September 12, 2011

September Garden Inventory

As it turns out, you can't just put a spare piece of plastic over a seedbed and call it a row cover.  I peeked under that thing a couple times a week to add water and saw little sprouts poking through the soil. Except then one day I saw nothing.  I think the sprouts suffocated.  So I took off the plastic and replanted.

At the Thursday Night Farmers Market there was a vendor selling plants.  For $14.50 a got a six pack of lettuce, a six pack of cauliflower, a mixed six pack (lettuce, dino kale, broccoli, collard greens, purple cauliflower), a single dill plant and a single marshmallow plant.  (No, it doesn't grow marshmallow candies.  It's a medicinal herb, the roots of which can be made into a tea that soothes a sore throat.)

So I planted all those things in Bed Number #1 along with seeds: Nantes coreless carrots, Tom Thumb lettuce, collard greens, baby red beets, cilanto and parsley.

From Bed #2 we're harvesting on average four or five big cucumbers each week.  There's also garlic chives and regular chives.  Our Anaheim pepper plant has produced two peppers so far.  The second pepper plant and the tomato plant we planted in July have blossoms, but no fruit yet.  Same thing for the watermelon. The morning glories are weighing down the trellis and the parsley has bolted.  The single celery plant hasn't done much.  I think the girls and I may have killed the fennel by pinching off its licorice flavored blossoms to eat them for an in-the-garden-treat.    

The squash vines in Bed #3 have grown almost twenty feet, but I still only have one pumpkin to show for it.

Now I am waiting for onion starts to be available at the farmers market.  This should happen toward the end of October.  At that time, I'll pull out everything in Beds 2 and 3 and plant one in onions and one in garlic.  Last year we planted one bed with 2/3 onions and 1/3 garlic, and we're just getting to the end of our supply.  If we get a good harvest next spring we may not need to buy onions and garlic for the whole year.  Wouldn't that be cool?

No comments:

Post a Comment