Choices for the Fall

Okay, so now that the fall gardening bug has bitten me I am itching with anticipation of getting my garden started again, provided the horrific heat and humidity comply and go away - far, far away.  Yes, I admit it has come to this... most of my garden planning is based in a pure fantasy world where nature cooperates and provides reasonable temperatures, rainfall and insect control - nothing at all like the actual world surrounding me.  Yet, it is this naively, optimistic avoidance of reality that is the backbone of gardening on the Gulf Coast.

I am planting a fall garden because in other parts of the world there is this thing called Fall.  I know there is because I have seen the after school specials and movies depicting it even though I have never in my life experienced Fall as a season.   Oh sure, we sometimes have 'fall-like' weather, meaning the temperature gets reasonable, the humidity drops and human beings in this part of the world emerge from their air conditioned enclosures like groundhogs hoping to see (or is it not see) their shadows.  We make all sorts of resolutions (I will go for a walk every day!) and discoveries (Is that a cool breeze?) and then the next day it is either back up to 90 degrees with 90% humidity or down into the low 40s with driving rain.  Our regions bipolar weather disorder allows us to experience a years worth of climatic events over the course of a week and sometimes in a single day.  There is no 'season' except for summer and Mega-summer which fill up about 6 to 7 months of our year.

But, because other places have Fall and have fall gardens, I too feel the need to have a fall garden.  To do this all I have to do is ignore the weather.  So, with my fantasy life fully engaged, I plan my fall crops.

Here is what the guide regarding my planting zone 9a says to plant.   I always figure that little "a" attached to the 9 stands for 'approximate' or 'absurd' or maybe 'abandon all hope yea who plant here' - but I go on in spite of it.

For September it says I can plant:

Beans
 We had a great bush bean season from the spring/summer garden and so these will go into the center bed where we had the okra.  I will be planting them from seed, so I need to get hopping on this asap to maximize their productivity.

Broccoli
 I have never grown broccoli successfully, probably due to the fact I have never paid the slightest attention to things like 'when to plant the broccoli'.  I am going to pass on this one even though I love to eat broccoli - part of the problem actually.  Even if I got the broccoli to 'brock' I don't think my plantings could keep up with my consumption.

 Cabbage
 I was a novice to the world of cabbage until this last spring but now that I have had success, sign me up again.  I am pretty sure my success this spring was a fluke since I put it in at the very last possible planting date.  Maybe planting it now at the start of a season will yield even better results.

Carrots 
 This is really a toss up for me.  I have planted carrots before and sometimes have done rather well, but not the last two attempts.  I have put more into the last two tries than all the tries before with deeply dug, sandy soil and constant vigil bordering on cheer leading.  I feel sort of rejected by this root crop so I am putting it into the no category for now.

Celery
 Never tried it before.  It looks like it might be very simple to grow, much like parsley.  I guess I am hesitant because it is so cheap in the stores and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I ate celery.  Pass for now.

Collards
 My collard greens were big and beefy and quite frankly one of them is still surviving right now in the garden (if you count surviving as being somewhat smothered by sweet potato vines.  So, I can grow collards.  But I don't actually want to eat collards.  Ah the vegetable gardener's dilemma - being good at growing something you are not wanting to put in your mouth.  Pass for now.

Cucumbers
It was actually news to me a few years ago that cucumbers could be planted again in the fall.  I guess I associate them with spring and summer so much it never dawned on me that the temperate fall would be a good bet for them.  I planted some sort of wacky heat/humidity loving weird cucumber type whose actual plant name is eluding me.  If it grows great I will be kicking myself for forgetting what type it is.  If it is a dud, then I will never again try a wacky cucumber variety.

Kale
 It is a beautiful plant that grows very well for me and then I just leave it there because like collards, I am not a big fan of eating greens.  Maybe I will just to have its beautiful leaves gracing my garden.




 Lettuce
 There have been several great lettuce crops in my gardening life.  There have also been some beautiful patches that I have ignored.  It all has to do with the selection.  This spring I made the mistake of planting a mixture that was various greens as well as a few lettuces.  Not for me.  I will get some select either leaf or bib lettuces and try for this fall.  I am also going to try planting more each week to see if I can keep up with my consumption.

Mustard
I grow it every chance I get, even though, like the other greens I seldom eat it.  Never mind that, the leaves are beautiful and it grows wonderfully.

Onions
 My onions barely onioned this spring and I am not sure why.  Part of it is that I don't know exactly what I did that made my previous onion patch so successful.  I am not even sure if planting a fall onion bed will result in onion bulbs or just green onions, but damn the torpedoes - I am already in and going to plant some more as well.

