End of the Growing Season

After the light frost at the beginning of October, the heartier plants kept producing into early November, when we were hit by several hard frosts. I'm not sure of the dates on these photos, but they're from early November, just before the hard frosts that happened around the 6th-8th. The tomatoes that were close to the soil and protected by foliage from the October frosts continued to ripen as the plants no longer were putting energy into the leaves. Some of the green tomatoes I picked also ripened on the counter and as of December 20th, I have one left!

One of my last acts in the garden was to cover the herb bed in a thick layer of straw and cardboard. I'm hoping that this will protect the iffy perennials from temperature extremes and root damage, so that I might find my oregano, thyme, sage, and marjoram greening in the spring. So far we've gotten a lot of snow, so there's a good chance they'll be insulated enough to survive.

Behold the carnage! After the october frosts, all the tender crops looked like this.


I simply can't imagine how many cucumbers I would have had if I'd started earlier in the year. As it was, I struggled to use them all!

The green beans weren't as thoroughly decimated as the squash or cucumbers. I was able to keep harvesting small amounts for a few weeks.

The obstinate wax beans surprised me with their cold tolerance and I wound up harvesting more in October than earlier in the year.


This is what harvesting tomatoes was like: searching for ripened survivors under the protective layers of dead foliage.


One of my final harvests of tomatoes and beans. The hearty onions were usable well into November, and I may even find some of them still alive in the spring.


These were harvested after the hard frosts of early November and were just fine, if a bit spicy. I'd like to find a milder variety for next year.


Of course my brassicas were going like gangbusters after the frosts, happy that the evil caterpillars were finally dead. This cabbage became delicious sauerkraut.

The hardiness champion was the Brussels sprouts, naturally. I harvested many right out of the snow!

These were the very last thing harvested from the garden, for the occasion of Kristine's visit. They were fantastic! (The visit was a great time too!)

Update and Cauliflowers Finally Doing Something

I'm out of batteries from my camera, but my garden looks about the same as last time, but more scraggly in some places and with plenty of insane tomato plants. My tomatoes are still green, but I harvested a few large ones to encourage the plants to ripen the remaining fruit. The sun returned after a long absence and after just a couple days of warm weather some of the tomatoes are starting to yellow.

A couple of days ago I went in the garden to get rid of the gigantic cauliflower plants that, until that point, hadn't done anything but crowd my cabbages. Fortunately I peeked into the center of all the leaves and there I found some tiny white florets! I guess the plants finally got big enough to bear florets and were probably helped along by the cool weather. I may just get a harvest from them, since they're frost-tolerant.

In other cole crop news, I harvested a 4-lb cabbage today. It's absolutely beautiful and I just love it to bits.

I'm also getting cucumbers all of the sudden and put up some fermented Kosher dills yesterday (though I need to add another half pound of cukes as they come ready. The "Amour" pickling cuke is a great variety--it produces attractive, uniform fruit, and many come ripe at the same time. They're very prickly, but I think that's OK. I'm definitely going to plant more of this variety next year, and it's clear that I don't even need to bother starting them indoors.

The green beans are continuing to produce heartily, and "Provider" is my favorite variety (as befitting its name). It was the first to produce, and the beans are tender and stringless, with great flavor and a nice shape.

I've got tons of greens that I'm not harvesting. It's just hard to get excited about them in the harvest season when there are plenty of other, tastier, things to eat. The important thing is to freeze some of the collards, which are so nice to have during the winter. The komatsuna greens have (amazingly) not bolted yet and they have a succulent, spinach-like flavor (like a cross between spinach and bok choy). I will probably grow more of them next year, starting earlier, so I can appreciate having greens early in the season. The big loser has been the "Garnet Giant" mustard greens--they have yucky flavor, bolted quickly, and dye everything blue or purple. I would be more inclined to use them as an ornamental in the future, since they look cool in the garden.

First Cabbage Harvest

My cabbages came back from the brink a couple weeks ago and are quickly becoming harvest-able. All my cole crops are happy for the cool weather we've been having, though if it continues I fear I will be harvesting only green tomatoes. Today I harvested my first savoy cabbage, picking one that isn't as large as it could get, but which will clear out some space for its neighbor to mature. I cut an X into the stem I left behind, which supposedly will encourage the plant to make 4 more tiny cabbage heads. We'll see.

I'm thinking of making this one into kimchi. It's not Chinese-style cabbage, but the head is loose enough that I may be able to get the salt in.

Not much else has progressed dramatically in the garden since my last post. I harvested my daikon radishes for kimchi, but they were a touch disappointing. I'd hoped they'd be bigger and/or I'd have more of them, so I wouldn't have to buy radishes from the store, but I think I'll have to. Next year I can plant a larger, longer-maturing variety for more kimchi, though.

That still didn't put a damper on my garden enjoyment, as you can see here:

Does my baby have my nose?

This past week I've just been harvesting delicious summer squash and thinning my green onions. My carrots are coming along and I ate one of the white ones today--it was wonderfully sweet and zingy. Next year I'll plant way more carrots, because they're just so much better when you grow them at home.

Hopefully the weather will warm up a bit to give everyone's garden plants the last little jolt they need. I've been talking to other people and most of them have tons of unripe tomatoes still too. My cabbages have set a lot of fruit but they're still too tiny to harvest--I'm hoping they'll all ripen at once for pickling.

Re-seeding and General Update

First true leaves on my daikon seedlings.

A happy garden hastily photographed due to mosquito attack.

My garden is coming along nicely, and the tomatoes and herbs especially seem to be thriving. Some seeds didn't do so well and I got low germination, so yesterday I re-seeded. The problem was worst among my green beans, where I got less than 50% germination and zero germination of the Carson Yellow Wax variety. I suspect that the seeds were predated in whole or in part and then rotted beneath the soil. My reasoning is that when I dug in the rows I found few seeds, and those that I found seemed to have holes in them and were rotted. (Though the rotting itself could have caused the holes, so who knows).

