Leaves and Leftovers

This weekend was clean-up day for the garden.  Plants killed by frost were ripped out and added to the compost.  Tomato stakes were pulled and put away for the winter.

After all the removal, we still have a lot of edibles available.  The list includes green onions, beets, red leaf lettuce, swiss chard, celeriac, arugula, collards, New Zealand spinach, kohl rabi, mustard greens, and radishes.  These garden leftovers should make some tasty stir-fry and salads over the next few weeks.

Everything left has survived a couple hard frosts.  These guys are tough and hardy.  Once the garden inventory was complete, it was time to tackle leaves.  Everyone helped, and placed the leaf harvest in the garden.

I spread the leaves in the troughs between the seedbeds, and stepped on them to compact them in and keep them from blowing around too much.  My hope is that they will decompose some over the winter, turning into leaf mold that I can till into the soil.  This was the first raking.  There will be more leaves.

Frost

Planting in late summer for an autumn harvest is a great way to extend the gardening season and keep putting tasty stuff on the supper table.  Here in Central Virginia, first frost generally hits at the end of October, so as long as you can count backwards from that average frost date, and only put in things that can mature in time, you can squeeze in a second growing season.

In this recent harvest, the green beans and the sugar snap peas are from plants grown from seed that went in the ground in late August.  I planted about a fourth of the garden with relay crops then, and put down clover as a cover crop a little later.

Clover is in the foreground.  Starting on the right and working to the left, you can see New Zealand spinach, collard greens, arugula, snap peas, and my Kentucky Wonder bean tepee, which produced all summer and fall.  Green beans are killed by frost.  Peas are hardier, as are the cabbage family greens like collards and mustard greens.  Earlier this week, a hard frost hit.

This was the first frost we'd had.  It was 29 degrees Fahrenheit that morning.

It was cold enough for ice to form in the top of these buckets of water.

These collards look frozen, but they defrosted and perked right back up.  The most important thing is to not pick anything while it is frosty, or you'll wind up with a pile of goo in your basket.  Let them unthaw, and then pick.  Interestingly, frost exposure generally alters the flavor of most vegetables for the good.  Root crops get sweeter, and leafy greens get tastier.

Our Swiss Chard, another August planting, appears totally defeated by the frost.  However, just like the collards, they warmed up and are doing just fine.  Chard is extremely cold hardy.  I've read that it can survive in snow.  Perhaps we'll find out first-hand.

What's in your wok?

Here were the ingredients in our most recent stir-fry, all from the garden...swiss chard, green onions, carrots, kohl rabi, and sugar snap peas.  I recently bought fresh ginger from a nearby farmer's market, and I'm ready to wok it up again soon.  There are still tasty things in the garden that need to be pulled and eaten.

The area is abuzz with talk of the impending landfall of Hurricane Sandy, a.k.a. The Frankenstorm.  We actually could really use some rain, just not the deluge that a tropical storm will bring.  I'm also not looking forward to high winds.

Oh well.  Wok on!

Surprises and Disappointments

For me, one of the coolest things about the third year of gardening the same ground and using compost I make myself is the growth of volunteer plants.  Vegetables that I did not plant appear like magic in the garden.  No, I don't think the gnomes are doing it.  Here's what happens... tomatoes, cucumbers, etc that rot on the vine get tossed in the compost or fall to the ground and get mixed into the soil.  In the spring, after the compost has been spread and the garden tilled, seeds from those rotten veggies that did not decompose sometimes germinate.  This year 4 or 5 red cherry tomato plants grew as volunteers, and this fall they have been producing fruit heavily.

Now, volunteer plants popping up are normal in a garden.  For me, they are a pleasant surprise.  An even bigger surprise is when a volunteer vegetable plant pops up and it's something that you have NEVER grown. This happened to me this year, and I discovered it recently while cleaning out a seedbed where I'd grown cucumbers.  Nestled in there was a vine with these odd bluish-green pods on it.  Inside each pod was what looked like a green cherry tomato.  Here's a picture...

The mystery fruit is on the right.  The pods are paper-thin, and on the far bottom right you can see what the inside fruit looks like.  Have you guessed what this is yet?  These are tomatillos, also known as ground cherries.  They taste similar to a tomato...a different flavor, a little less sweet, but in the same ballpark.

The conundrum is this - How did tomatillo seed get into my garden?  The easiest answer is via bird poop, but I'll never know for sure.  Maybe it was the gnomes.

So, in early summer I planted Connecticut Field Pumpkins as a relay crop after something else got harvested.  They took off, sending vines all over the garden.  A grand total of two pumpkins formed.  The first one was harvested but some sort of bug was already in it and it rotted on our counter top.  We had high hopes for the second pumpkin, but those hopes have been dashed...

This appears to be the work of a rabbit.  Cute little bastards.  I shake my fist at them, and think mean thoughts.  I don't think I'll be planting pumpkins again.  I'll probably go with butternut and acorn squash next year instead.  I did not plant butternuts this year, and Angelia misses them.

What's your favorite winter squash?

The Fall Garden

It's mid-September, and the garden is steadily pushing out produce.  Beans are still coming in strong, but there's more.  Plenty more...

Carrots and beets are ready to be pulled whenever we want them.  Volunteer cherry tomatoes are producing, and in serious quantity.

A few larger tomatoes are ripening, every couple days.   We also have lots of hot peppers.  Above are Scotch Bonnets.  They have this gorgeous deep red/pink color.

This weekend, I need to get more beds cleaned out, plant some cover crop, and do a little food preservation.  Time to dehydrate.