fall leftovers

Here is what's left in the garden from last fall. I must say I am proud of the spinach, which wouldn't even sprout for me last year. Abbey and I have been picking and eating it for the past few months now, and it just keeps on growing. The trick with planting spinach seeds is weather-related. Last fall I planted it the first rainy cold-front and thats what did it. Also, we have snap peas which have sprouted and are sending out their little tendrils looking for something to grab onto. The broccoli is all gone, as I harvested what was left after taking these photos.

Sorry the posts have been both brief and rare, It's just that season.

Spinach

Last of the broccoli

Snap pea sprouts

Cilantro

Photolog 10/15/2009

With this post I come armed with a new camera, a Nikon D-40. The pictures are coming out much better than my hundred-dollar point-and-shoot Olympus POS, and I hope to get back to blogging more often now that the weather is cooperating with my gardening efforts. Look forward to next week's post, as we going climbing this weekend with the new camera (and the dog).

Last week I planted some pretty stressed out broccoli transplants (they were the only ones left at the garden center). I also, in anticipation of rain, planted spinach seeds last Friday. Amazingly, it rained that night and off and on for the next two days! Now I've got little spinach sprouts :).

The fall tomatoes are a disappointment once again, partly because I did not prune them. They are nine feet tall and have basically no fruit. Note to self: next fall do black-eyed peas instead of tomatoes.

The basil is out of this world though, and is enough to supply four families with year-round pesto. (Anyone interested?) I bought it in a container with four separate sprouts and just planted them as they were without spacing - a technique I will have to try again next spring. The bees love it, and I have to keep pulling off the flowers to prevent a permanent basil infestation. I'd bet the honey made from basil flowers is delicious!

Spinach sprouts! Barely bigger than an acorn.

Elephant Garlic

Broccoli transplant.

Fall tomatoes

Bailey by the Basil.

Pulled up the Tomatoes

Finally finding enough time to work in the garden this weekend, I decided to pull up the tomatoes. They were really looking bad, and Abbey said the smaller ones were not tasting very good anymore. So now I have a ton of green ones, which will be slowly turning red over the next few weeks (hopefully).

Here is my largest cauliflower, 

Broccoli heads are getting bigger!

And, as always Gideon is helping.

Photolog 11/24/2008

Gideon helped me make rounds in the garden today!

Well, you can tell the cold nights have been hitting my tomatoes and okra - they look all brown and crunchy. I am waiting for the last of the tomatoes to turn red and I am letting one of the okra pods go to seed for the spring batch. Just from a single pod there will be way more okra seeds than I could plant in one season, so if anyone is interested...

Broccoli is putting out some heads!

Cilantro likes cooler weather, and it's really hard not to pick and eat at it. I'll give it another week!

Photolog 10/10/2008, Grand National

Photolog 10/10

Night-time temps are finally dropping! This means leafy-greens!

Here is what's been happening this week:

+ Planted Mesclun Lettuce

+ Planted Cilantro

+ Planted Spinach (again)

+ Composted Black-eyed peas from the side garden

Broccoli and Cauliflower

Tomatoes!

And a side-note on the Grand National:

I have been listening to Grand National, which is a band I found on Pandora, and they are pretty sweet. You can find a link to them on the right in the Headphones section. They are a British band with a sound reminiscent of Sting and The Police, although much more modern. It deserves a good listen if you are getting bored with whatever you got spinning on your iPod. I think it's shaping up to be my fall soundtrack, and if you know me that says a lot.

Buggered Corn

The corn has literally been buggered to death

Okra flower

For the past three weeks, my corn has been steadily consumed by tiny caterpillars, and I have been too busy with school to do anything about it. The little buggers were deep down in the stalk eating the new leaves before they even unravelled! There were certain measures I was prepared to go to in order to protect the delicate stalks. I suppose I could have sprayed them with any combination of my organic pesticides, but most of the corn just wasn't doing well enough to warrant such extremes. This afternoon I pulled it all up and buried it in the compost. The corn roast party has officially been delayed until the spring harvest. Bugger!

I am also worried about the okra. It's doing great for the moment, blooming and making pods, but it will probably be the first to go when the really cool weather comes. It will be interesting to see how much longer I have until I have to pull that up too. I think I will wait until it either completely stops growing or I find something better suited to cold temperatures.

I am not all that disappointed since the garden space where the corn was has now been filled with a more suiting (and more healthy) fall-weather crop. Broccoli and cauliflower have joined the lineup, and in a couple weeks so will mesclun lettuce.

Newly transplanted Broccoli and Cauliflower