Garden Update, October 2025

Weather's shifted to requiring jackets and long pants, so the garden season is mostly over and we've had our most successful year yet! 

We had 27 tomatoes over 4 plants. I usually view getting anything edible as a win. I'm resigned to the fact that this hobby will not yield enough to make a financial gain. However, 27 tomatoes is non-negligible! We've also harvested an additional 6 green ones that might ripen, and the plants are still alive and producing. Even if they don't turn red, we'll get more material for fried green tomatoes.

One of my coworkers has said that each plant should produce 100 tomatoes. Obviously we're shy of that, but I'm not going to be cynical because this is still our best year yet.

No luck with the zucchinis. They made a lot of flowers and a few began to develop but were lost before we could harvest them.

We had three bell peppers on one plant. Not great, but it was our first year trying one, so I'll consider any harvest a win.

The way that snow peas grow, it's almost impossible to count them. We had a reliable crop though. Similarly, it's hard to quantify herbs, but we managed enough mint, parsley and arugula to make several salads. We also grew chamomile and it was healthy, but we really didn't know what to do with it.

Unfortunately, none of the sunflowers that I'd highlighted as interesting survived. The one with the loop in it's stem and the one that survived getting snapped were eaten by critters. Despite that, we've had 27 blossoms, far surpassing our old record of eight.

Of these, seven were Kongs. Not bad, considering we planted ten. It wasn't a flower per plant though. I got to see the first one beheaded by a squirrel from our kitchen window. After the initial assault, some managed to produce more flowers post-beheading.

Despite blossoming, the Kongs never got to a height that distinguished them from regular sunflowers. Of them, the tallest was 4'5", just one inch larger than the biggest of the traditional batch.

And of those two that were competing for tallest, both lost their flowers, and both produced multiple additional ones in retaliation. It appears that when they lose their initial blossom, it triggers an instinct to grow multiples at once. Most of the ones that didn't get attacked were content with a single flower.

That's seven blossoms on one plant! The replacement flowers are more crinkly than the originals, and grew from darker buds. I've only managed to harvest one seed so far, and some should be well ready for harvest. I don't know why they didn't really mature properly. Still, there are more that can still produce, and they're attracting pollinators, so they are functioning to an extent.

Lee-Anne also grew some decorative flowers.

At one time, there was a variety in this pot. It really got dominated by the one plant, though I don't remember it's name.

A neighbour gave us some hostas for the front yard. We just got to know her this year from an interaction regarding her community sidewalk chalk set. She kept it in a plant pot, and one day me and Lee-Anne noticed that it was broken. We replaced it, and I guess she has a camera or something, because she saw the random act of kindness and went out of her way to thank us and introduce herself. This led to a discussion about plants and we wound up with some hostas.

They aren't really impressive at the moment but they appear to have survived. Apparently they'll come into their own next year.