No Social Media Post – Gardening in Oc tober
I keep forgetting that all the stuff I would normally post on a social media account can be posted here on my little home on the internet. Sometimes it’s fun to just walk in the garden together, right?
I failed to take pictures of the garden progress this summer, but it was a rousing success. We built our garden beds by just spreading well aged horse manure right on top of the grass. I was skeptical, but Charles Dowding assured me it would work, and apparently he knew what he was talking about.
We enjoyed tons of broccoli, great green beans (these are by far my favorite they are tender, delicious, and super prolific), two small watermelon (so hard to know the right time to pick it) and corn.
So, let’s take a stroll through the garden today, shall we? Starting over on the Zombie garden area (this is where we put the compost directly on top of the grass. For a while it looked like very large grave sites, and since it was at the beginning of the pandemic, we named this plot of garden Zombie Bottoms).
We had beans and broccoli filling up most of these front beds and they produced wonderfully all summer. We had broccoli for weeks!
There’s a few volunteer broccoli plants that came up after we harvested the original ones, I thought I’d let them live since they were so set on it. We also cleaned up the rest of the tomatoes and will let the green ones ripen in the garage. (I planted San Marzano tomatoes from this shop on Etsy since at the time, all seed companies everywhere were sold out! They worked great and I got to support a small business which always makes me happy.)
Leeks!
and lettuce
mustard seed
and beans drying and almost ready to pick.
Over in the raised bed garden (it still needs a cool name, any ideas?) I planted some onions,
and some dill (all of these are supposed to be frost hardy plants).
The green peppers and jalapenos in the front raised bed are still going strong,with young broccoli in front. (Though I’m not sure how it will do, it seems a bit leggy. Do I put some compost around them to help them stand a bit stronger?)
And more baby cilantro. The spring cilantro harvest was amazing, but as soon as it starting warming up it went to seed overnight (which is a delicious coriander seed, but not what I wanted) and the mid-summer planted cilantro was immediately seed. So I’m happy to have some starting up again. I know you either love or hate cilantro. Lucky for me it tastes like bright summer days. I’ve heard it can also taste like soap to some people. I’m glad I got the summer tastebuds.
this lower bed is the fall crop of kohrabi, green onions, spinach, lettuce, radishes, and carrots.
The stupid white ash fly went crazy on all my broccoli and brassica plants and when I pulled those out they came over and feasted on my kohlrabi and decimated most of them. A few of the strong ones pulled through. I tried neem oil and just water to get rid of the flies, but they are pretty resilient little jerks.
This lettuce is by far the best lettuce I’ve ever had. It’s called Salanova lettuce and I think you can only get it at Johnny’s seeds. But man, is it worth it! I’m going to grow mainly just this lettuce next year, planting it every couple of weeks because it has the crispness of a mature lettuce, but the sweet buttery taste of a baby lettuce. Plus when you cut it off, it falls apart into individual leaves. I love it!
I planted a few fall spinach plants. I might try to get a few more in the ground before it gets too cold because our big thug cat laid down in the middle of the row and smashed a bunch to death.
and in the back we have a few different plantings of carrots.
I have a few starts of winter cabbage almost ready to go into the ground, and when I get the garlic bulbs in I have a bed saved for them too.