look forward to a bumber crop twelve months from now.
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