Apologies for not posting in a while. I’ve had an accident involving the thumb on my right hand.
Suffice it to say that my life has had to slow down quite a bit while I have been slowly healing. As
we speak, I am wearing a hard plastic thumb splint that makes typing more of a challenge.
Thanks to my wife Catherine, my friends Steve and KC Swallow, Jim and Vicki Dyer and
Chuck Kennedy. They all pitched in to help me get the garden ready for fall.
Steve and KC helped prep the legume beds for next season. We pulled the remaining green bean
plants, making sure to scrape the nitrogen nodules attached to the roots back into the soil. I need
that nitrogen for next season’s leaf crops. These would include; lettuce, mesclun, arugula, cabbage,
kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, etc.
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| THE GARDEN AFTER CLEAN UP (NOTICE THE ENCLOSURES) |
Once we had cleared the bed we added the following: ground limestone, rock phosphate
and green sand. After that we added a large wheel barrow full of compost and spread it
with the back of our rakes. Steve then tilled the soil with my little one horse Honda
tiller. We raked again and went on to the next bed, doing four in all. For more information
on this topic I recommend that you check out one of my early posts, CROP ROTATION-
THE FOUR CROP METHOD
Chuck Kennedy helped me make some simple enclosures to keep cucumbers and zucchini
warm this fall. Jim Dyer leaped onto my lawn tractor and mowed all the grass on the property.
Vicki helped with harvesting. Catherine has been busy harvesting beans, hot peppers, tomatoes,
and squash; then she has processed all of this stuff. We have lots of green beans frozen. We
now have our own ground chili powder, hot pepper flakes and dried peppers. We have lots of tomato
puree and chopped tomatoes frozen.
I have been slowly reducing the tomato plant population. As of today, I have two “Matt’s Wild
Cherry plants, two “Japanese Black Trifele” two “Russian Ox Heart” and one”Rose” still in the
ground. The “Matt’s Wild Cherry” will remain in the ground until the killing frost. It is the most
hardy tomato I have ever grown. It grows wild in Mexico. It is one tough hombre.
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| THE FALL CARROT BED |
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| A BASKET OF CARROT THINNINGS |
This past week I concentrated on three beds: the fall carrot patch, the Brussels sprouts patch
and the fall broccoli-cabbage bed. I thinned the carrots and wound up with a basket full
of carrots ready to eat. Judging from this harvest it looks like the best fall carrot crop ever.
It looks like we won’t have to buy any carrots until Spring. I cleaned up the Brussels sprouts
patch, added some supports to keep the plants upright, sprayed for cabbage worms and fed
the plants with Neptune’s Harvest 2-3-1 fish fertilize. The broccoli – cabbage patch got the
same treatment. Tomorrow I will set up a low tunnel over this bed to encourage the crop to
maturity.
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| BRUSSELS SPROUTS |
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| BROCCOLI-CABBAGE PATCH |
All the best,
Greg Garnache
gcgarnache@gmail.com
UPCOMING BLOG POSTS
OUR WINTER SQUASH GARDEN
RADISH &BEET ENCLOSURE TO COMBAT ROOT MAGGOTS
FALL PLANTING OF GARLIC
Y EAH! WE’VE GOT CHICKENS
