The 2017 garden was a success – the freezer is full to the brim with a rainbow of vegetables – beets, carrots, green beans, squash.  Our shelves are laden with jars of sauce, jams, jellies, pickles, salsas, chutneys and soups.  The wooden crates in the basement are full of potatoes and squash, and the pantry is full of dehydrated tomatoes, herbs, scallions, onions, garlic.

What did we really get out of the garden?  Here it is by the numbers (rounded to the closest pound):

• Beans                                     25 pounds
• Beets                                      28 pounds
• Brussel Sprouts                    3 pounds
• Carrots                                   11 pounds
• Cucumbers                            19 pounds
• Farm Berries (wild)             4 pounds
• Garlic                                      1 pound
• Onions                                    2 pounds
• Peas (shelled)                        3 pounds
• Peppers, Green                     8 pounds
• Peppers, Red                         3 pounds
• Potatoes                                 25 pounds
• Pumpkins                              8 pounds
• Squash, Acorn                       9 pounds
• Squash, Buttercup                7 pounds
• Squash, Butternut                35 pounds
• Squash, Spaghetti                 2 pounds
• Squash, Zucchini                  4 pounds
• Tomatoes, Amish                  32 pounds
• Tomatoes, Beefsteak            45 pounds
• Tomatoes, Cherry                 35 pounds
• Tomatoes, Zebra                   30 pounds
• Tomatoes, San Marzano     44 pounds

That’s 380 pounds of produce!  And that’s not counting the salsify that we’ve just begun to harvest, and all the herbs, and the gourds that were just for decoration, and the smattering of raspberries and blueberries.

What do I want to do differently next year?  I think less tomatoes, beets and beans and more garlic (I’ve planted it already!) and onions.  The acorn squash doesn’t seem to hold up well in the “root cellar” but the butternut, buttercup and spaghetti squash are doing great – so I probably won’t do acorn squash.  I would have expected more zucchini, but the plants got some sort of blossom rot and didn’t do much this year – maybe I’ll try that again next year.

There is a coating of snow on the ground now.  All my gardens are blanketed in white, but I gotta go… it’s time to start looking through the seed catalogues for next year!