The time has come. The end of the summer growing season and the beginning of autumn. Each day the air gets a bit crisper and the dew on the morning grass has a little bite to it. Our first frost a few days ago (rather early for us here in Iowa) has many trees already changing their colors to match the season. It is my personal favorite time of year. In the mornings its cool enough that you need a sweater and a warm cup of coffee (or cocoa for those of you who don't like the strong stuff haha) to watch as the morning animals take to life for the day, and in the afternoons its still warm enough that you can shed your sneakers and wander through your yard and let your toes feel the soft grass. Now if you are like me and let your chickens free range: Watch your step!
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| (One last male pumpkin flower fighting to live) |
So it's at this time of year, as urban farmers, and even farmers out in the country begin to take inventory of their crop for the year. So I thought that I might share some pictures of what we have harvested, and what is now left of my almost bare garden. I still have several things left to do in my garden however before winter comes. I will be ditch composting my chicken manure to create a lush and ripe garden bed for our corn next year, and I need to dig up and till our garden plots that we are adding to the back of the yard, so that first thing in the spring I can get my berries in the ground.
Speaking of spring, doing a little research I came across several great articles on having a late garden well into the autumn season and early winter. Using many greens that require a hard frost to become sweet and edible, and then by overwintering them they will also produce much earlier first thing in the spring. Something to definitely look into. I am thinking of trying that with my lettuces and my broccoli to be specific as according to what I read its the best time to plant both of them, and neither did very well for me this year.
Mother Earth News, a magazine and website dedicated to self sustainability and organic methods of living, has an article dedicated to this topic in their Sept-Oct issue. You can find the article here on their website. It talks much about what types of plants are good to plant in a fall garden, and how to go about starting your fall garden. I found it very enlightening that greens and root vegetables actually thrive better in the cold than they do in the heat, and certain greens such as Kale actually need a good frost to make them sweet and delicious.
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| (As you can see we still have a bit of harvesting left) |
Some Fall Garden Favorites:
Kale
Radicchio
Swiss chard
Carrots
Radishes
Lettuces - My favorite is Romaine
And Broccolis
As the season grows cooler every day I have actually noticed quite a large increase in the growth of my broccoli ( an Italian Heirloom breed), and so my hope of being able to harvest it has returned. Picture below :)
The article is just wonderful with helpful tips and suggestions and has actually given me one that I plan on hopefully putting together this weekend; a cold frame. Its a rather simple idea really, basically you are just giving your plants a winter shelter to protect them from colder temperatures at night and even during the day once it starts to snow, and a properly made cold frame with things such as black-painted bottles of water will stay warm even in some of the coldest temperatures. (another great idea right there with soda bottles simply spray painted black and filled with water to retain solar heat)
In our garden this year we grew (or attempted to grow) several items including pumpkins, watermelon, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, basil, and we have naturally growing onions and rhubarb in our yard. Below are some pictures I took this morning in the garden.
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| (our baby peppers. Can't wait to try them!) |
As you can see our peppers are rather small. It was our first time trying to grow peppers, and they were choked out first by the pumpkins which took over pretty much the entire garden, and then after that they were taken over by watermelon vines, which we unfortunately were unable to harvest any viable fruits this season.
The peppers are just now able to grow as the watermelons pretty much died off during our first frost, and then the pumpkins have been pretty much cleared out for the end of the season.
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| (The peppers are still flowering which leaves me with hope for even more to harvest later in the season) |
Speaking of pumpkins. At the top of this post you will find a picture of several of our pumpkins grouped together. I know of at least another 3 - 4 we have hidden around the house and the yard, but Tim has been harvesting them for close to three months now, so who knows how many we really have.
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| This is all thats left of our pumpkin patch (imagine it three times this size if not bigger) |
And to the left is one of our last two pumpkins that are still growing in the patch. We are lucky if we get a single male flower anymore, and I only saw one flower at all this morning so I think they will be our last two of the season.
Overall there is still quite a bit to do in the garden before winter gets here. So much to do with so little time left as I am thinking we are going to have an early and harsh winter this year!
Ciao xo
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