First Fall Harvest

I spent a happy morning in the garden. The kale in frame 1-2 was more than two feet tall. I took out the tallest and left a few of the smaller plants to grow a little more before frost. The twelve basil plants were harvested and several containers of pesto stored away in the freezer. I also harvested a lot of lettuce, kale, green beans and yellow pear tomatoes.

Of the 100 lettuce plants that were started at the beginning of September, only about 50 remain. I think that the biggest culprit is sluggo. Maybe it will be better to start these indoors after all and move out after they have their first true leaves. My experiment with setting out beer for the slugs did not seem to work earlier. Maybe I need a different beer container, or the thought just occurred to me, maybe I need to push the jar lids into the soil so that the slugs don't have to climb to get in.

While checking the garden at dusk recently, I came across a very large toad. I had to wonder whether he is the same one that I photographed earlier in the season. It looks like it was a good year to be a toad.

Basil is OK

The temperature got down to 46 F at the Buffalo Airport last night. The basil appeared to be fine with that. The forecast looks wet for the next few days, but no temps approaching 40 until Sunday night. Maybe we will do the final cut of basil this weekend and plant something to overwinter in its place.

Cooler weather

I noticed that the weather service is forecasting temps down to 42 F on Wednesday night. This prompted me to do some research on when I should make the final harvest of basil. I found one gardener who noticed that her basil leaves started to turn brown after 38 F temps. I will see how the basil does with 42 F and keep a close eye on the forecast.

Some Agribon-15 row cover and overwinter seeds arrived yesterday from Johnny's: Tyee Spinach, Winter Density Bibb Lettuce, VIT, Joi Choi, Mizuna, Ridgeline Romaine Lettuce, Wrinkled Crinkled Cress, and Persian Cress.

Second Spring

Eliot Coleman likes to call Autumn, the "second Spring". That is how it felt while working in the garden Sunday morning. The sun was shining, but not too hot, and the bug count was definitely down.

I transplanted the 9/2 lettuce to 4 per square spacing, a total of about 100 plants. I also harvested beets, carrots, kale, lettuce, basil, green beans, and yellow pear tomatoes. After a little work, the beech seedlings that have been straining under wire mesh finally have room to grow again. A total of 76 beech seedlings have survived which will potentially provide more than 200' of hedge.

I ordered some agricultural cloth in preparation for covering everything at the beginning of October. This cloth will then be covered by plastic in November and another layer of plastic in December. Based on the Four Season method, this should allow us to harvest greens into December and January and provide a significant head start in the Spring.

Plenty growing

Leaves are beginning to rustle, but there are still plenty of things growing in the garden. The lettuce planted 9/2 is about ready to put on second leaves. Very tiny green beans have appeared on the plants that were started 7/25 (49 days) and there is an abundance of fully mature kale, lettuce, basil and chard.

Several garlic cloves donated by our dear friend Marybeth were planted yesterday. This past week, there have been wide temperature swings as low as 48F at night and 80F during the day.

Woodchuck returns for more kale

Last week, a woodchuck made it through a section of chicken wire that had become detached from the frame. I patched that up, but he pulled another section out this week. I fear that he is learning how to get into the garden frames. If my super-duper stapling job doesn't hold up, I think I will have to try setting up an electric fence to "unlearn" him. Update 10/18/12: The stapling job did the trick. I haven't had any further woodchuck incursions since.

New lettuce started

I planted a handful of lettuce and arugula seeds in frame 3-1 under clear plastic covers and then covered them with wire and burlap (for shade). I have high hopes for this latest easy arrangement for starting lettuce seeds. The idea is to start them in an easily protected cluster and then to transplant them to the desired spacing after they have sprouted.