On September 1 we had our first frost. Our last spring frost was later than normal on May 31 (but not necessarily unusual), giving us 92 frost free days. This is a bit shorter than usual which is closer to 100 frost free days.

I had already finished harvesting the above ground veggies like broccoli, cabbage, lettuces, etc, but all the root veggies were were still in the ground. Its fine for them to stay in the ground, in fact its preferable through one or two frosts as long as the ground doesn’t freeze hard. This helps set the sugars.

The annoying part though is that it dropped just below freezing two nights and has been up in the 40’s at night since. It killed most of my potato vines, so now they’re done growing, but they could have potentially had another several weeks.

That was my cue to go start harvesting my root vegetables though, so I determined to get some of it done last week. The morning I planned on doing so, my daughter texted not to let the dogs out early. Her husband had seen a bear out near the garden when he was getting ready for work.

When I got up, I checked out the windows, but the bear was long since gone. But, what did I discover? The possible reason there was a bear, a moose had found it’s way into my not so secure fence and completely cleaned out any remaining veggies above ground. The fence was not built to keep the moose out as they usually come after harvest anyway. It’s more for keeping rabbits out in the spring.

The broccoli and cabbage had been harvested, so there were big leaves and stalks that had gone to seed, which were now completely cleared out. The only part left was the really tall woody stalks and bases of each.

My beet tops, which I had been using as lettuce for the last 6 weeks, were completely gone. I’ve never had them eat the actual beets, so fortunately they were still there. I didn’t plant a ton of beets this year because I’ve had horrible luck getting them to grow ever, but I decided to try again, and I got some good size beets, most the size of a softball.

The carrot tops were laid down flat already, so they were mostly untouched. The onions that I hadn’t already picked were all still there, though flopped over like the carrots. The moose have never touched my onions. Any remaining greens were eaten right down to the ground.

The one thing that really surprised me though, the sunflowers were completely stripped of leaves. I’ve not ever grown sunflowers before, but I didn’t think moose would eat them. My potatoes were untouched by the moose. Potato leaves are toxic, and they seem to know that. They never bother my rhubarb for that same reason I’d assume.

Because this moose had done such a great job, cleanup became much easier. I picked up the veggies that had been laid on top of the plastic, and then I cut off the remaining stalk pieces and was able to just pull up my plastic and get it folded up and put away. This revealed any remaining produce which I just gathered up off the top of the ground.

I then got to work pulling up my few carrots. I have never had a problem growing carrots until the last 2 years. Not sure what’s going on there. Interesting enough, I planted rainbow carrots and the red ones that grew, grew great. The orange ones that grew were all little balls, and I got 1 white carrot. Maybe I can either grow carrots or beets, but not both. I’d rather have the carrots.

I then was able to finish cleaning up the debris from all the dead plants and get it thrown out of the fenced area. We only have 1 item left to harvest, but it’s the biggest part of the garden – the potatoes. I am so excited to see and share the difference between the area covered in plastic and the area uncovered. I have dug up some potatoes from both, but until I really get into each area, I won’t know exactly the difference. Hopefully by Wednesday I’ll be able to share the results!

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