Three weeks ago, in my garden. (September 5)
This morning, in my garden.
(If you're keeping garden notes and photographs and want to share it with the rest of us, do leave a comment with a link so that we may take a stroll through your garden too! It's a delight to see what and how things are growing all over, and to read the comments with such great gardening wisdom! Thank you all for continuing to share in this little project.)
Late September in the garden. How can that be? With the growing season slowing just a bit, I'm busy (really busy) with the work of harvesting what we can in the time we have left. We haven't had a frost here yet, but it's come very close - our neighbors just a bit to the North and West have. So I'm watching that closely, and at the ready. Though I'd like to get to it earlier, I'm thinking there's going to be a mad dash for pesto making just as soon as I get an official warning.
Tomatoes - I'm officially calling it - were a whole lot of talk and no action this year. Our weather pattern here was so bizarre this summer - super dry, crazy wet, and back and forth again. I'll have enough to do a bit of preserving, but not enough to get all the way through the winter with salsa, passata, and ketchup, unfortunately. It'll be more precious than plentiful in that particular area of the pantry. Potatoes, too, were a bit of a wash. We had some leafhopper damage early in the season, and as I've been pulling them, I'm realizing the damage was far worse than we knew from the plants above. For each plant I'm pulling, I'm getting about two useable potatoes. French fries and ketchup? Looks like we might be a little light on that particular snack this winter.
But for every crop that didn't do well, there's another that did better than expected. Those pole beans I wasn't even sure were growing have taken off and are covered with beans. I harvested twelve pounds in just a few minutes upon arriving home earlier this week, and that's just a dent in what I have to put by for beans. It's a good thing we like dilly beans so much. (Let's hope we still like them as much in March!) Beets, too, are very happy...and carrots, parsnips, broccoli all are still going strong. And oh, the greens. So much kale and chard that we'll be able to keep eating from the garden for many months to come. And squash are still moseying along with what looks to be a decent outcome.
I'm beginning to prepare some of the 'finished' beds in the garden for the winter. I had hoped to get a cover crop of oats on some, but am now thinking I'm a little too late. A blanket of leaves will have to do this year. And leaves...oh, there are plenty of those. Fall is here in full force - inside the garden and out. Before we know it, the garlic will be going in the ground, and after that...we'll be tucked inside by the fire dreaming about next year's garden.
What's going on in your late September garden?