The circle of life... it has no beginning, nor an end. So why do I feel so sad about the end of the gardening season?

September Garden

I'm not a big fan of September. In my country, September means the gardening season is coming to an end.

I can't help it, but I always feel a little sad when I see the veggies in my garden die a slow death. I've put my heart and soul into that garden for 6 beautiful months, but no matter how hard I try, I can't fight the seasons. When September arrives, it's time to let go, every year again.

There isn't much left in the outside garden. Last night, I picked the last batch of cucamelons. It feels like it was only yesterday that I saw the seeds turn into seedlings and I felt like a proud mummy.

The gourds are still doing good, in spite of a heavy mildew infection. I cut off all infected leaves, and to be honest, I feel sorry for the once so beautiful plants. By cutting off the leaves, they look more like a Halloween skeleton of skinny vines with a couple of huge gourds growing on it.

The colorful petals of the flowers are slowly turning into brown, dry seed baskets, and the strawberries have given up at last.

The incredible feeling of joy I experienced during the gardening season, is slowly being replaced by a sense of fatalism.

The Greenhouse

Fortunately, there's the greenhouse. Although the signs of fall are starting to show there too, they are a lot less significant.

Tomatoes

The tomato jungle I wrote about only two months ago, isn't really a jungle anymore. This last month, we've been harvesting buckets full of tomatoes almost daily. Nevertheless, there are still quite a lot of tomatoes on the plants.

To give them a chance to be able to ripe in their natural habitat - on the plant instead of in a cardboard box - they need all the sunlight they can get. So I cut off as many leaves as I could to make sure they could enjoy maximum exposure to the sun. The jungle is no more, but I have a good feeling about it. These last couple of days have been pretty warm and sunny, so I think a good number of them will make it.

It's obvious that the Indigo Rose and the Garden Peach varieties take longer to ripe than the more common red tomatoes. A lot of them won't be ready in time, so if someone can recommend me a good recipe for fried green tomatoes... I'm going to need it.

The big winner this year was by far the 'Sweet Baby' variety.

Not only did the plant produce hundreds of cute, little cherry tomatoes, but they were also so incredibly delicious that most of them never made it into the kitchen. I picked the ripe ones off the plant and put them straight into my mount. There's no doubt about why they are called 'sweet baby' - they are the sweetest tomatoes I ever tasted in my entire life.

This variety will definitely have its place in next year's garden.

Sweet Peppers

The sweet peppers have been very productive this season. Especially the Mini Chocolate Bell variety grew more of his cute, little, chocolate brown peppers than we could eat. The little plants started producing very early in the season - the first sweet peppers were already growing before we could actually plant it outside, and it's still giving us sweet peppers today.

All sweet pepper plants are still looking pretty good, and there still are loads of peppers growing. The big benefit of sweet peppers is that you don't have to wait until they are 'ripe'. Green sweet peppers are not as delicious as the colored ones, but they are not the worst either.

Sweet Potatoes

I'm starting to get curious about how my sweet potatoes have been doing. Just like last year, the vines grew long and beautiful, but I have been able to keep myself from taking a look at what has happened underground. Once it's time to harvest, it'll be a real surprise.

You can see the plant has passed its peak. The leaves are starting to turn yellow and from this point forward, they will die a slow death.

(Sidenote: the plant was really thirsty when I took this picture,)

Watermelon

We had to remove one out of two plants last month. After growing 3 medium-sized pieces of fruit, the plant had absolutely no energy left.

Our second plant has now reached the same stage. I'm going to harvest the last watermelon of the season this afternoon.

There's almost nothing left from the plant itself: all its energy has gone towards the production of 3 delicious fruits.

By the way, this was a record year for the watermelons. Never before, we were able to harvest 6 of them in one season.

Starfruit Or Carambola

During the December holidays last year, a supermarket nearby sold various kinds of tropical fruits. It will be no surprise to you that I bought at least one from every variety, mostly because I wanted to save the seeds and try to grow these plants myself.

It was purely experimental, because, you know, we don't really have a tropical climate here in Belgium.

The only seeds that sprouted were those of the starfruit, and to my big surprise, one of them is doing actually pretty good.

Of course, it will take a couple more years before we will find out if it will actually grow fruit, but my main concern now is to have the plant survive winter.

It'll be moved inside the house pretty soon now, where it will get a sunny spot at the window, with the cherimoya on one side, and the banana tree that hasn't even been outside all summer, on the other side.

It would be awesome if they would all survive winter, but I'm not putting my hopes up. There is a reason why those tropical fruits only grow in tropical areas.

Nasturtiums

Every year, I plant plenty of nasturtiums all over the garden. Not only because I'm so fond of that spicy taste, but mostly because they are the best way to keep aphids away from my other plants. Aphids seem to like the taste of nasturtiums just as much as I do, so they gather on the plants and leave my other veggies alone.

It was a good year for the nasturtiums. All plants thrived, both the ones that we planted outside and the ones in the greenhouse.

But the season is ending for them too, so I'm going to collect as many leaves as I can sometime this week and turn them into a delicious pesto. It would be a waste to just let these delicious plants die, while there is a perfect way to preserve them.

A couple of days ago I found a recipe in which the flowers were used to make a spicy sauce. That's something I definitely want to try out too.

Chinese Lettuce

When I took out the first watermelon plant, I instantly removed a tomato plant that had sprouted spontaneously in the same bed. Afterward, the raised bed was so empty that I decided to fill it again with two different varieties of Chinese lettuce. According to the seed packages, they could handle lower temperatures, so with a little luck, there will still be fresh greens on our plates in a couple of weeks.

Garlic

I'm not an expert on pests, but I think I've seen some signs that spider mites have moved into the greenhouse. From what I've read, I learned that it was not easy to get rid of them once they had moved in.

I also learned they don't like garlic, and since it's the perfect time of the year to plant garlic, I put cloves in the soil wherever I could. I'll show those spider mites they chose the wrong person to pick a fight with.

And let's face it: homegrown garlic is way better than what you buy in the store, so this will be a real win-win situation.

I'll Miss It

I'm really going to miss it, being outdoors taking care of the plants. Fortunately, I have some veggies that need to be taken care off until the first frost arrives.

And my perennials will get their own guest room inside the house. Still, indoor gardening is not the same - it's more about survival than about satisfaction. But that's life, and I got to deal with it.

And once November and December come, I'll have fun things to do again: shopping for seeds of unusual varieties I can add to my collection, and giving the sweet peppers a head start in my fancy propagator.

Maybe winter won't be as dull as I originally thought after all...

You can read my other September garden updates here:

🌺 September Gardening - It's Definitely Different (Part 1)

🌺 September Gardening - More Lesser-Known Veggies And Fruits (Part 2)

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