Getting to the End of the Fall Garden

Over the last two weekends we've been able to transplant all of the tomatoes and peppers into the garden as well as plant sweet corn and several varieties of green beans.  We've made room by harvesting all of the carrots, radishes, bok choy, and cauliflower.  The broccoli, cabbage and lettuce are finishing up.  In a short time, the cucumbers and squash will be planted, but we need more room.

Dill, Sorrel, Cucumbers and Squash

We're working on it.  The spinach finished up, so we planted our sweet corn there.  Now the beets are ripening.  First the Detroit Red Beets...

And next the Bull's Blood Beets.  You can see why they are called that.  The leaves have a deep burgundy color of bull's blood.

With all the carrots we pulled, we've been cutting up the beets and having Roasted Root Vegetables for a side dish several nights a week.  We'd add turnips to this dish, but we've been feeding all of the turnips to the cows.  We really like turnip greens, but the turnip roots are another story.  The cows like 'em, though.

This is the second to last cabbage still in the garden.  We've been making egg rolls with them, smothered cabbage, and cole slaw.  Once the last cabbage is pulled, we'll have room for the squash.

The cauliflower, as I mentioned, was all harvested.  The broccoli is another story.  The neat thing about broccoli is that after you cut the main broccoli head, little broccoli florets will continue to pop up.  We leave the broccoli and continue to pop off little florets every so often.  It is perfect for cooking up a quick vegetable side.  At some point as the weather warms, the little florets quickly turn to yellow flowers before you can pick them.  At that time, we'll remove the broccoli plant and put egg plant in its place.

It's all about making effective use of space.  We've run out of it.  That's why I planted all the potatoes in the side yard.  Maybe we'll check in on them later this week.