I did not go into the garden for two solid weeks, but nothing died! Yaa gotta love Fall!

[Kansas Terri]

The garage got cleaned out, the new bathroom sink is in and the plumbing is all attached and it works. Mind, it did take a lot of time! While my husband and son did most of the actual work, I was needed to go through boxes, keep my teenager working cheerfully and well, and clean up the mess afterwards. So, I have had no time to garden.

But, it is Fall. The plants are large and deep rooted, and the weather is cooler. The plants did JUST fine, I am glad to say! Of course most of the green beans and the okra are too large to be tasty, but everything was alive and well!

I came out of the garden (When I FINALLY got back into it) with some tomatos, a fist full of small green beans, 3 pods of okra, and some kale. ,

To my disappointment there were some tiny worms in the kale and so I tossed it: I get the creeps when I think about eating bugs and so I would not eat it without giving it some serious cleaning, and I did not want to take the time to do more than give it a casual rinse with salt water. So we did not eat the kale. Instead I put more of the organic bug powder on the kale and we can have kale in a few days time.

But, we did have a lovely beef and vegetable soup that night with garden vegetables. To make it I opened a can of beef in gravy to use as the base of the stew, and then I added vegetables and some stock that I had made earlier by boiling bones, and also some whole wheat as my husband likes the chewy texture of grain in his soup. His favorite soup of all time is beef and barley soup, and I think I made a fair copy of it with my beef, wheat, and vegetable soup! He said it was wonderful and he went back for seconds.

I will miss the garden when winter comes, but I am getting very tired of the biting bugs. I will not miss weeding, either. Even though the weed barrier greatly reduces the number of weeds there are some, and I really am tired of that part of gardening.

I will ALMOST welcome winter when it comes in a few weeks time!

 

[zigs]

Nice one, no thoughts of a polytunell to extend the season then?

 

[Kansas Terri]

Nice one, no thoughts of a polytunell to extend the season then?

I usually extend the season for greens by covering the cold hardy vegetables with plastic sheets, but nothing will work very well for the tomatos, the okra, or the watermelons. I confess I have never tried to extend the season for bush beans!

With a great deal of care I once protected a potted tomato that was just loaded with fruit until December, but I was sadly disappointed. Without the long days of summer to sweeten it, the tomatos turned out to be dry, bland, and not at all sweet..

Before the first frost of the year I will place stacks of bricks next to the cold hardy greens, and then throw sheets of transparent plastic over the beds. The bricks will mostly keep the plastic off of the plants, and this willpretty much serve the same purpose as a polytunnel. I will weigh down the edges of the plastic, of course, with more bricks to keep the wind from blowing the plastic away.

Depending on the weather I might get four more weeks of garden produce this way, as the first storms of winter are not usually very severe where I live. The soil is still warm from the summer, and the transparent plastic allows the sun's light to reach the plants, and the cold hardy plants do very well until the weather gets REALLY bad!,

The really severe weather here in Kansas usually comes in the late winter or the very early spring, and no amount of protection will help with THOSE storms, as the temperature might go to zero degrees Fahrenheit (-32 Celsius). Mere plastic is no match for those temperatures, especially as the soil will still be cold from winter!. .

 

[Rzashida]

That sounds nice, I hate that summer has come to an end, but I appreciate the harvest season. Now its time to get busy with seed saving. I hope you guys will still garden talk through the winter.

 

[Kansas Terri]

That sounds nice, I hate that summer has come to an end, but I appreciate the harvest season. Now its time to get busy with seed saving. I hope you guys will still garden talk through the winter.

Yes, that reminds me. Because I did not get to the cucumbers, I have several that are overmature and turning yellow! I might as well scoop those seeds out and dry them on the counter to use next year.

Many people say to never save seeds from hybrids but I always have. The offspring have always been similar to the parents but not always an exact copy. For example, the tomatos that were so very good one year had offspring that tasted just like the parents, but the skin tended to sunburn and the skin was, in general, more easily damaged. Still, once the tomatos were cut up and in a salad the tomatos were just as good in quality as those from the parents. I do not require perfection from my home raised vegetables, just excellence.