Peas
 Okay, this might sound like I am not a true southerner, but I just am not a pea fan.  Except for snow peas which are great, but I am not sure they do well with our weather.  I also don't get the whole 'inoculate the soil' business regarding planting peas.  Probably why my previous earlier attempts have yielding nothing.

Peppers
 If peppers would let me I would plant them in the dead of winter.  I actually one mild winter kept a pepper plant alive to the next year.  I learned the hard lesson about this - the second year they barely produce.  I already have planted two peppers - a sweet banana and a mild tam Jalapeno.  That may be all I put in for the fall.

Radish
 Radishes are almost guaranteed to come up for you, but my first 3 years I had poor to no results.  Then I had incredible results, but the problem is that I don't actually like to eat as much radish as I am able to grow, so once they get going I just sort of ignore them.  I did learn that if you have neglected your radishes to the point they are as big as turnips, you can cook them like turnips and they taste like turnips.  So there is that.

Spinach
 I have never yet gotten spinach to a harvestable condition.  They sprout, they grow a bit and then they just seem to be stunted.  Maybe I am expecting too much from the type I am planting.  Maybe my expectation is that I will get a whole cooked can of spinach from one plant.  Not a reality.  I have some seed, so it is probably that I will throw it into the dirt this fall, but I am not excited about it.



  

Squash
 I am excited about squash.  Specifically the butternut squash that I discovered last fall.  Talk about making you feel like you have done something right.  The plants grow amazingly long vines and they produce about a billion of these large squash per plant, but best of all, nothing seems to want to eat them.  I found my seeds last night and I am putting them in asap.

Tomato
 Even though I am not always successful with the fall tomato plantings, there have been many times that I have had Christmas tomatoes.  The Better Boy, Early Girl and Rutgers that I have planted seem well on their way.

Turnips
 When we mad the beds for the ceder garden was the first time I ever tried growing turnips for anything other than the greens.  I still feel like a champ when I pull those purple topped beauties from the soil.  Definitely going to plant them this fall.






So with all my choices it looks like I will be having a bean/cabbage/lettuce/mustard/onion/pepper/squash/tomato/turnip fall garden.

I am sure that many other things will work their way into the garden as well, including several types of herbs.  So, it is a loose plan with room to grow.

The Harvest Continues...

I think I am beginning to experience cornucopia fatigue.  The garden continues to produce at an extraordinary rate.  Now I feel I must qualify that statement a little in regards to 'extraordinary'.  I am not a novice to gardening by any means (the whole collection of my previous garden rants can be found here: Gardening Deja Vu, The Garden Never Sleeps, Garden Photos - part 1, Garden Awards Spring 2011,  Weeds - part 1, Garden Photos - Part 2, Gardening A,B,C, I am RAIN, Evil Tomato, Figs!, The Garden Marches On, Okra Odyssey, Garden Equity, Garden Check In and Garden Harvest - the haul so far). Some years you have great harvests and some years no matter how much work you have done or time invested - you get nothing. 

Forget Mother Nature.  Sometimes you get Father Wonka.

This year I am discovering the unrelenting agony of success.  Sure every year the garden needs me like a two day old abandoned kitten but this year I have the added guilt stab of the harvest.  If I don't get out there and pick those beans or tomatoes or cucumbers they are not going to pick themselves.  Oh no!  That luscious organic produce is going to go over-prime on the vine and blah, blah, blah... starving children overseas!  Or something like that plays out in my mind.

Okay, okay, so I go out and pick it all.  Just where does one store 68 tomatoes that are currently hanging out on my kitchen counter finishing the ripening process  (Let me tell you the myth of 'vine ripened' tomatoes - you might as well just call them bird pecked tomatoes and toss them right into the compost pile...).  There is only so much room in the fridge where I can store the five gallon-sized bags filled with cucumbers.  And the beans... well, okay, those are pretty small, but still - two pounds of beans is a lot to have hanging out waiting to be cooked and eaten.

We are overrun and by now even our friends and family are getting a little gun shy about me approaching them with plastic bags.  "More cucumbers?" they say, looking for the nearest escape. Yes.

So, let me reveal the garden productivity for this last week from 5/23/12 to 5/30/12:

Cucumbers

Total weeks harvest = 20 pounds

Although the pickle plant is suffering from mildew, it is still producing some great tasting offerings and the burpless hybrid are doing what they always do.  They are completely impervious to any plant disease and rocking the garden with constant productivity.  The only thing that will stop them is the upcoming unrelenting heat which will bake the flowers to dust before they can set fruit.  Until then it is a cucumber world.

