With a snap of a finger summer ended and a cold front welcomed fall into the mix. My garden is still holding on for the most part. I’ve also declared war on the ants as they have caused some troubles and perhaps have been the underlining issue I’ve been dealing with all year. It has been nice to have some cooler weather.

Tomatoes

I think it’s safe to say the tomatoes are done for the year. They did nothing at all and are now just giant husks for the most part. One of them had some growth at the top overnight. I’m just not expecting anything to come of it. Next month with the cooler weather I might consider filling some empty containers I now have with something else.

Since I’m not expecting the two I had to make any real comeback let alone have enough time to grow any tomatoes it was time to investigate what I’ve been noticing this season. Quite frequently I would see ants walking along with the concrete I have all the plants on. Once in a while, I would notice one or two crawling on the plants themselves. They never seemed that overly interested so for the most part I just left them along.

Seeing ants around here is quite normal. They have always been annoying and we do have quite a few anthills not too far away. Past attempts at dealing with them never seemed to get anywhere. Sometimes we would get rid of them for a while and then they would come back. For a never-ending war, it seemed like with them I’d rather just spend the money elsewhere since if I felt them alone I never felt they were doing much harm.

After emptying one of the planets it’s quite clear the ants had been heavily busy in one of them. When you look into if ants are an issue for gardens most places seem to point to no and want to contraband to you have other issues that caused them to move in, in the first place.

I however have had quite a few plants that did not do much and it seems like the root systems just never developed enough this year from what I can tell. While ants are not supposed to consume plant roots they seem to have distribuend them enough that I’m willing to put down some measures for next year.

My choice of weapon ended up being rather a an inexperience --cornmeal. While some suggest you mix it with other things I was rather interested to see just how well it did all on its own. After all, it’s just cornmeal and if I can naturally and cheaply resolve my issue I’m going give it a try. It’s also sworn by some in the area to work quite effectively.

I’m two containers of the stuff into my little side project and it feels like I’m getting results. I don’t have any pictures but of the bigger anthills near me seems devastated by the stuff. I even watched the ants play in the piles of cornmeal I left them before they would wander off with a little bit of it and come back with more friends.

Next year I’ll be adding cornmeal to the list of things I have on hand and use frequently if things appear to have an impact. It rains so much down you would think having dry soil would not be an issue for causing the ants to be interested. My plants having weaker roots systems also would explain why they always struggled to defend off anything that came up throughout the gardening year. Sometimes you just need to go with what you are observing and not the endless information online saying it’s not a big issue or things don’t work when they in fact seem to be doing just that.

Peppers

We are heading into October and I’ll still be eating homegrown green and red bell peppers from the looks of it. In September I ended up getting around 6 peppers. They are still blooming, growing, and outside of seeing some ants on them, there are no other issues.

It also seems like with the sudden colder weather we have had towards the end of September caused a suddenly started to flower again. While they are not getting as much sun as they do in the summer they seem to be quite happy as it is.

I ended up having three bell pepper plants in total this year and the other two are starting to flower again. I always seem to have one of these plants to be growing a couple of peppers. I’m somewhat glad I ended up spacing them out when getting them. It has worked out quite well this year.

Herbs

Herbs this year I ended up loving to grow. They tend to be just a pick some of what you needed whenever during the year. I never had to wait or plan meals around them. I don’t use a lot and even if I had large sections of them dying off at one point there was still enough for whatever use I had for the most part.

I did end up leaving some parsley out to dry out on its own over a week or two. That stuff is quite potent nothing like the dried parsley I get out of the store. I learned that the hard way when I put a tad too much of it on something I was eating. I still tasted parsley an hour later!

With the cooler weather, the basil lost a few of its leaves one night. This is a bit of the same as I do enjoy making a pesto with it and that requires quite a large quantity of sage. This one has also tried to flower which I cut off. The flowers have quite an amazing scent to them. I did not know until after I had thrown it away that basil flowers are amazing to cook with.

Final Thoughts

I might end up getting a couple more growing months out of this year’s garden. The tempters for right now are just amazing and you don’t even need a light jacket. It’s still swimming weather after all for those that don’t mind it being a little cooler.

Garden Journal 2020

• May Growth
• June Had High Temps, Flash Flooding, And More
• July Heat
• August Things Are Not Looking Good

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Photos were taken and content was written by @Enjar.