July 29th:
Re-seeded

• Toscano Kale
• Champion Collards
• Hakurei Turnips
• Scarlet Queen Turnip
• Amour Pickling Cucumber
  
• All varieties of green bean
  

Next I need to pop in a couple of more cabbage plants. I had one more red cabbage plant die on me--for whatever reason they didn't take to the transplanting. My sorrel hasn't germinated, or if it has I can't identify it. I will wait a while longer and then decide if I want to re-plant or maybe put in some Thai basil.

A red sorrel seedling from the Ohio State Website. My sorrel isn't red, but the seedlings should look something like that.

Beyond some low germination, things seem to be going well. I'm getting some leaf predation by flea beetles on my turnips and radishes (though fortunately as that's increased the nibbling on my cabbages has decreased). I might look into getting some floating row cover, but I haven't been able to find it at the couple of stores I checked at. I don't know how much aerial holes will prevent root development--I'm most interested in the roots and if nibbled leaves is the cost of keeping my cabbage un-eaten, I'll happily sacrifice my turnip greens.

My peppers are still playing head-games with me, but haven't died or anything, so that's good. Many of my tomatoes plants have unripe fruit now, byt I've learned not to 'count one's chickens before they hatch' when it comes to tomatoes, so I'm cautiously excited.

Amazingly, I have one pickling cuke! It matured so quickly because I bought it as a large greenhouse seedling. What do I do with one pickling cuke?

Weather-wise it's been a pretty typical few weeks of summer. Hot days in the low- to mid-eighties with rain or a thundershower every 3-4 days. I pulled back on watering a bit, but I'll go back to it to keep the new seedbeds moist. We're going to have some extremely hot weather this weekend, so hopefully it won't damage anything.

Weed-wise, the redroot pigweed is finally starting to pop up significantly. The seedlings are still quite small, though, so they're easy to control. It's the dominant weed, joined also by lambsquarters, purslane, and cheese-weed, and a few grass species in the mulched areas. I think the mulch brought in the grass seed--I should make more of an effort to identify it, but I usually pull it out before it's big enough to do so conclusively.

Garden Update

So far nothing's germinated yet, but that's not surprising. I think I see some cracking in the soil over the beans, so hopefully they're doing their sprouting thing.

Half of my peppers are quite wilted now. I'm not sure what the problem is, since we got drenched in rain yesterday and it seems unlikely they'd be thirsty. From what I've read and heard, pepper plants often wilt, especially in hot weather. However, today was pleasant and in the low 80s, so I would think they'd be fine. Five out of five look happier than they did before the rain and the other five look wretched. I guess I will have to keep monitoring them. Like I said, they're in prime real estate so I can always replant. What I'm afraid of is phytophthora stem rot due to too MUCH water. Maybe I should back off with the hose.

My cabbages are looking happier now than before the rain, but I've seen some insect holes on the leaves. I was hoping not to have to get floating row cover this late in the game, but it might be necessary if they're going to make it to sauerkraut stage.

Planting Turnips, Carrots, Radishes, Greens, Green Onions and assorted seedlings

Whoo hoo I did it! I finished planting everything I needed to get into the ground right away. The only things left are finding space for the remaining cole crop seedlings and digging a mound for my fall garlic planting. I finished not a moment too soon, since we're expected to get pounded by storms this evening.

Freshly planted garden, viewed from the SW corner.

And from the NE corner. Yeah, my rows aren't perfectly straight, but I don't think the plants will care.

July 16th Planted:

Roots

• Hakurei Turnip (38 days)
• Purple-Top White Globe Turnip (55 days)
• White Satin Carrot (68 days)
• Sugarsnax Carrot (68 days)
• Miyashige Daikon Radish (50 days)
• Scarlet Queen Green Stem Turnip (43 days)
• Shunkyo Semi-Long Radish (32 days)

Greens

• Garnet Giant Mustard Greens
• Toscano Kale
• Champion Collards
• Redleaf Amaranth
• Goldberg Golden Purslane
• Summerfest Komatsuna Greens
  
• Cooking Sorrel

Onions

• Evergreen Hardy White Bunching Onion
• Nabechan Bunching Onion

Cucurbits

• 8-Ball Summer Squash (2nd planting)
• Sunburst Patty Pan Summer Squash (2nd planting)
• Amour Pickling Cuke (2nd planting)

Misc. Seedlings

• 2 Watermelon Seedlings (var. unknown)
• 4 Cayenne Pepper Seedlings
• 4 Brussels Sprouts Seedlings
• 2 Purple Kohlrabi Seedlings

For most of the plantings I did a box-style layout, giving turnips 6-8" and carrots and radishes 2-3". I planted a lot of the Hakurei turnips, because I liked them so much. I really hope they grow well. The greens should be exciting too, though I don't know if the kale and collards will get beyond the 'micro-greens' stage. I tried to arrange the root crops so that the quick-maturing varieties were in a very sunny spot, which I can sow with a fall crop of greens or peas.

At this point my space is pretty much used up. I'm kicking myself for not having the neighbor till the garden further east, but I was too lazy to move the giant rock pile out of the middle of the paddock. Most of the west side is unusable because of the shade from the maple trees. Oh well...I can always refine it next year.

In other news, my peppers are looking droopy. I'm trying to water them well, but they just won't perk up. Maybe with the coming rainstorm, all the fertilizer will be mobilized and the plants can take it up and be happy. If the peppers bite the dust I'll gladly plant other stuff in their place, since it's prime real estate.