Bush Beans

Total weeks harvest = 3 pounds

The first planting of about a dozen plants is showing signs of old age, but still setting beans.  The second planting has been doing great, but even it is having a little trouble with the heat.  I don't recall just when they give up, but I don't think it will be that much longer that they can hold out.  I estimate that by July we will see the last of the beans.

Peppers

Total weeks harvest = 1/2 pound - which is deceptive since they don't weigh very much.  About a dozen peppers in all.

The pepper plants continue with a modest offering.  Many of the fruit now don't get very large before they start to show the red rosy signs of maturity.  Since I have several varieties, some might continue to set fruit in the heat, but others won't.  The plants will typically survive the summer and might produce again in the fall.

Okra

Total weeks harvest = 1.25 pounds

Finally!  The okra plants have now grown past the 'dog' stage and I am getting to harvest most of the pods.  I know I stated that whatever happened to the okra this year I was going to blame on 'dog', but truer words have never been spoken.  The canine duo are still circling the plants like sharks, hoping for a low hanging pod.  Now when I am out there harvesting they hunker at my feet as if begging from the kitchen table for scraps. I don't relent because this 'okra predation' is the type of behavior I would like to extinct in my hounds.

Tomatoes

Total weeks harvest = 25 pounds

Well.  This continues to be a pinnacle year for the tomato harvest.  I definitely did something right with these guys this year because all of our productivity has been taken from five plants.

The two Creole tomatoes definitely are winning on numbers with one of them having set over 70 fruit and the other over 30.  Many of these fruit are in the half pound range.

BN444 - "Bunny" is the winner in HUGE fruit.

Many of Bunny's fruit are in the one pound range and they are beautiful.  Too bad Bunny is determinate and after all this fruit is gone she will be done for the year.

Here are eight of Bunny's fruit together weighing in at 5 1/2 pounds.

Top Gun is awesome and has quietly produced mostly half pound fruit that are the prettiest unblemished fruit I have ever seen.  The plant itself looks awesome and may go on to produce another crop.  It did not say on the tag whether this was determinate or indeterminate, so we shall see.

Big Boy has had a come from behind recovery from whatever befell it earlier this spring.  It has produced some moderate to small sized fruit.  Quite a lot actually, but the fruit are sort of ugly looking with tops that won't turn red and look a little wrinkly.  I think this is from the ?whatever? sickness it suffered from since I have grown this type before without this kind of issue.  Now though it is definitely setting new fruit and its new growth is out of this world healthy.  It may finish with a big bang of a harvest and be the longest producer of them all this year.

The month of May totals

Cucumbers = 40.5 pounds
Beans = 9.25 pounds
Basil = 2 pounds
Okra = 1.75 pounds
Pepper = 3.5 pounds
Butternut squash = 8.75 pounds
Tomatoes = 53 pounds!

Some people when I tell them about my garden harvest ask me "How many acres?"  There is not even one acre.  The entire area of our garden takes up just a small part of our back yard.  We have ten 3x6 foot beds along the fence on one side of our yard, a 3x9 foot and 3x12 foot bed in another area and a 3x6 and a couple of 3x3 foot beds in another area.  You don't have to have 'land' in order to have an over-abundance of produce.  What you need is good dirt and that you make yourself through composting.  Coming up I will share our secret of making great soil.  Stay tuned.

The garden March-es on...

Just a couple of months ago I was breaking my back getting all my garden beds prepped for Gardening Version 2012 and I am excited to report that now in March – I am still breaking my back getting all my garden beds prepped for this year.

Don't get me wrong. There has been some progress. I went from having a mere four completely redone 3ft by 6ft ceder fence garden beds with their 22 inch pathways on all sides to now ten. I transformed the center garden from three east/west facing rows into two north/south facing rows and additionally created an extensive rock pathway within this bed area. I completely remodeled the grapefruit bed from a single massive horseshoe shaped bed into three manageable beds. I also have planted most of these beds and have harvesting radishes and mustard greens.

Yet even though it seems like I have done a lot there is much, much more that needs to be done. Currently we are installing a watering system that will allow us to have drip hoses in every one of the ceder fence garden beds. Now I know when you just read that it did not have the impact on you that it has on me. Just seeing the words 'watering system' much less 'drip hoses' makes my heart beat faster.

Perhaps I should explain. Last year, what with the relentless drought and 100 plus degree temperatures I would spend somewhere around an hour and a half every morning just watering my garden. An hour an a half I could have been oh, I don't know, maybe sleeping or weeding the garden or harvesting the massive amounts of produce or performing basic hygiene. As it was I spend an hour and a half just watering and then pretended I didn't see the weeds, snatched the fruit and vegetables off the plants and did the bare minimum hygiene stuff necessary to make sure people were not offended by my presence.

