Here: the one thing in our garden that doesn’t mind the cold!

Like this post? Share it with your networks!

The tomatoes are starting to come to the end of their season. The temperature has dropped below 40 a couple of times now, and all gardens must come to an end some time. Strangely, one of the volunteers at the food co-op told me the other day that her garden is still flourishing – she even said that the eggplants and okra are still doing well! Our okra never amounted to much, and the eggplants surely look like they’re done for the season.

Aside from the cooler weather, it has been very windy recently (in Morris, it’s always pretty windy, though). The bean trellis finally decided that it wasn’t going to take it any more, and landed on the cucumbers and tomatoes. It’s going to have to be repaired for next year; I think we’re going to use the taller two trellises for tomatoes, and think of something else for beans. I want to plant beans in front of the house and also in front of the garage, and tie twine from the ground to the eaves for the beans to grow up.

Now, soon, comes the task of pulling everything out of the ground. I’m going to find some good green tomato recipes (I made a green tomato/apple chutney a couple of weeks ago, and it is really, really good!), and eventually we will need to take care of the beets, carrots, and everything else that we haven’t pulled out yet.

Like this post? Share it with your networks!

Well, the sunflower seeds that I got from my food co-op made for beautiful flowers all summer long. We’re going to plant more next year, and maybe even buy another variety. We’re going to look into some native sunflowers, and I really want to get some of those giant sunflowers that are good for seed-eating. I’ve also seen sunflowers with jet black petals – kind of neat, but haven’t found seeds for them anywhere.

I don’t think these sunflowers will have seeds that we can eat, but I won’t pull them out for a few weeks anyway, just in case.

Like this post? Share it with your networks!

(Just for the sake of posting something).

Like this post? Share it with your networks!

Of all the things we grew this year, the chile peppers were definitely the best producing, and the most exciting. Especially the purira peppers – we will be saving seeds from these for next year. The peppers start green, and then turn yellow, then purple, then orange, and then red. I think they get hotter as they mature. This time of year, it’s a real Christmas-light show.

Hopefully the manure will add a lot to the garden for next year! I’m not sure yet where our winter gardening plans sit…

Like this post? Share it with your networks!

We haven’t been very good about updating this weblog recently. Something to do with the end-of-the-season-nearing lack of motivation, I guess. Anyway, here are a bunch of carrots that Chris picked from the garden today!

Like this post? Share it with your networks!