starting to clear up

The season's end is here. Everything should be cleared by 31 October. I started on that yesterday.

A trip to the garden yesterday revealed no more cucumbers but again a few zucchinis. Harvested all the remaining green tomatoes - excellent as salsa and I will try fried green tomatoes tonight. More carrots. I also removed the few little ears of corn that were straggling, for use as guinea pig food. Only the rainbow chard and collards remain for harvesting. I left a few tiny winter squashes to see if they do something over the next week or so.


I took down the beans and removed all the rest of the plants, which generated an additional compost heap. Unfortunately, I missed the garden clear-up in the morning during which Parks & Recreation got rid of unwanted material with their truck.


Even at mid-afternoon the light is dimmer and the shadows longer. I've really enjoyed having this garden and I will miss it over the winter months.


This morning I had some delicious scrambled eggs (traded with produce from the garden) with zucchini (from the garden), mushrooms, neuf-chatel and spring onions and a side of sauteed Rose Finn Apple potatoes (also from the garden). I haven't really had to buy any vegetables from the supermarket recently (except lettuce for the piggies) and it'll be strange to be doing that again.

Harvesting

The first zucchini harvest! Instead of one, I actually got two today which were of good size. In addition I also took some more rainbow chard - the last batch was delicious chopped up into some scrambled eggs.

I am still waiting for the patty pan summer squash to blossom but it seems to be putting on lot of leaves. Not as pretty as the zucchini's marbled leaves (shown on the right) but nonetheless very attractive.

I am very excited about the cucumbers, its little spiny beginnings showing. Lots of flowers also on the lemon cucumber but nothing concrete yet. Right next to the cucumbers are my mustard greens which seem to handling the hot weather very well so far. They need thinning out again, so even more greens for supper soon.

The main event of the afternoon was putting together some support for the burgeoning tomato plants. The are now too big for the wire cages and I was too cheap to buy the wrap-around ones for $4 each. Little bamboo frames and string will have to do.

All in all a very successful afternoon but it was very hot. Had to do an emergency stop cycling home buying limeade since I had run out of water. Such is life... :)

more planting

Today I got a worthy replacement for the loss of my English cucumber - "Orient Express". I'm going to nurture this little puppy to make it through. Let's see if coffee grounds can keep that nasty something away that killed the last plant. Again, I am trying to trellis it. There is more space so I may actually get more cucumber plants since it seems to be a challenge now.

Looking around the garden centre my eye also fell on some Swiss Chard "Rainbow" and some fava beans. It may actually be a little bit too warm already for the fava beans but it's worth an experiment. The spending spree ended with some seeds of mustard greens "Wild Garden Mild Mix". Everything was bedded down and tucked in.

As the plot takes shape I am now noticing some empty spaces that could be filled. I am contemplating more peppers. We eat a vast amount of them but they are expensive grocery items. Maybe also lettuce; I was too hasty in turning down some free starts earlier in the year. I feel a trip to the garden centre coming up again...