I have a dream and it goes like this. I get up at a reasonable hour, saunter out to my garden where I turn on my 'watering system' which starts all my 'drip hoses' and then I leisurely weed the garden, pick the abundant produce from the thriving plants and luxuriate in a long hot shower before I casually look over my water bill and laugh because it is so low. I like the virtual watering system very much. It almost seems a shame that we have to actually install it because that is sure to put some wrench into the works in some annoying way that we can't foresee because you just don't know what you don't know. But I have tonight before we turn it on for the first time, so I am still living the dream.

I thought I would provide an introduction to each of the beds to have as a reference for later in the year. These first group of garden beds are in the ceder fence area that is protected by the dog-proof fence.

Ceder fence garden bed number 1 - "Herbie"

This bed is only partially planted because many the wonderful seeds I lovingly pressed into the soil refused to sprout. Currently it is home to cilantro, a mixture of salad greens, fennel, basil, and curled parsley.

Bed number 2 - "Leeky Creole"

At the north end of this bed is one of the Creole tomatoes we are trying this year. Supposedly this tomato will set fruit in hot humid weather. The rest of this bed is filled with yellow onions, leeks and garlic.

Bed number 3 - "Big Boy"

The north end of this bed has a Big Boy tomato plant. I consider all of the tomatoes in competition with each other, so we will see how this guy stacks up to the other contenders. I should mention that I am trying a new tomato restraint system this year since last years 'lash the tomatoes with string between several bamboo poles' was a horrible, horrible idea. This year I am using a C shaped cage of dog fence which I will increase in height as the tomatoes get larger. Perhaps this will be the year I will find my tomato caging solution. This bed also has a couple of cabbages and two different sweet peppers, a Gypsy and a Sweet Banana. There is also an extra cucumber plant snuggled in next to the tomato cage.  The pots along the side of this bed are several fig trees we sprouted last year.  They are awaiting distribution to their new homes.

Bed number 4 - "Bunny the Quick"

This bed is almost identical to bed three except that is houses the tomato “BN444” – some sort of determinate hybrid. I like this tomato since it has won the 'first to set fruit' award. I like it so much that from now on I am giving it a proper name to replace it uninspiring clone sounding name. I will call it Bunny the Quick from now on. The south side of this bed has cabbages, sweet peppers and another orphan cucumber plant.

Bed number 5 - "Cornie Creole"

Okay, again this is a tomato at the north and cabbages, sweet peppers and orphan cucumber at the south, but this tomato is another Creole and these sweet peppers are a Corno de Toro and a mild Tam Jalepeno.

Bed number 6 - "Burpless"

This bed still needs its trellis to support the hybrid burpless cucumbers it is holding. This type of cucumber is a miraculous beast that just laughs at powdery mildew that kills off all the other cucumber types I have tried. It also is a workhorse in production and soon, very soon I will be asking myself just why I planted so many of these plants. The cucumber orphans are of this variety which means that very soon we will be discovering just how many cucumbers we can consume in a single day without ill effect.

Bed number 7 - "UnYuns"

This was the first bed I planted and if you looked at my earlier gardening post from January you will see the onions have valiantly rebounded from their ravishing by the opposums. The onions to the west of this bed are yellow and the east side are red. The center of this bed are scallions and at the very back are garlic plants.

Bed number 8 - "It's not easy being greens"

This bed is hosting collard greens, turnips, mustard greens and until recently, radishes. It is also being plagued by snails and caterpillars which are making lace of the leaves. Soon though I will find my organic slug and snail bait and my caterpillar BT powder and this bed will feel much better.

Bed number 9 - "Butternut"

These guys are butternut squash and if they do what their family members did during the fall garden then we will have a whole bunch of very large squash on plants that will try to overrun the entire ceder garden area.

Bed number 10 - "Pickles"

Here are some more cucumbers, but these are pickling cucumbers. I actually purchased these before I was able to find my burpless hybrids. They are supposed to be hardier than other types of cucumbers, but they will have to prove themselves.  Regarding as to why this bed looks like it is out of the Flintstones cartoon.  I found myself with an abundance of energy and a lack of correctly cut lumber.  We have a whole bunch of rocks we have collected and I decided to use them as a temporary holding wall to shape the bed. 

The great beyond...

This is a picture of what is yet to come. It may look like a bunch of dirt and rocks, but this is proto-garden. This will become four more beds in the not too distant future, baring early excessive hot weather, my body  giving out, or me actually coming to my senses. The plan is that this area will be for the wildly vining things like cantaloupe and watermelons.

Stay tuned...