Design

We had a solid frost last night. The temperature went down to 30°F, with enough moisture in the air and combined with a still wind, the conditions were ideal to produce a heavy frost. The mustard greens, purple mustard, arugula, etc. were frozen early, but by late morning were fine (I'd harvested all of the large leaves yesterday, just in case). The lone fall tomato plants wilted with frost, of course, but the young green tomatoes became sauce for a vegetable lasagna that I'm planning to make tomorrow. It was a good day in the vegetable garden.  I finished planting garlic cloves and prepared two beds with extra compost in the satellite garden for potatoes and onions. for spring.  The added mushroom compost and composted manure will enrich the soil over winter, so those beds will be perfect for planting.

Such a lovely sense of renewal comes with new seeding; fall greens are the promise, hopefully, of seeds sown now. This weekend, I'm definitely planting lettuce, spinach, arugula, beets, chard, kale and collards in all of the beds not allocated to garlic! I'll plant garlic from my own harvested heads for the first time this year.  I've put aside the largest heads (and so the largest cloves) to separate and plant out in late September/early October. Yum....

I'm doing a program tomorrow on fall vegetable gardening.  It's so hot and humid, it's hard to think about sowing spinach, lettuce, chard, beet, kale, turnip, collard, mache, onion, and arugula seeds (not to mention transplants of broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower.  But it's time.  It may not be too late to try a few baby carrots, too, and nurse them along in the heat. But I was reminded, updating this program yet again, how much I've learned about gardening seasons in the South, and how even simple season extensions (cold frames, row covers, and the like) can extend our three seasons of growing to four. I haven't yet decided whether to sow kale (Tuscan, Siberian, and Red Bor) in the main vegetable garden or the satellite garden (they're susceptible to both root-knot nematodes and woodchuck herbivory); nor have I figured out what I'll plant in my raised beds in the mountains, when the tomatoes and beans finally decide they're finish...

I'm feeling awfully behind in my fall gardening at this point. I 'should' have transplanted greens by now; my home-grown brussel sprouts and broccoli seedlings are languishing in pots. I keep catching a poor young opossum instead of the voracious woodchuck in my Havahart trap. This last time (I think it had pushed its way in, as I hadn't left it set), we provided water and food (dog kibble and fresh apple pieces) before it recovered enough to scamper off into the forest edge. I managed to get out before dusk this evening , and sow a round of mixed wild kale, Tuscan kale, and some Oriental Spinach, and managed to water them in well. If I can just keep enough water on those beds, maybe I'll have something to work with, after all. My flats of arugula and mustards look fine, but they're in partial shade in nice fluffy moisture-retentive potting mix. It's been dreadfully dry in August and early September, so everything is looking wan (the gardener included!)

The return of droughty conditions is hindering germination of fall greens in the main vegetable garden. Lettuce, spinach, and arugula, directly sown, aren't appearing so far. I sowed a second round this evening, hopefully to a better result. I've been too preoccupied with other things to be scrupulous about watering them every day, which doesn't help either. The salad mixes, wild mustards, and arugula sown in flats are doing fine, but they're in partial shade and easy to keep moist. But happily, I'm harvesting a few heirloom tomatoes from container-grown plants, and French filet beans, thanks to seeds from my friend CEN, and I'll be sowing some mustards and kale directly in the garden tomorrow evening.

I managed to do a first sowing of mixed mustards, lettuces, arugula, and spinach today. I even poked some nasturtium seeds around the beds, hoping to have a few flowers before frost. Normally, I'd have started a bit earlier with my flats, but heat and dry weather (and recovery time) has kept me inside most of this month. We've had some rain and mild weather, though, the last few days, so it's a good time to make the effort. There's plenty of time for fall greens, to be sure, and I'll be doing successive sowings in flats through late September. I'm also planning to use my cold frame for season extension this year, too, and may even use a second makeshift coldframe with extra hay bales from my straw bale experiment. The straw bales have matured wonderfully well, and is a technique that I'll probably try again, although my experimental results were hindered by woodchuck foraging. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to do the bed prep in time to plant m...

I harvested purple mustard, arugula, spinach, and turnip greens today. It's almost (our) Thanksgiving --Thursday, Nov. 27 this year. Even though we've had frosts, in the protected walls of the vegetable garden near our visitor center, the frost damage hasn't been significant.

Our first big frost in our garden occurred over the weekend. We came home to collapsed nasturtiums and blackened basil. Last night, it dipped below the freezing mark; the parsley was frozen and the large redbor kale that had survived from early last winter was frosty early and drooping late in the evening, a sure sign of frost damage. Late this afternoon, in chilly temperatures, I hurriedly cut purple mustard, red cut-leaf mustard, lettuce, and arugula in the (ornamental and demonstration) vegetable garden next to the visitor center; I hated to think about the tenderer greens going to waste in tonight's potential harder freeze, since I'm unsure about how much the brick walls might hold heat. I've been giving the excess harvest to my gardening companion for some of the custodial staff in his building -- mustard and turnip greens, and arugula (great as a cooked green). There's not enough to take to our local food bank (I need some gleaners to harvest more, I guess),...

Osaka red mustard It's been busy this fall, so I've barely been able to get a few new beds changed out, and only planted some (purchased) collards and cabbage plants last weekend. I still need to get the garlic in, hopefully this week, since it's getting late in the season. But a woodchuck has reappeared, so I might as well write off growing kale and cabbage, until s/he is relocated. Our drought continues, unfortunately. Lake Hartwell, next to campus, is remarkably low, and the Army Corps of Engineers announced recently that they couldn't mark all the hazards for boaters because of the low water. But I was encouraged about how well that some of my 'donated' seeds have produced in the protected vegetable garden next to our visitor center (at work). My colleague Kathy had reworked the beds, and recently sown collards, mesclun mix, turnip greens, red-striped mustards, and Osaka purple mustard. They all look great, and some are ready to harvest. She also has ...

After a weekend away, the squash and beans were ready to harvest. I had five large tromboncino squash (the 9 inch + sort), lots of the smaller bicolor gourd-like squash, and a final green bean harvest. Inexplicably, the bean vines wilted late last week, and all the leaves were brown by Sunday. I haven't had a chance to follow up on what it might have been. But the garden peas are growing well, and I need to get the supports up (I guess the bean trellises are now available!) I'm planning on sowing some more fall greens before I leave for a conference late in the week. Just before going to bed, I happened to catch a glimpse of the moon rising above the hedge out the mud room window. Tonight, the moon is full.