Sometimes the offspring of a hybrid is just like the parent but sometimes it is not quite. However, all of the vegetables I have raised from hybrid parents have TASTED just fine!:

 

[claudine]

I'm glad to hear that your plants did fine on their own Recently, I've been very busy, because it's the beginning of the new semester at my university, so I wasn't able to wash my roses daily and nasty mites are attacking them again. It's not a problem though, since soon my lovely plants will go dormant anyway.

 

[Kansas Terri]

Claudine, I LOVED college! Everything I could imagine seemed possible if I just took the needed classes, and I also met the young man that I married.

What is your major?

 

[claudine]

Claudine, I LOVED college! Everything I could imagine seemed possible if I just took the needed classes, and I also met the young man that I married.

What is your major?

Currently, it's philosophy, but I also got my masters degree in philology a few years ago. I love being a student. I'll never get bored with it
Oh, and just like you, I met the love of my life while studying. We had classes together

 

[ChanellG]

Isn't it great? I knew summer had dissipated for good when I went out after a couple days expecting to see withered and ding plants and nothing even needed to be watered. Now, in the aftermath of Karen we are having some nice cool weather, though it's been downright windy at times. I am loving the fall temperature, though it is supposed to climb back up into the 80s in a couple days.

 

[justusforus]

I am still learning the more mountainous area I am in. Last year we had an extended summer but the year before I walked out, didnt realize a frost had come over night and it looked like some one took a blow torch to my plants that had been lush the day before. Glad you had a good experience...except for the worms and bugs.

 

[ChanellG]

Well. we are expecting temperatures in the upper 80s today. It's still better than being in the upper 90s with 100% humidity though, so I'll take it. I'm still not putting in enough time in the garden; I got some rainbow chard that needs to be transplanted - of course I need something to transplant it into, lol. I'm pretty sure it needs to be divided as well. A gardener's work is never done.

 

[Kansas Terri]

To my delight, this year's heavy rain has brought back a patch of mint that I had thought had died out two years ago! I only just noticed it when I was mowing this week: I have a large patch of the mint but all of it is only about 3 inches tall and so I suspect it has come up from seeds that were left when the large plants died.

I should definitely do something with this mint or I might lose it for real. Every year I bring a few pet plants into the house in the fall, and I think I will put some into a pot and bring some inside even though I do not have very much light for it: I really do much better with shade plants inside the house! I can also transplant some into the vegetable garden next to the greens that I will cover this Fall.

Every winter I very much miss the scent of growing things, and bunches of mint should help with that!

 

[ChanellG]

Dig up a patch of mint and put it in a pot for the winter, @Kansas Terri. Mint is very easy to multiply by division. It also spreads by self-layering. If you notice, as the almost vine-like "branches" spread out, when they are low to the ground they develop roots. Also, if you trim it back when it looks scraggly it will grow back with a vengeance.

 

[Kansas Terri]

Today I potted up some mint, more or less. I say more or less because the roots were twining around some half-rotted twigs and I could not dig up the nice clump that I had in mind: instead I got more of a ribbon where the "branch" had rooted along the ground. I was able to get some soil still attached to the roots, though, so I think it will be all right. I also poked in some cuttings .which gave the pot a less patchy appearance, and with careful watering I hope that the cuttings will root.

I am leaving the pot outside for now, so that the mint has the temperature and the light that it is used to. I will probably bring it in next week.

I was pleased to note that the mint had a nice, strong smell! I really miss the smell of growing things in the winter, and so I love the scented plants! I have killed a wide variety of scented plants over the years, as my home really does not have the kind of light that most plants prefer. But, my daughter is moving out and so I will have her south-facing window that I can use. In the past that has worked fairly well up until February, when it is too overcast and dark even for a south facing window.

In the dark days of February, if I want a plant to survive, I have to put the pot outside and bring it in when frost is predicted. It is a bit of an effort but many years I do just that!

 

[ChanellG]

@Kansas Terri, you may want to keep the pot in the shade. I've never multiplied mint from cuttings, only from division. If you have a "branch" that is long enough you can try air layering it to get new roots and then cut the stem away from the main plant. You could even do that without digging the mint up by using small starter pots to layer.