Fall dropped in quite promptly after a very long, dry, hot summer. We got our first substantial rain this week of about 1-1.5 inches, after nearly two months with very little. It certainly helped kick start a few things around here!
Tomatoes are about done, but some are still hanging in there. I'm still pulling a couple small Mortgage Lifters, several 4th of July and Gardener's Delights as well. The Pineapple seems to have really gained a second life through the less humid weeks.
ML about done, but Pineapple keeps going and going. I've just let these go at this point
Peppers always seems to really kick into overdrive towards the end of summer, and the one Habanda and one sweet banana is covered in fruit.
In our raised bed, I've cleaned it up and added some fresh rabbit manure and then seeded with carrots, kale and radish along with a few cabbage and spinach starts. I've had to start over multiple times because a couple especially adventurous chickens found there way in and proceeded to roto-till the box a few different times.
I myself got adventurous this year and bought a flame torch and flame-weeded around the cleared out tomato plots. Unfortunately, I think I zapped some roots of a blueberry bush as one side has now turned all its leaves. That'll teach me to go flame-throwin' around pine needles!
Potatoes were a total waste of effort this year. I emptied most of the bags out into one of the three tomato plots as "soil" and threw down some timothy seed to grow some hay for our rabbits.
Next to those, I spread what compost we had in the bin on the other two tomato plots and seeded with rye and lightly mulched with (sort-of-shredded) leaves. All three beds are now sprouting after a week and the heavy rain we had mid-week.
Over near the lasagna bed where I had the squash and a couple tomatoes, I had extended it some with a tarp and then put down some compost and leaves and seeded some cereal rye for a cover.
I am keeping the main plot in production for now with some cabbage, broccoli and spinach.
Speaking of Rye, Since I bought a bushel of seed, I started messing with sprouting it for fodder. Man this stuff draws flies and fruit flies/gnats
As I slowly build out our little hobby "farm" here, I went ahead and setup some chicken-wire bins to hold mulch/compost materials so I can work on composting over the winter
One bin for grass clippings, one for pine needles one for leaves, and little one for leaves that I started with
We have 4 50-60 year old Maple trees on the property, so I just ran the leaves over with our otherwise-worthless electric mower w/bag and hauled them over to the bin. I've already plundered half of the leaf bin
And finally, I went hog-wild and ordered a ton of various micro seeds from Bunny Hop Seeds. I started a few for testing this winter, including:
Venus
Jochalos
Monetka
Yellow Balcony
Andrina
and saved seed from the summer grow of Red Robins
The little silver things all over the place are the plastic squares from my greenhouse dry-rotting out and falling everywhere
I am now looking at options to build bigger-and-better this winter. I'm debating between a boot-strap style hoop house, or picking up the Harbor Freight 10x12 greenhouse.
