Well, it’s going to freeze here.  Maybe not tonight, but any night now.  And there’s SNOW in the forecast for Saturday.  I am counting on that to be wrong.  But I brought in the few remaining tomatoes tonight, anyway.  Hopefully they will all ripen slowly over the next couple of weeks so I can still get a few tastes of summer.

The silver lining here is that the end of gardening season means the beginning of parsnip season!  I can’t wait to start digging them up.  I learned a lot this year.  Let’s review:

Some things I learned about gardening, 2009

1. My second attempt at brussels sprouts was a fail.  Until I can determine what I am doing wrong, I am not going to attempt growing them again.  They got further along this year than last, but they still never “sprouted” — they just got tiny, loose little bunches of leaves where the sprouts should have been.

2. Garlic is super easy to grow, and you get a double harvest because you can eat the ramps in June, and then harvest the garlic bulbs in August.  Definitely doing garlic again.  I’m planting my bulbs for 2010 in the next week or so; I will take a couple of pictures.

3. Four zucchini plants is too many.  One would be plenty.  In fact, I don’t think I’m going to do any zucchini next year because we get some in our CSA box, too, and that is more than enough for my zucchini needs.

4. Three tomato plants is a decent number.  Still not enough for canning, but I just don’t really have room for more than three.  We did have enough to freeze a couple of bags full though (we use them in soup).  I may try growing a couple more in pots next year.

5. Growing heirloom “dried” beans is super fun and easy.  Most definitely will do that again.

6. Because of my unique growing situation, between two two-story houses, so-called “late season” veggies that you plant in mid-July, such as beets and kale, are just not possible for me.  The sun dips below my neighbor’s roofline in mid-August and suddenly my garden is shaded during the warmest part of the day.

7.  I grew a lot of different herbs this year: fennel, basil, dill, thyme, rosemary, oregano, and cilantro/coriander.  They were super fun to fill in between my perennial flowers and we attracted a lot more bumblebees and butterflies to our garden in the process.

I’ll see if I can think of some more things I’ve learned.  Those are just off the top of my head.