Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Autumn gardening

How did we commemorate the beginning of October? By gardening, of course!

If you're not out there weeding and planting and tending this time of year, you won't have a nice fall/winter crop to harvest. You don't need a fancy greenhouse either, just some row-covers if you plant cold-hardy crops. If you want to go the fancy greenhouse route, check out Eliot Coleman's books to learn more.

Here are the kids, weeding (before harvesting tomatoes and peppers); no, they don't always have goofy grins while weeding, but they don't complain about having to do it either:
So what are we weeding and tending to? Well, there's choi sum:
and lettuce:
and carrots:
and don't forget the cabbage (although that was planted a while ago) :
Another nice fall crop is kale. It's highly cold tolerant.  Hubby grew 2 different varieties this year:
We're also harvesting some end-of-summer crops like potatoes (no pic, sorry) and sweet potatoes:
Sweet potatoes as big as footballs (with the density of bowling balls) -
Here's a more mature choi-sum that hubby's been harvesting already:
Hubby re-planted some summer squash after vine borers killed our squash plants earlier this summer.  We've been getting a really nice harvest from them.  Both the patty-pans:
and the summer squash:
Because we needed room for the new plantings, hubby pulled out a bunch of volunteer dill plants and I hung them up to dry.  Who needs Halloween decorations when you have these?
I hope you're running a nice Autumn garden yourself!  Next up: tomato pie recipes.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams