Quick Look at the Fall Garden (The Salad Rows)

Let's take a look at the Fall Garden.  The spring garden is tailing off with only okra and butterbeans producing still.  Well, our many varieties of peppers and eggplant are starting to really produce after a dormant summer slump.  Today, we'll look at the salad rows.  We have one full row with various types of leaf lettuce.  We've enjoyed salads deep into winter by covering these rows during freezes.  Here is the most prolific variety of leaf lettuce - the Black Seeded Simpson.

Growing up, I had never planted lettuce, so it was a new crop to learn.  In fact, when the lettuce got big, I'd pull it up by the roots.  Not smart!  My wife told me, "Why don't you cut the leaves off from the different varieties and they'll re-grow over and over?"  Why didn't I think of that?  This was the start of the "never ending salad bowl" during the fall and winter.

Here's a patch of Red Romaine.  It looks spiffy next to the Black Seeded Simpson (green leaf lettuce) that is it's neighbor to the east on the row.

Here is a mix of lettuce called Rocky Top Blend.  It must originate from Tennessee.  It has a nice mixture of different varieties and different colors.

And finally here is a variety of lettuce called Oak Leaf lettuce.  Yep, you guessed it.  The leaves mimic the appearance of an oak leaf.  The colors are different, the leaves are different, but I think that most lettuce tastes the same.  I'll admit I don't have a refined palate.  There was a salad mix I planted one time that was "spicy," you might say.  It had arugula, radicchio, and endive along with others.  It was just too strong for our tastes.  The varieties I have planted are all sweet and tasty. 

Along with every salad, you'll want to slice up some cucumbers.  This is the first time I've attempted to grow some in the fall.  If the frost holds off, we'll have at least ONE cucumber to cut up.  There's lots of blooms and lots more on the way!

Tricia likes to slice up homegrown tomatoes for the salad.  We've got lots of tomatoes coming.  I've trellised them using the Florida Weave method and they are happy, adding inches of growth each and every day.  Annie, the Nubian Goat, is coveting the tomatoes.  If she could, I promise you, she'd be in there making a mess of the garden.

We have lots of blooms and lots of tomatoes coming!  We'll see if we can get a harvest in before the first freeze hits.  The Old Farmer's Almanac shows November 26th to be the first FROST date for our area.  We can protect these from a frost, but not a hard freeze.  We'll watch and see what happens.

While I was pinching off suckers that grow in the tomato plant's 'elbows' and squeezing to death four or five late season Army worms that were feeding on the tomato plants' foliage, I saw one of our honeybees that was busy (as a bee) pollinating one of the tomato blooms.

That concludes the salad rows.  I'll show you some of the other rows a little later this week.  We still haven't planted a few fall/winter crops like mustard greens, spinach, and turnips.  Those will likely go in once the okra finishes up.