Another gardening year has come to an end, though many gardeners still have winter squash, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a few other things to harvest. Many like to wait until there is going to be a hard frost before gathering in their potatoes. Our gardeners did quite well this year despite the heat wave and whatever else the weather challenged us with. I think this may well be our best year ever. One thing the weather has blessed us with is a warm fall, meaning those second crops planted are doing well, and I fully expect more than a few gardeners to have fresh green beans on their tables come Thanksgiving.

Gardeners have either frozen or canned hundreds of pints and quarts to take them through the winter. In addition to vegetables, they have canned soups, sauces, pie fillings, and peppers with sausage. They have frozen chopped peppers and diced tomatoes for soups, chilis and stews. There’s going to be some good eating this winter.

Once again gardeners are looking to woolly bears to predict how the winter is going to be, and woolly bear stripes are indicating a harsh winter, with some woolly bears almost all black, and others with a wide black band on their backside. Both seem to indicate cold and snow from the end of December through to early March. Hoping the woolly bears are wrong on at least part of that; I don’t mind the possibility of a white Christmas at all, but a cold start to March could impact people planting potatoes around St. Patrick’s Day, or wanting to start peas in February. For those unfamiliar with woolly bear lore, the position and width of their black stripes indicates when the worst part of the winter will be: a narrow black stripe in the front with a larger brown stripe after, indicates the start of winter will be harsh, but the rest of winter will be mild. A black stripe at the end following a solid brown stripe means the back end of winter will be harsh. A black stripe both front and back or an all black woolly bear means the entire winter will be bad. Of course you do need to figure out which is the front end and which is the back end; but I guess that doesn’t matter if both ends are black…

Looking forward to starting next year’s garden, at least on paper.