Our Next Garden Project

One of the pleasures of gardening is being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor, especially in the vegetable garden. I worked too many hours at my job this summer and sadly the vegetable garden did not get as much attention as it needed. Nevertheless, we have harvested a large number of tomatoes. We planted Roma tomatoes, Big Boy tomatoes, and grape tomatoes. The Big Boy tomatoes were especially good. I find tomatoes from the grocery store to have little taste. Our tomatoes this summer were very rich in flavor.

We have also successfully grown peppers this year. Andrew likes hot peppers. This does not mean your typical pepper, no, Andrew wants them as spicy as possible.

These orange peppers are Helios F1 peppers. On the Scoville scale of pepper heat, they measure a modest 75,000 units. For reference, a typical jalapeno pepper has a unit scale of 2,500 – 8,000 units. Andrew likes to eat his Helios peppers whole as an accompaniment to whatever food he is eating. This is impossible for me. Just the slightest nibble on this pepper proved too strong for me.

The Helios F1 peppers are early peppers. Andrew is really waiting for these upcoming peppers:

The Ghost (Bhut Jolokia) pepper has a Scoville heat unit rating of 855,000 – 1,041,427. The Trinidad Scorpion has a rating of 1,200,000 – 2,000,000. The Carolina Reaper is still hotter at 1,400,000 – 2,200,000. These peppers would be impossible for me to even try in the tiniest quantities, but Andrew will enjoy putting them in his food. It is a cultural thing, as he grew up with them, while the food I grew up with lacked all manner of spice. Studies have found that hot peppers have compounds that bind to pain receptors in the mouth and throat, causing a burning sensation. This is pleasurable to some people and in some people this releases endorphins that can produce a feeling of euphoria. I laugh writing this, as my mouth in agony does not sound in the least bit euphoric.

The rest of the vegetable garden was not successful this year. My efforts yielded precisely one eggplant – delicious, but I expected more. One watermelon, in an odd shape and white when cut open. And, a few puny potatoes.

This brings me to our next project. A complete revamp of our vegetable garden area. Our vegetable garden is surrounded by a picket fence, to keep the deer out. We have been successful at keeping the deer out but unfortunately have a ground hog that took up residence. I have tried all summer to capture the ground hog however it has not succumbed to the many apples, melon, and cantaloupe I have used to entice it.

The ground hog is shown climbing the fence to eat the morning glory vines growing on the fence. We had fewer morning glories this year, no doubt partially because they were a delicacy for the ground hogs.

The fence encompasses an area of 17 feet by 23 feet. It is a good size for a garden, not too big and manageable. We have had some encumbrances that have not allowed us to fully utilize the space. Within the garden area, we have had a large propane tank, used to fuel a pool heater. The pool heater takes up space and we never use it. There is also a large air conditioning unit in the corner. The final limiter to our use is the pool filter. When I built the garden enclosure, I purposefully enclosed all these elements as did not want to see them. The fence solved the problem, but now I would like more garden space.

With great effort, I managed to get the propane tank out of the garden enclosure. I rolled it to the driveway. A man on NextDoor came and picked it up. Next for removal is the unwanted heater. I need to drain the water in the heater and will post it to NextDoor as scrap metal. We will be getting a new heating and cooling system installed soon and the air conditioning unit will also disappear. As soon as the peppers have succumbed to frost, I can eliminate an old stump from a pine tree that had died.

The pool filer takes up some room, but not as much as the other things I have discarded. This will allow me to build 4 raised beds from composite decking boards and aluminum posts. Rather than use wood, I will use these materials to avoid rot. I watched a video on YouTube from someone who made their raised beds in this manner. Next year, I hope to have a neat and bounteous vegetable garden.

I did not plant zinnias this year and I regret it. One sprouted in a crack in the sidewalk, to give me a daily reminder of how much I like them. Next year!

We planted some lovely rose-colored hibiscus near the driveway. The large flowers are so cheerful this time of year, when everything else is fading.

Autumn is creeping up slowly. Only the days are warm. The night, early morning and evening hours are all chilly. We have had a lot of sun and little rain, so we are in a drought. The leaves are no longer bright green; instead, they are fading before they turn their Autumn hues. Autum days are lovely.