Slowing Down in the Fall Garden

It's been a long time since I posted!  That garden bed I talked about in the last post is now finished, mulched, and has a bunch of little plants (sacrificial lambs) poking out of it!  More on that later, though.

(Mostly) Fall garden

Here's what the community garden plot looks like right now.  There are still three tomato plants, though they are definitely on their way out.  The watermelon vine, freed from the shade of the gazillion basil plants and the exuberant buttercup squash vine, is trying to produce three more fruits in the waning daylight.  Peppers are ripening left and right, and the bean plants are beginning to dry out.  I still have summer squash plants in the front bed, mostly just because I prefer that to bare soil - production has pretty much stopped.  I mulched the older carrots with shredded tree leaves, and am looking forward to picking them well into the winter.  The first round of lettuce (that light green strip at the very back) is already trying to go to seed, so I've been picking quite a bit of that, plus there are three more planting rounds that I expect will keep maturing throughout the winter.  There are a few heads of cabbage that I think will finish before winter, and several more (plus a lot of broccoli) that will probably not be ready until spring.  Anyone want some basil?  We still have a few plants that I just don't know what to do with.  I planted some parsley where the buttercup squash was, though I'm not really sure if it will make it through the winter, being planted so late.  I just miss having parsley in the garden so much.  (N practically clucks at me every time we have to do anything as ridiculous as buy parsley.  I really have to pay more attention to herbs next spring.)

I have mostly been cleaning up lately.  Now that there are fewer daylight hours and the days are getting cooler, I am starting to catch up with the weeds.  I decided to renew the great cardboard project - I've covered about 90% of the paths with cardboard and wood chips, which I hope will last well into next summer.  In the process I've weeded most of the beds at least a little, and removed many of the plant stems and branches that were leaning into the paths.  All in all, the garden is looking much tidier. 

I think I will probably add a path along the right side of the plot, where the park service turned over a whole plot to "community space", with a picnic table and regularly cut weeds.  Technically the path will be in the community plot, but I think it will be a relief to the gentlemen who trim the grass to have a little buffer zone between them and my garden.  They always leave the weeds right at the edge uncut (truly, I do appreciate their consideration), which means I have to either trim them or let them shed seeds on my garden beds - mulching a strip seems easier.  If I have enough time before the weather turns I'll try to build a small bed over there, too, where gardeners can plant/pick at their leisure.  Well...we'll see if that happens or not.  ;)

R and I planted a round of garlic on the first - Inchelium Red.  I had three large bulbs, which provided only enough cloves to fill about 1/3 of the space I have designated for garlic next year.  I want to fill the rest of the space with cloves I harvested this year, but I am a little concerned about them.  When the papers are removed they have what look like tiny little pimples on the surface, which the internet tells me means nematodes.  Nematodes are tiny little worms that live in the soil and feed on the roots and/or bulbs of many, many different plants.  Most likely my entire community garden plot is infested with them, but I think I will still try heat-treating the cloves before I plant them.  Supposedly soaking the cloves in warm water destroys the nematodes so that they don't infest the soil of the new garlic bed.  Assuming it isn't already infested.

Well, this post is getting long, so I think I'll sign off and write more another time.  Hope all is well with all of you and your garden clean-up (or gear-up) is going well.

Late Summer Garden

Late summer garden photo

With my planting window for the fall garden rapidly closing and the summer harvest starting to taper off, I thought I'd do a status update for the community garden. 

Squash vine borer hole at the base of my mystery squash

The summer squashes are still producing, despite evidence of both borers and squash bugs in the garden.  They seem to prefer attacking my mystery squash, which seems to be able to take the abuse.  It is also still producing, though I've cut it back a lot in the hopes of squeezing another watermelon out of the season.  The watermelon vines got a little overrun by mystery squash and basil, so they are limping along.  The basil has outperformed my wildest expectations; there is still some left in the garden after two large harvests!

My peppers are still doing well, but are under attack by some sort of stink/soldier beetle.  I've really never had problems with pests on my peppers before, but I suppose there's a first time for everything - especially bugs.

I've got five rounds of carrots in the garden right now.  Some that I planted in the spring, some from my June planting, and three rounds that I planted for the fall. The spring ones can be picked whenever I like, and the June carrots are filling out.  I planted an entire bed for the fall garden, hoping to grow some to leave in the ground for winter like last year.  It's been challenging keeping them watered, even with the weather's cooperation.

The cucumbers are just about finished, but I've been putting off pulling them out because I don't have anything else to plant in their bed and I'd rather not leave the soil bare.  The onion bed is mostly bare, and the soil there is as hard as a rock, even with all the rain we've been having.  The eggplants are just limping along as well, still under attach by the flea beetles.  It looks like I'll get at least two more rosa biancas, though.

Broccoli plant - see the half-eaten leaves?

