Fall Garden Goodies

We are at the end of October and we haven't had a frost. Up until this past week, we've had a pretty dry fall also. However, we are having still having production from the garden.


This is the harvest that I've had this week. The peppers, tomatoes, and green beans are doing really well. We will soon have carrots and beets. I also had the first head of broccoli from the fall crop with more on the way. I still have a few sweet potatoes to dig up and also the jicama to dig up.

The eggplant and a couple of tomatoes are from our greenhouse. I made the best eggplant lasagna with fresh tomato sauce this week!

Fall Garden update

The weather has been amazing lately. We've lost the humidity and the days are milder and it's been beautiful (even though a bit dry). I thought I'd take a stroll out in the garden for an update.

Believe it or not, this is our asparagus. Some of it is now two years old so I expect a good cutting in the spring. Once established, Asparagus will live for 25 years or more!

The three beds on the left are broccoli and cauliflower. We also have planted onions, carrots and beets in here as well as a few heads of cabbage. Our okra and peppers are still producing and in fact having a comeback since it's cooled a little.

Here's our green beans that are just blooming. The plants look so green and lucious. Our fall tomatoes are on the right and just starting to produce.

These containers hold about six tomatoes and four eggplant and a pepper plant that will soon go into the greenhouse with drip irrigation.

We put the greenhouse floor in last week and are working this weekend on some tables and plumbing for our hydroponics.

Gearing up for a fall garden

Our pears are almost ready to pick which we will probably do next week. Last week we picked a bushel of apples and made some delicious applesauce and apple butter!

I'm praying our weather will become more mild. I've got a lot of plants started for our fall garden including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage as well as some tomatoes and peppers I'm going to put in the greenhouse. Tomorrow I plan on putting in a bed of green beans. We are still getting tomatoes, okra and peppers. We have another bed of tomatoes about 2" high and blooming and a bed of summer squash that is starting to bloom.

As of tonight, no more signs of our beavers!

Rainy Saturday

Fall has definitely come to our little neck of the woods. It seems that our rains come on every Saturday. It sure would be nice to have a sunny one to work on the greenhouse! This look seems like I should be in Oregon right now.

I did notice this spider web which is neat with the rain on it. I wasn't sure how the picture would turn out but you can see it.

The rate of harvest has gone way down but we do have collards. Before a rainy Saturday, I ran out to pick some to cook up. I'm no Southern gal but Michael has some fond memories of his mom's collards so I'm trying!

I takes so many collards to cook down. The big bowl above cooked down to about 4 quarts of cooked collards. Michael liked them and said they were good. . . but I'm not sure they were better than his memories of his mom's!

A frosty morning

One of my favorite things about fall mornings is to be able to look out on the pond and see the steam rising. It is hard to capture is in a picture but it is so beautiful!

In this shot of the pond, you can see that we've done a lot of framing on the greenhouse. It's going a little slower than we anticipated since we've had a rainy fall.

Our first frost almost took me by surprised. Sunday night it was going to be in the 30s but I didn't realized it would be cold enough for frost. So. . . I was able to pick the rest of any tomatoes, peppers and eggplant but the plants didn't survive the cold. I will miss being able to just go and pick several times a week but we still have a lot of colder tolerant crops like my lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, collards, cauliflower, and carrots that are coming along well!

A touch of Fall

It's going to get down to 52 tonight so I guess fall is definitely here! This morning, at breakfast, we heard a honking sound and saw these geese on their way South. I guess they stopped in for a rest stop on the pond.

I got the camera to watch them swim and soon heard a honk and then they all
took off.

We've had rainy days for almost two weeks so since this week is dry, Michael and Duane Jones worked on getting the roof on the storage building part of greenhouse. They got all of the wood foundation up and hopefully the roofing and shingles will go on Wednesday!