In Shaw (an historically gentrified blog)

Fall Garden Report

I know it's Tuesday but I'm posting anyways

Well Summer is over and the Fall is not quite bad. Not as humid, which makes me want to spend some time outdoors..... then I get bit by mosquitoes and that just drives me back into the house.

Squash- B. and I agree that squash were a miserable failure. I was able to get a few fruits off the plants but the squash borers did them in and made it bad, making the fruit shrivel. B. he, I gather, got nearly nil in the squash department and has sworn that he will not grow squash next year. I'm not ready to write them off. I think next year I'll try them in the front, in the ground.

Tomatoes- Not as good as last year but good none the less. I've been most successful in the back with the potted tomatoes even though most of them look sickly and crappy. Right now they are getting their 2nd wind. In the past month I've been able to harvest 1 tomato, the rest are green and deciding if they want to turn red, or not. Surprising to me is the tomato vine in the front as it competes with the passion fruit vine that popped up from last year. It has been a pretty good producer. The Zebra tomato has been a great producer of flowers but not fruit. Yet when it does produce fruit it is the best tasting stuff ever. A cherry tomato vine appeared out of nowhere and it is not a great producer either, maybe it is time to do something with the soil.

Salads- A lesson I learned was when you stop watering salads they turn on you. All the other plants are more forgiving, Bibb the other mixed greens, no, they just got bitter and no matter how much I watered afterwards, they stayed bitter. Even new growth was bitter. Spinach, just bolted or died in the last bits of summer.
So I planted a new bunch of salad greens in the mid-summer months. Well the inch worms got to the Cobb and Bibb, only the arugula survived and thrived. I planted a few spinach seeds, they are okay for now.

Radishes & Carrots- I don't like radishes. So it doesn't matter. I planted them as a companion crop. I have learned that if I want edible radish looking radishes I need to bury the roots better, same for carrots. Carrots were a disappointment.

Cucumbers- I grew them in a pot and got good results from the 2 vines then they were recently brought down by cutworms.

Edible Flowers- The marigolds I didn't care for as a snack, but I did love them as a cutting flower and I enjoyed running my hand over the foliage to smell their lemony fragrance. The pot marigolds, ditto as far as a cutting flower goes. The heriloom impatiens, not that tasty. The regular old impatiens were a pain to grow all Spring and did not spring forth as a wonderful flower till mid Summer. They are very tasty.

Beans- String beans good. I need to grow more because I just didn't have enough to justify dirtying up a pot.

Herbs- As many of you know I got more basil than I know what to do with. I did make pesto, and used it to add to salads, but still too much basil. When the peppermint went to flower then I stopped harvesting them. So no more mojitos. The creeping thyme is doing well. I am wondering if I should replace my lawn with creeping thyme.

posted by Mari @ 20.9.05