Harvest

Falling Into (what is almost) Fall

September 4, 2011

A cold front is moving through and our temps are about 20 degrees below where they’ve been for what feels like forever.  It’s raining lightly right now and I’m happily drinking a cup of hot tea in the middle of the afternoon.  Tomorrow is the unofficial last day of summer, and while I am incredibly sad about the dying down of our summer garden, I am super excited about our fall garden.

This will be the first full year we will have intentionally grown veggies.  While we had our summer garden last year, it didn’t hit us to try to plant and grow year round until the beginning of November (literally, I think we planted on November 4th…).  So, everything went in late and came up late, but we produced enough garlic, onions, kale and spinach to support the idea of continuous growth (with the help, of course, of our plastic covered, raised beds AKA “The Wagons”).

This year, though, in addition to the Wagons, I want to try a few crops uncovered, straight in the ground.  I just want to see how they do.  We have about a month left before the frosts hit, so we’ll see what happens between now and then.

So, I cleared out a section of the bed that runs parallel to the fence in the front yard.  Starting from the left and moving right you’ll see our fading summer squash, our strawberry patch, and bush beans in front with a couple of pole beans up against the fence.

Before

This morning I pulled all the beans, since they were pretty much done, and gave them to the chickens for breakfast.  I left a few mystery plants (sage? echinacae? weeds? who knows) and threw down some buck wheat as a cover crop under the tree (which you can see peaking off the corner of the below picture).  I also planted a few snap peas to go with those I started a couple of weeks ago (against the fence), some kale, spinach, chard and mixed lettuce.  I’ve heard kale can almost completely over-winter here (uncovered) if you mulch it well.  We’ll see.  My hope is that the other greens will just get us through the next couple of months.

After
Next, I moved on to our 4X5 raised bed (yep, we’re still in the front yard).  Last winter this bed housed onions, garlic and spinach.  This summer it simply held buck wheat for a bit and some bush beans.  Right now it’s holding what remains of our second planting of bush beans.  I haven’t been able to convince myself to pull all these beans because they’re still producing nicely.  Instead, I’ve slowly “fenced” them using yarn tied around the PVC pipes that will later hold up our plastic sheeting.

A close up of the “fenced” beans 😉

Now, why would I “fence” my beans?  Because I’m trying to get a head start on our fall (into winter) garden!  Here’s a close up of what’s happening in the back half of the bed.  From the right to the left you (might) see (single rows of) broccoli, carrots (Carnival Blend), kale (Red Russian), carrots (Cosmic Purple), kale (Red Winter) and beets (Early Wonder-Tall).  Right now 4X3 of the 4X5 bed is planted.

The plan is to continue pulling and fencing beans while succession planting the remaining  4X2 of this bed over the next month or so with more of the same (minus the broccoli…it takes up too much space) as well as some spinach.  I like to plant things closely 🙂

Up close shot of a Red Russian Kale sprout

In our other (4X6) raised bed I plan to plant next years onions and garlic as well as a few more rows of carrots, some radishes and some turnips.  This bed will be mulched and turned into a wagon as well.  But right now, that bed looks like this…

A complete jungle full of way too many ripening tomatoes and a few cucumbers.  This will have to be dealt with once the tomatoes are done.  Not today, though.  I’m definitely done for today.

What are you planning on sowing 
in your fall garden?
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2 Comments on “Falling Into (what is almost) Fall”

  1. Kelli-Yay for fall gardening, is right! It really is exciting to grow veggies year round! Who knew?!?! 😉 Thanks for stopping by!

  2. hi! i’m so glad you stopped by my blog because then i came here and i love it here!=) like you, i started my fall garden late last year, so this year is my official first fall garden. i’ve got little pea, kale, collard, cabbage, carrot, beet, broccoli, escarole and arugula sprouts growing, and i planted lettuce seeds yesterday. yay for fall gardening!=)

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