A Fall Garden

Welcome to my office...

It's time for a few Fall plants to go in where the Summer crops are finishing up.  It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is.  And next year I'm sure I'll have a better handle on it.  Hopefully!

So, here's what I'm doing...

My onions and garlic are basically done, so they got pulled out to dry.  The basil only grew one lone plant so it got put into a pot on the deck.  That leaves me a nice little bed for Fall greens like lettuce, kale and mustard.  I'm not really sure which will grow well here, so I'm mixing them up a little.  Apparently kale is delicious (?) and gets even better after the first frost.  We'll see.

Next, I pulled out a bunch of giant zucchini plants that weren't really producing.  That made room for carrots and turnips.  I mixed in a bunch of compost before planting.

I've got lots of room around my Roma tomato plants, since they stayed pretty compact so I'm planting spinach in all the open spaces.  I think those tomatoes will be completely done in a few weeks.  That will free up some room for more stuff later in the month.  Spinach can go in all the way til September 1st.

My big boys dug up a nice row for snow peas.  The spot where they grew this Spring is too shady now.  I'm thankful for all the wonderful compost our chickens are making for me!

This type of gardening is different from the olden days method of planting everything in the Spring and then harvesting once.  I don't have a big enough area for that, so I'm trying to double or triple up the crops on each area.  It's called "intensive gardening" or "successive planting."

So the other day I was out there with a clip board and a pencil sketching out my plan.  I printed out a really helpful guide from our state's extension office.  It's got lots of charts with first and last safe planting dates for our climate.  It's nice because the seed packets are more vague.  And these heirloom seeds don't have ANY info on them!

Since most of my stuff is heirloom variety, I'll be saving seeds, too.

There is sooooooo much to learn.
If you know someone with a successful garden then you know one smaaaarrrtt person!
Because it's harder than it looks!

OK, just to be fair... it's not really as hard as it all sounds.  There's just a lot to learn.  But it is so very gratifying to grow food for your family that I highly recommend trying it.  And if you missed the Spring or Summer garden, you've still got a little window of opportunity here.  And homegrown spinach is so very delicious!

And just so you know that I don't have it all together (just in case you thought that, which I highly doubt) here's a picture of my kitchen drawer to make you feel a little better.

I mean, how many twisty ties do we really need to save???

Have a great weekend...and go plant something!  : )