Some of The Last Plants That Will be Growing Until the First Ground Freeze

Right now most of the garden plants are done with the exception of cool weather plants and a couple of eggplants.  I have picked an eggplant from each of my plants this season, but I am getting a second crop from a couple of my plants.  Since this week a frost may occur I might have to pick them prematurely before the cold ends the summer season for good this year.

I am also growing a cool weather crop for the fall including some broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, and a few plants of celery.  I even have rhubarb which I started this season which will hopefully last through the winter once I place some straw over it for protection from the freezing cold.

The only plants that I added into the garden this fall was my kale.  Although kale can be grown in the spring I have found that growing them in the fall is much easier and there is much more room to grow a couple of rows of this delicious plant.  Since they are easy to freeze and store it makes them the perfect leaf for any season.
 

All the other plants were planted in the springtime and have endured the hot temperatures that came during this summer.  Since I plant a sun king hybrid of broccoli they are able to withstand the heat and still produce good sized heads and side shoots.  Right now I am working on two broccoli plants and I have been harvesting broccoli from them since sometime in late July or August.  They are still good and both plants are continuing to supply me with more broccoli each week.

Brussel sprouts and celery I have not harvested yet even though they were planted all the way back in the springtime.  I will have to plant them a little bit earlier and probably start both of them inside in small pots or possibly peat pots. 

The good news is that the heat did not damage them and I still might be able to pick them once they are ready for harvesting.  My celery might be ready in a couple of weeks and my brussel sprouts might soon be ready for picking.  At least my brussel sprout plant is producing sprouts on the stem and in-between the leaves.  I can’t wait to start harvesting all these fall crop plants

Cool Weather Seeds are Now in The Garden

I have four seeds that were ready for the garden not including my potato or lettuce plants that will be placed in the ground real soon.   I do have a few seed potatoes in the ground, but I didn’t get to put all of them in the garden for now.  I will probably take tomorrow to just add the rest of the potatoes that I have in the ground.  The holes are ready for them and all I need to do is add some manure and bone meal and place them.

I had some spinach seeds that I used to only plant a partial row.  I will have to get some more in order to fill the excess space that was left due to lack of seeds.  Next to my spinach row are my celery seeds that I placed into the ground rather than planting them indoors first.

In the second row I have snow peas and radishes.  It is a good thing to put peas and radishes together because they make good inter-planting plants.  I can easily put radishes in between the pea plants in order to save room just in case I need to save space.

Getting the Right Seeds for the Year

The first step in setting up my garden is getting the right seeds.  Most of the time I just use the same thing every year except for one that I choose to have something different.  This year I decided on doing another melon along with watermelons and cantaloupe.  I am now going to add honeydew to the list and will plant them in the same row as my other melons.  Making a fruit salad with these three melons is something that I can do with them once they are all ripe.  I could also just eat them like I normally would.

Leafy Plants

These year I will have many leafy plants in the garden because I will continue to grow spinach, both romaine and iceberg lettuce, and now for the fall I will be growing kale.  This is one of the plants that I have grown before with much success, but did not get to grow them last season.  Adding this leaf plant to the fall crop will reduce the amount of broccoli and cabbage that I can grow, but will give my fall garden a little bit more variety.

Again with Celery

At the same time I will be growing celery again like I did a couple of years ago.  That harvest was not my best and I want to make sure that I get a much better harvest and I thought getting some celery seeds would be a good addition to the garden.  I don't plan on growing that much, but at least half of a row should suffice for this season.  I will see how much room I have when I begin planting them.

One More Flower

I like to grow flowers in order to attract all the best insects that I can for help in reducing the populations of many pests.  This year I am going to add cornflowers to the arsenal of other flowers that I will be planting.  I will not be removing any other flowers and instead will just add cornflowers in random spots in the garden.  The more variety of flowers you have the better that the good insects will continue to travel to your garden.  This is my hope every season.

Just Finished the Season by Digging Up Carrots and Celery

I wasn't sure if I was going to get that many carrots since the season didn't look very promising in the very beginning of 2014.  It was a relief when I finally dug up my carrots and saw that many of them were large in size as compared to what I had received last season.

Last year I got more carrots, but they were not as big as they were this season.  I would rather have larger carrots of high quality rather than quantity.  This is what organic gardening is all about and is why I subscribe to this particular way of thinking.

Here are some carrots that I took pictures of while digging them out of the ground.

I collected about a basket full of these vegetables.  Once I cut the tops off and placed them on the scale they weighed about 33 pounds.  Very good for a season that didn't look too good.  I was definitely happy with this harvest of carrots.

Two pound carrots were also picked up that I thought I would share with you.

Both of these carrots on the left each weighed over two pounds making them the largest carrots of this season.










Celery was also another vegetable that I collected towards the end of the season when they began to stop growing.  They looked like they were ready for harvest so I picked them just before I did the carrots on Thanksgiving day.

I didn't collect much celery because of the seeds that didn't grow in the garden earlier this year.  I was happy just to collect any celery as you can see from the picture.  These were a couple of the larger ones that I got and totaled six pounds.








This season is now over and nothing is left in the garden except for some flowers that will last through most of December depending on the temperatures that we get during the month.  I will probably be writing less frequently until 2015 rolls around and it is time for another garden season.

Cucumbers are Now Done for the Season

The last cucumber was picked this week and that means once I finish eating this last cucumber I will have to wait till next year to eat delicious, home grown, organic cucumbers.  This happens every single year and this makes me look forward to the next season.

Although the cucumber season is coming to a close that doesn't mean that the entire garden is completely done this year.  I still have plenty of food that needs to be harvested such as eggplants, pole beans, carrots, some celery, pumpkins, peppers, and some regular and Roma tomatoes.  It is not completely over until the first frost comes.

Here is the last cucumber that I was able to harvest today.

Here is a look at the pepper plant that is still growing flowers even right now.

Eggplants are also still growing quite well and I have six of them that should be ripening within the week and I will pick them very soon.  I am not getting flowers on them and if I were it would be too late for the plant to produce another fruit.  Right now I have six and it looks like it is going to stay that way till the end of the season.

The First Planting Outside for 2014

Today I am here to discuss the first seeds that I have started outside this week in order to get the garden season going.  Corn and bush beans are the first that I planted, but I also had enough time to put carrots, celery, and pole beans as well.

I didn't fill the entire two rows with corn seeds because I want them to ripen at different times to prevent them from staying on the stalk and getting tough to eat.  If they ripen at the same time I will have about fifty ears of corn that I will have to eat and this is not something I can do. 

This year I am going to plant them at different times.  Basically once the first set starts sprouting I will then plant some more.  Now each section will ripen at different times and I will be able to eat them when they are good and ready.

I am also using seeds I have collected from previous years because these are heirloom corn seeds that I bought from Burpee.  They have been great and have produce very large and delicious ears that I can plant every single year.  All I do is save at least one ear and have it dry out for a month and then the next year remove the seeds and plant them in the soil.

I used about five feet from the two rows which will end up with corn plants.

I also planted some short rows of bush beans because I prefer pole beans because if done correctly you will have a much larger yield with pole beans than the bush types.  I had some extra room next to the rows where my pole beans are and decided to plant some bush beans anyways.

Celery was something that I decided on doing for the first time this year and it would be a good idea to plant it somewhat early because they are not good with hot weather.  They are similar to lettuce in that they tolerate some hot weather, but cannot withstand too much.

Carrots are very simple and do not need that much work except in the beginning.  When they are small they can be overtaken by many weeds and I will have to make sure that they are not near any weeds.  A good mulch will help out with this.

The two rows on the left have celery and carrots.