July 5, 2011

I awoke this morning still tired from a very late night of fireworks watching with the family.  In bed I always use my phone to check email, the weather and my blog dashboard.  Today I saw a post by Erica about it being late to start your fall garden.  That news was enough to make me bolt upright and jump out of bed, throw on clothes and head out into the garden.  Thankfully I never replanted after my failed carrot germination this spring, so I had a bed open.  Immediately my mind started racing as to what to plant where.  I knew my broccoli and cauliflower would go in the back in front of the peas which are still going despite the lack of trellis.

Yep, I was shocked and amazed that I had peas when my brother and his horizontal pea trellis doesn't.  Boy were they yummy! By the way, that's just a piece of scrap board I am using to keep the peas from flopping over onto the rest of the garden.

Anyway, I knew my broccoli and califlower needed to be at the back by the peas, so I ran upstairs to grab them.  Little did I realize that this hot weather we've been having had completely drained the water out of the trays and killed the plants.  Crap. I've been keeping these babies alive for months waitng for the right time and now they die.  GRRR. Anyway, I direct sowed 2 rows of brassicas and will hope for the best.  In front of that I planted 4 SF of spinach, 2 each of Space which is my favorite, with one of Bloomsdale Savoy and Tyee.  I overplanted seeds to make sure I get good germination. I don't have time to replant.

I should have said first thing I did was toss about 2 gallons of compost on the 8 SF and mix it losely into the top lair of soil.  When I realized I was planting the whole bed, I asked my boys to fill the 5 gallon bucket I was using to transport it from the compost pile.  That 5 gallons worth finished off augmenting the rest of the bed.

In front of the spinach, I have my row of lettuces.  I planted one SF each of Salad Bowl, Red Sails and Italienshier, my favorites.  I left one SF open for when I steal some arrugula from my brother.  Sorry to say at that point I'd reached basically the end of the bed.  It's my second shortest bed, but the only one open that gets full sun.  In the triangle front of the bed, I threw in a hodge podge of fall crops.  Onions, radishes and beets rounded out my salad garden, with a little space held out for some mache I hope to plant if my brother can spare the seed.  As you can see, I'm hoping to have salads well into winter as I can throw my season extending

This picture is taken from the path between the beds so it's looking back to front with my lone surviving carrot in the middle. I'll harvest it before the other stuff needs the space.  Oh, as you can see, I'm using dollar store popsicle sticks and sharpe markets to label my crops.  They don't last much more than a season, but I got a thousand of them for a buck.

Also, while I was out there, I found my broccoli had finally headed.  The best along looked like this.



This picture was actually from a few days ago. I should have harvested it then.  Today it was a bit looser and I was starting to see some yellow flower-like color in the head.  So I harvested it and had it with fried chicken and gnoochi.  Yum!  Boy don't I wish I had a whole bed of this to preserve for winter use.  Grrr.  This weather's been horrible.  No Spring or Summer to speak of.  Not sure how farmers in our area do it.

Enjoy your garden, I hope you've planted your fall garden by now.