It’s been a little while since I posted a garden update. I never would have anticipated actually having a garden to speak of this late in the year, but one of my many great gardening discoveries of 2011 is the existence of something called cold weather crops.
Cold weather crops, winter crops, cool-season vegetables: these all describe plants that actually grow better in cool temps than their heat-loving summer counterparts. Salad greens of all types, broccoli and cauliflower, peas, and any root vegetables such as radish, carrots, beets, and so on, will grace your garden well into the chillier months.
About six weeks ago we built two new garden beds and carefully sowed a small variety of seeds. This is the first time I’ve grown a garden from seeds alone, so things were a bit messy and slow to start, especially whenever the cats would get around to haphazardly planting their own fertilizer, so to speak.
But things came around, and though I’m not entirely confident we will get much of a harvest out of some of it, I’m still ecstatic to have new little green plantlings to be checking on each day, even in the middle of October.
Our lettuce and spinach (and wild onions, incidentally) are flourishing, and taste a great deal better than the ones I had tried growing in the heat of late spring. If the spinach looks a bit sparse, it’s mostly because we’ve already begun supplementing our dinners and snack time with it.
Mmmm, spinach snacks.
Here you can see where I spilled nearly an entire package of carrot seeds on the ground between the two beds. Maybe it won’t be such a waste after all!
Farmer Ollie helps out.
He stomps his feet and claps his…paws, and turns around to view his land. (That doesn’t exactly rhyme, does it.)
Meanwhile, my summer garden bed is still churning out a few surprises. I found a surprise green pepper, but unfortunately by the time I realized it was growing there, it had been rendered inedible by some mysterious force or another.
My zinnias seem to have caught a second wind this late in the season, and the marigolds are still blooming full force.
Most wondrous of all, my crazy cherry tomato plants are going on five months of production now, still providing us with a few daily saltable snacks.
It’s good to be a farmer.
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