Sunday, October 12, 2008

First Frost! October 3rd

This blog has been desperately in need of an update! I think I got overwhelmed with processing photos and vegetables and kept putting it off. Basically, at the end of September I harvested a ton of veggies for a mini-CSA for mom and Joe, and then a week later (October 3rd) we had our first frost in Zumbrota.

In town it supposedly only got to 34, but I think it must have been colder here on the farmstead. All of the cucurbitaceae died, and most of the upper leaves of my beans wilted. My tomatoes got all wilted at the top, but I think the ground kept the lower branches warm and I'm finally harvesting some ripe tomatoes from them a week later. It warmed up immediately after the frost, and rained a couple of times, so the rest of the garden is doing great. The brassicaceae and cruciferae are just thrilled about the cool, wet weather, and are thriving. Another frost isn't expected for a while, so I can continue harvesting most of the vegetables. I'm still not sure if the beans are continuing to grow or not, since they just look so unhappy.

The amazing thing is that if it had just stayed a couple of degrees warmer I would still bee harvesting everything. As it is, though I got a week more growth than the median last frost-free date (9/28), so I'm not complaining.

Here are some photos from the end of September (I don't have exact dates):

This isn't even the final harvest of turnips. I got at least 30 large-sized turnips from a 3'x3' area! PS: this was the advanced guard of what was to be legions of Asian Beetles.


Not content to simply grow the vegetables, I have also been crocheting them.


The cauliflower I produced was amazingly tender and flavorful. I'm still shocked I was able to grow this finicky vegetable so well, and it was likely because of my late planting date.


I definitely need to plant more carrots next year. These were one of the tastiest and most useful of all my garden plants. They are also very fun to pull out of the ground.

Well I didn't make it to the Sierras this year, but I was able to pretend I was among the Sequoias when I was picking celery.

My cayenne didn't yield much this year but they were still tasty and cute.


These luscious greens don't know what's going to hit them in a few nights! Everything but the basil and zucchini kept producing for at least a month, though.