Our gardens and our pecan trees seem to be following in the footsteps of our economy. Not much there.
Summer gardens did really well. Just about everything grew well and bore fruit. My pepper and eggplants are still going strong. Yet we had meager returns on seeds planted this fall. Out of 15+ seeds planted for each item, we were lucky to see 1-2 new plants; some stuff, like spinach, didn’t even make an appearance. And with the early cold snap a few weeks ago, I lost our Chinese Red Bean, several muskmelons and even the dinosaur-size winter squash. If they’re not going to make it through a cold spell, they shouldn’t call it “winter” anything.
Our garden currently consists of 2 barely breathing muskmelons, 3-4 eggplants, 4 black garbanzo, lettuce, 2 bok choy, 1 green cabbage, assorted random sunflowers and a few carrots. The only thing really thriving are peppers: green, purple, thai red chili, tabasco and sweet stuffing. Hot sauce anyone?
Our pecans had a bountiful past season. You couldn’t see the grass for the pecans. We sold several hundred dollars worth, gave away about 200 pounds and have 70 pounds in the freezer. This year, one tree gave me one pail. And I’m talking a regular Jack and Jill size pail. If you want pecans, you’d better reserve now.
Hopefully, nature just used up all its energy over the summer and needs to lay low for winter to recharge. We’ll pile on a bunch of manure and compost and see if that helps. Just like the economy. Hopefully, come Spring, things will look brighter.