I transplanted several broccoli back in July, and they have been under pretty serious attack by cabbage moths.  Four or five have survived, but comparing their size and vigor to the ones we had in the spring, I think any heads they produce will be disappointing.  I've transplanted a bunch more and covered them, so we'll see.  According to the almighty HG16 it is too late to plant broccoli, but I think I'd rather plant them and have them not produce anything until spring than leave the soil bare.

Tall tomato plants

I've pulled out four of the tomato plants, hoping the others would have a better chance at ripening their remaining fruit.  We've reached the part of the season when I pick a large bowl of tomatoes every time we go to the garden, and they sit on our table waiting to be turned into sauce.  There was something very odd about the way the tomatoes grew this year - when I look at them from the main path, both beds are shortest on the left, then get progressively taller and bushier as I look to the right.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe the left gets marginally more light?  Less wind?

A wide row of beans

The green beans R and I planted in July are putting out their first beans!  Yay!  I do like planting these later much better than watching them rust and struggle through the heat and dryness and not produce anything.  It's also nice to have something just coming into crop at this time of year.

The snap peas are up - the first generation are about three inches tall, while the second are about 1 inch.  I've transplanted a whole lot of lettuces into the former potato bed, some simpson and some valerie, and one little romaine has reached survivable size, with more little ones to go in the bed this week.

I'm glad the fall planting is almost finished.  It feels like the fall weather is coming early this year, and I'm anxious to start cleaning and packing things away.  I've also decided to convert more grass to garden at the house, so it will be nice to have some more time to work on that.  (Funny how I'm even looking forward to picking less!)  But more on that project another time.

How's the Garden?

The community garden plot

June is a precarious time in the garden.  There's a lot of empty space around plants that aren't yet fully established - prime weed-growing real estate.  There's also (in my area) not a whole lot of rain falling, so many of the newly planted summer crops need water.  Add that to the relatively little harvesting and planting to be done and the human tendency to steer clear of heat and burning-bright sunshine and you have a real recipe for disaster.  This is when we lose a lot of the new gardeners at the community garden.

Luckily, I am behind schedule this year, so I have plenty of reasons to crawl out of bed and go take care of things.  Here's a rundown of the crops currently in the community garden plot:

• Potatoes - seem to have some sort of fungus or disease causing the outside edges of the leaves to blacken, but I think it won't seriously harm the yield.  At any rate there will certainly be plenty of potatoes this year.
• Tomatoes - Both rows are setting fruit, but the ones in the back row are larger.  Both rows also seem to have the fungal problem I was worried about in the spring, which I think is gray mold.  The back row really needs to be tied and pruned - I'll have to get to that this week.
• Garlic - some if not all of the garlic is probably ready to be picked.  The plants are browning and seem to be shrinking before my eyes as the energy from the plant slowly goes into storage in the bulb.
• Carrots - there are three rounds in the ground right now, with the oldest ones ready to pick and the smallest ones barely out of the ground.  I really should have put more compost into the carrot bed before I planted it - the carrots I'm harvesting are pretty stubby and crooked and split from the hard clay soil.
• The back peas aren't really producing much anymore, thanks to the heat, I just haven't gotten around to pulling them out yet.  I'll plant some beans there soon.
• The onions are so exciting right now.  It's my first year growing bulbing onions, so I'm trying not to get too excited, but it's really hard when they are clearly making onions!  I don't know when they'll be done, but I'm thinking at least another month.
• The asparagus seem to be loving life.  They could use some light weeding, and maybe some fertilizer soon, but mostly they seem to take care of themselves.
• The back pepper plants are starting to produce lots of peppers (bell and chili), while the front ones are still getting over being trasplanted.  Also I think the front ones are a little chlorotic.  I think the wood chips I added were not sufficiently rotted and now I'm worried there's not enough nitrogen in those two beds.  I watered them with some fish emulsion, and threw some more coffee grounds over the soil, so hopefully they will start to look better soon.
• The celeriac is bushy and I think I can see the tops of the thick roots widening below the soil.  I'm continuing to weed the bed, but other than that I leave them alone.
• There are little cucumber starts tucked between some of my pepper plants that look like they're starting to take off.  It's good because I'm almost out of pickles!
• The eggplants are all growing, although they're still getting torn up pretty badly by flea beetles.  The ones I started at home, which were horribly ragged when I planted them, are starting to close the gap with the nursery-bought transplant.
• The bed that used to have the broccoli in it is full of new little things whose outcome is far from certain.  There are two watermelon starts, a butternut squash start, a spare bell pepper plant and marigold that look pretty happy, and lots of little carrot and basil sprouts.
• The front bed is newly planted with summer squash: zucchini, yellow squash, and tromboncino (seeds).  There's also an extra 6-8 feet of space in there that I think I may use for beans.   I definitely don't want to plant extra summer squash!
• I haven't seen much action where I planted the parsley seeds.  I wonder if those seeds are no good any more.  I'll give them a little more time and then try some other seeds.

Whew!   The little bit of extra planning I've done this year has made a tremendous difference in how efficiently I'm using the garden space.  Can you tell I'm really proud of the garden?  Cause I am.