Garden Season Is Over

Our garden died this weekend. It was not unexpected, but it’s always a little sad when previously flourishing plants succumb to the frost. When you live in Colorado Springs, you have to know it has a short growing season (and even in shorter in Monument where we live, just north of Colorado Springs). The growing season is longer on the south end of town, sometimes by as much as 2 weeks on each end. This is probably due to that 1000 to 1500 feet in lower elevation 🙂

It’s usually risky to start planting much before Memorial Day, and sometime in early October is often when we often see a hard frost take out tomatoes that still haven’t ripened. While a garden here can be extended a little with some work and a little greenhouse covering, by the end of October you just have to accept that we have a short growing season.

Fortunately, we had enough warning that I had picked most of the tomatoes of any size, and a bunch of zucchini  and beans as well. Not sure what we are going to do with all the zucchini we still have. While some of it is making it’s way into things like chili, meatloaf, sauteed, Parmesan baked and zucchini bread, there is still a lot to use up! We didn’t have any major hail storms beat up the plants this year, so we actually had quite a good little crop for the small plot we did.

Of course, in true Colorado Springs fashion, the cold gray weather of Saturday has given way once again to sunshine and highs in the 60’s and 70’s. But the dead garden IS a reminder that winter is not so far off. Time to get the ski’s tuned up, the furnace and wood stove cleaned and serviced, and the sprinklers put to bed for the winter!