We have managed to put most of our garden to bed for the winter! here are a few photo updates with some of the joys and lessons of this season
This is damage caused by white flies. The black spots are sooty mold, and seem to have had an effect, not on productivity, but on taste. The tomatoes and beans got hit especially hard, and they moved on to chard and celery later in season. In fact, they're still there.... Prevention and early action are key!
We have planted cover crops to build the soil, this is baby rye coming up. We also planted oats and clover in some of the beds, so we can compare which is more effective.
Ed, helping with clean up - thanks a bunch!
This is proof that pruninig your tomatoes encourages them to grow vertically - this one was 12 feet high! Also, we saw that none of the tomato roots had the root disease that we saw last season. Our tecnique of lasagna gardening really paid off!
Cheesmani tomatoes....productive right to the very end! We removed all the plants and saved the green tomatoes to ripen on windowsills.
In September we planted lettuce, spinach, beets, and radishes. Although they've sprouted, there hasn't been very much growth....
The parsnips are looking great, and can be harvested now. This past week we planted garlic in the other half of this bed, in a shadier spot, and also in a sunnier spot to see the difference. It will be hard to wait until they are next July or August, but we look forward to the scapes!
The beds with no cover cropped have been mulched with dry leaves in order to protect them for winter. The flowers were still too lovely to pull out.....Although there's not much activity in the garden, we will still meet every second week until close to Christmas, with the next meeting being November 8th.
