A Quick Look At the Garden

Most of my first planting of the fall garden was wiped out in Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta, but as the old saying goes, "If at first (or second) you don't succeed, try, try again."  So we replanted.  The cooler temperatures and decrease in insect pressure have helped the garden catch up.  Let's walk through and take a quick look.  

First the Contender Green Beans.  They are very healthy with lots of green growth.  These weren't fertilized at all.  However, they are growing right on top of a previous crop of legumes that fix nitrogen in the soil.  This photo doesn't really show, but just beneath the leaf canopy are a whole bunch of blooms.  We may have fresh green beans for Thanksgiving after all.  

This bed is planted thickly with turnips.  I'm not a big turnip fan, but our cows are.  We'll feed most of the turnip roots to the cows this winter and we will eat the turnip greens.

These are English Breakfast Radishes.  I've just pulled the mulch closely around them to discourage weed growth.  That same mulch will eventually decompose and turn in to rich garden soil.

Carrots always start slow, but once they get a foothold, they really take off.  Eventually, I'll pull the mulch around them to crowd out weed growth.  The oxalis is already threatening.

This is our lettuce bed.  We have a number of different varieties of leaf lettuce.  We like to harvest a mixture of lettuce leaves for a nice tossed salad.  The various colors of the different types of lettuce paint a nice portrait in the garden.

Here is a row of Detroit Beets.  I also have two rows of Bull's Blood beets.  I figure in another week, I'll pull the mulch closely around them as well.  In the meantime, we walk the rows and weed, but that will end once the mulch is pulled around them.

Always one of the first items we're harvesting is kale.  This is a fast growing plant that produces new leaves in record time.  It will produce for months - right up until it gets warm in the spring.

We also have Rainbow Swiss Chard at various stages of development.  The veins of the rainbow chard light up the garden with vivid color.

Here is another type of kale - Dinosaur kale or lacinato kale is a relatively new variety for us.  

Here is a big patch of cilantro that has come up on its own volunteer after seeding from the crop last spring.  We allowed it to go to seed and the plant reproduced itself many times over this year.  The cool weather will keep it from bolting and we will enjoy it with scrambled eggs for many breakfasts to come.

The Sugar Snap peas are beginning to trellis up the cattle panels I have for them to climb on.  They are planted thickly and will soon completely cover the trellis, producing crisp, sweet pods for snacking on.

I'll show you some of the rest of the garden in Part II of the premature garden tour coming up early next week.