Early Start on My Spring Garden

(Before It's News)

Well, here it is, October 1st, and I’m still trying to get my fall garden in. Why is it I can never bring myself to plant my fall garden when my Cooperative Extension says I ought: July and August? I suppose one reason is that it seems odd that cool weather loving plants would even want to bother when the temps are in the 90s F everyday. For another, (with the exception of this year), these are the months when we have our summer dry spell. That makes keeping teeny seedlings alive a challenge.

Wando peas and purple top turnips, all doing well. This is the cattle panel I showed you in my last garden post.

Because it’s so late I’m wondering if anything will have a chance to grow before it gets cold and everything goes dormant. If not, I figure what isn’t ready to harvest this fall and winter, will be next spring.

Here’s what I’ve planted so far, from saved seed unless otherwise noted:

• peas, Wando
• turnips, Purple Top White Globe
• beets, Detroit Red
• garlic
• lettuce, mixed saved seed, all old
• carrots, Parisienne (thank you freebie from Baker Creek)
• parsnips, All American
• onions, multiplier
• Hulless Oats (Baker Creek)
• cabbage-collards, Morris Heading (Shumway)
• celery, Tendercrisp (Baker Creek)
• kale, Dwarf Siberian (Baker Creek)
• collards, Vates, (Shumway)
• broccoli, Calabrese, a new variety for me (Baker Creek)

Dwarf Siberian kale planted fall of 2011. I’ts making a comeback. This one will be for seed saving. I planted more for eating.

I grew the Dwarf Siberian kale last year, from a gift packet of seeds from Baker Creek. We loved it. It was so much tastier than any kale I’d grown before. I had so many brassicas growing however, that I was uncertain that the plants didn’t cross pollinate, so I didn’t save seed. My workaround for that in the future, will be to rotate which seeds I save. If kale, then I’ll pull everything else to make sure the kale seeds will indeed grow kale.

I pushed all the cantaloupe vines out of the way, but left them to grow. I planted new kale seed in the bare spot.

In the past, I’ve always waited until a row or bed finished producing, then pulled the old plants and prepared the soil for the next thing. This time I found space wherever I could, pushed summer plants out of the way, and planted in the midst of them. For some reason I can’t bear to pull plants that are still trying to produce, even though I know they’ll soon be goners with first frost due in a couple of weeks.

Garlic just starting to come up. I planted over 150 cloves this year.

This year I’m planting more too. I’m planting whole beds with one thing rather than dividing the bed into sections. I figure what the heck. There’ll be plenty for us and for the goats, plenty for seed saving, and lots of spring leftovers for the pigs.

Volunteer parsnips. You can see my sweet potato plants in the top right

Because most everything is recently planted, there isn’t much to show you. Hopefully it will all get a good head start before cold weather slows everything down. Of course, now that I’ve finally got almost everything planted, it has decided to not rain. Still, it’s in. And that’s something.

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