Wrapping up the (summer) garden

My summer 2025 garden is officially done. With the exception of the pepper plants (that are still cranking out a few peppers here and there) we've harvested everything. Yesterday we pulled up and discarded the worn-out plants and gave everything an initial tidy up. I know those of you from even slightly more northerly climes are probably scratching your heads right now, so let me explain. By this point in the summer, the intense heat and humidity have started doing a number on pretty much all vegetable plants. Our last frost date is early April, so we plant out very early. The plants have been growing and producing for three months already, and now with day after day of sweltering heat, they're just giving up the ghost.  I don't blame them. I'd be ready to die out in this heat day and night, too! Plus, the f*cking stinkbugs have shown up and tried their best to attack and ruin the last of the tomatoes. (I seriously hate them, much more than the hornworms which are much easier to control). 

So anyway, the garden is mostly kaput. I've kept careful notes, and this morning I sat down to "compile my data" :) Here are my results and takeaways from this year's garden.

Tomatoes:

This is always the most important part of the garden to me. I love good tomatoes eaten fresh, and when there's extra there are lots of things you can do with them. Since I really hoped to have some extra this year to can, I tried something different. Instead of growing all heirlooms (which taste great but often struggle with production in this climate) I divided my tomato-growing space in half: room for 8 heirloom indeterminate plants that I started from seed, and 5 bushy young determinate plants I bought at Lowe's. Determinates, of course, set a lot of fruit all at once, early in the season, and then they're done. Perfect for having big batches of canning tomatoes that are ready by the time our hellish South Carolina heat scorches the garden! Check out my results:

Determinates

Bush Goliath: 

2 plants, 

28 individual fruits

Total: 10.55 pounds

Better Bush:

1 plant

10 individual fruits

Total: 2.61 pounds

Heatmaster:

1 plant

11 individual fruits 

2.86 pounds

Roma:

1 plant

24 individual fruits

5.05 pounds

Determinates

Eva Purple Ball

3 plants

43 individual fruits

10.05 pounds

Hillbilly Potato Leaf

3 plants 

8 individual fruits

2.95 pounds

Berkeley Tie Dye

2 plants

14 individual fruits

2.45 pounds

All told, I ended up with 36.5 pounds of tomatoes! And that's not counting the one cherry tomato plant that's given us probably around 2 pounds of fruit (I didn't keep track of those)

Yesterday I also finished up some canning and preserving!  I'd already made 6 12-oz jars of salsa and 6 half pint jars of pickled mixed peppers, and I added 2 12-oz jars of pickled jalapenos and 2 12-oz jars of pickled cowhorn peppers. I also whipped out the dehydrator and made a big jar of dried tomato slices and dried cherry tomatoes. I also dried some tiny, fiery tabasco peppers and crushed them into a jar for pepper flakes.

Picked early to save from stinkbugs, put to ripen on the windowsill. 

In the dehydrator...

Hooray! Ready to squirrel away for winter!

Sadly, these are the last of my (homegrown) slicing tomatoes for this year, along with some zinnias I cut for a centerpiece. 

One of these tomatoes will be sliced within the hour to top cheeseburgers we're cooking on the grill.