September has brought with it cooler days and cooler nights and that has slowed down the garden as well. We haven’t harvested a zucchini or tomato in weeks and the beans and cucumbers have begun to wither on their own. It is getting late in the season anyway and D is excited to put the fall/winter garden. So, today we did a complete once over of the garden harvesting everything we found and then pulled it all out. The harvest turned out to be mostly green tomatoes; Diana has never had any before and I figure now is the perfect time to introduce them to her (fried, of course).
In addition to tearing out the garden I turned over the soil, “harvested” all the compost that was made this year (about a bucket and a half), and cleared out 1/3 of the vermiculture composter. The compost and worm castings and compost were then worked into the garden plot and everything was lightly watered. We’re going to let it lie for a week, or so, and then plant the winter garden. Much like last year we are going to plant a lot of greens (chard, spinach, kale, arugula, celery, etc.) I only hope that this year isn’t as wet as the last…
Lastly, we found a couple of these enormous caterpillars while tearing everything out. These guys were as long and thick as my index finger! Anyone recognize it?
looks like a tomato horn worm to me!
Yeah, Melissa, it’s the hawkmoth larva, “Tomato worm”, also Manduca sexta, also “tobacco hornworm”. I didn’t see any on my one plant this year, but I remember all the summers of finding the tell-tale scat on tomato leaves. Suddenly you’ll see the worm, startlingly large and well-camouflaged. It’s weird to remove it from its evidently perfect environment.