Encouraging Ripening

Last week the first day of fall nearly past before I realize it had even arrived, and today is the average first 32F frost for my area and I didn't realized until late in the afternoon.  Why do I point these days out?  Well, because whether we like it or not, garden season will soon come to an end, and there are always a few last fruits/veggies that we would like to encourage to full ripening before that finale killing frost. 

This year I have green tomatoes, pumpkins & peppers.  Not only are the plants full of green fruit, but they are still trying to set on new fruit.  The reality is that any new fruit at this point in the season is not going to reach maturity, so I spent time in my garden this weekend cutting off all of the very small fruit, the flowers and growing ends.  This makes the plants focus their energy on the fruit that are already set.  Truth is I should have done this a couple of weeks ago, but now is better than not at all and hopefully I'll have 2 or 3 more weeks of warm days for these plants to invest all of their energy into the fruit they have and I'll have an abundant ripe harvest before this season ends.  :}  One can always hope...

Have you called an end to your 2011 gardening season yet?

Happy Gardening!  :)