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From faithful commentor Marvel:
Here in the Willamette Valley, we’re squaring away the last of our Fall chores. The days alternate between cold & drizzly and sunny & brisk (often during the same day).
We’ve pulled up the last of the root veggies — a few small bites out of some I had harvested recently motivated quick action on our part. The carrots, beets & parsnips are presently resting safe & sound in a few oversized crispers. BTW: Beneath the carrots & beets in the photo, you can see the tyfon (a stubble turnip) cover crop we’ve been using for the last several years in an attempt to convert a barren, clay-y space (“Area 51”) into a patch of productive soil — I think it’ll be ready for planting this Spring.
The purple cabbage and green cauliflower are glorious (they’re several beds removed from the one the field mice found) — we don’t intend to share these lovely gems with our furry neighbors, so they’ll be off to chilled storage this week.
The kales & garlic are happy in their 6-mil poly cloaks and the tender stuff (herbs, lettuce, spinach, chard & assorted bonsai) will wait out Winter in the greenhouse.
Have a warm & wonderful thanksgiving!
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Unless I hear from some warm-weather commentors (or indoor gardeners with photos to share) this may be the last Garden Chat until we can start talking about seed catalogs next March. Maybe I should solicit pet stories to fill in the Sunday-morning gap?
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
OzarkHillbilly
I hate you Marvel. ;-)
JPL
I love Sunday mornings with Marvel. The pictures are beautiful and inspire me to keep trying.
@OzarkHillbilly: haha! Green is not a good color for you.
JPL
Marvel, Your Thanksgiving is going to be bountiful.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
That’s why I have to put in a GREEN house this winter, so I don’t have to wear that color so often.
Schlemizel
I hate all of you! We have had a cold, wet, crappy fall but even if we hadn’t the garden was quiet done weeks ago. Yet you people keep tormenting me with beautiful pictures of the bounty you have reaped from places not on the frozen tundra. It only got into the low 20s yesterday despite being sunny for the first time in my memory. The sun is low enough in the southern sky that it really doesn’t do anything useful and it won’t for several months yet.
So you guys just all go on enjoying your harvest and the glorious finale produced by gardens outside the arctic circle. I shall huddle here in the gloom and cold while contemplating why the Scandinavian countries have such high rates of alcoholism!
WereBear
I think pet stories will fill the gap.
That is, indeed, lovely produce.
Ramalama
I’ve got this grade-A crop of la neige in my jardin this morning. Hopefully it will grow large enough to yield a lot of … chocolate croissants.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel:
Well, on the bright side, some of us need the break winter allow us.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
After living in the South for a time I have come over to Keillor’s point of view that winter forces people to understand the need for doing things today. If you live where winter really comes to stay it is obvious that you have to sow and reap in their seasons and not on your own time. It also teaches the necessity of community and the social contract because there will always be times that the world does not provide for.
Modern life has removed much of that urgency and understanding from those living out here and it shows in our politics and compassion. People on the tundra used to be the most industrious and generous. Now we are becoming as slothful and miserly as those who can live without fear of winter.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel: Yep. 12 degrees right now. yesterday afternoon I ran around covering all my cold sensitive herbs in the vain hope of having fresh herbs for a few more weeks, than I had to bring in a load of firewood that I cut last winter cause that’s how we heat. Than I made dinner with some of the frozen and canned veggies I had put up. Everything in it’s own season. That, and none of us ever make it all on our own. Pretty much the antithesis of today’s conservatism.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: I think that’s a good point. Living in the mountains, with four distinct and different seasons, gives one a sense of time passing in a way blurrier lines did not.
Florida, for instance, gives growing seasons distinguished by hack-it-back and hack-it-back-harder.
HeartlandLiberal
Hoping the small cabbages and last of the collards, kale, and mustard greens survived last nights cold. There was a really heavy frost this morning, but not the first. We have had several nights in mid to even low 20’s, and I have let them go, hoping to get the additional weeks growth. But it is time probably to pick them all today, the final harvest from this year’s garden. There may be some radishes, too.
Yesterday I picked a bag of the last of the tat soy Asian greens, and some dinosaur kale, which my wife sauteed in olive oil with crumbled bacon. Had it with a beef pot pie from our favorite local health food / natural food store. Tasted great.
Still working on the potatoes from this year, we have eaten about half of them, but there are about 25 pounds left in the storage container. They make for wonderful hash browns for breakfast.
tybee
winter is the only time we can grow fall/spring crops down here.
lettuce, turnips, mustard, cilantro, radishes, leeks, onions, cabbage, etc, won’t grow in the summer and spring is too short to grow them.
so we garden year round and there is an urgency to getting rid of the played out crops to get the next season’s in the ground…
Ferdzy
Well about 6 inches of snow yesterday. I think we got the garden mostly put to bed first, although I have an uneasy feeling there is a wheelbarrow out there somewhere that didn’t make it into the garage. Guess I need to put on my boots and go and rescue it before it becomes impossible. Brrrrr. Time to start sewing projects.
Schlemizel
@WereBear:
When we moved to Florida I was astounded to learn that being from the Midwest made getting job much easier. My wife and the oldest boy were hired as soon as they mentioned it. The wire’s boss later told her “I knew you would be willing to work because you weren’t from around here.”
One of the things that got us to move back was that I started seeing my kids displaying the attitude that everything could wait until tomorrow because tomorrow as going to be just like today. Part of that is the warm weather feature but to be fair lot of people move to Florida because they think they can get something for nothing, so its not all climate induced.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: Fascinating; I lived in Florida for ten years, did not like it, but had not noticed that!
Of course, this was in the ’70’s, before people hid indoors in the a/c. I always put a lot of the torpor down to the killer heat and humidity we dealt with, half the year.
Someplace like Key West or the coasts, where you get the breezes, it’s nice. But inland… fuhgettaboutit.
Southern Beale
Down to 22 last night. My garden is kaput.
In other news, while everyone was commemorating the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination on Friday, some folks in Nashville gathered to remember the death of that other guy who died in late November….
Fred
@Anne Laurie- All of these photos are really lovely but your last photo seems to be askew.
Aji
@Schlemizel: Yeah, this.
Actually, our garden’s normally done by now, which is fine, but climate change is viewable in real time around here. Very early, protracted, and severe monsoon season this year drowned nearly everything but the beans, spinach, zucchini, and a few tiny carrots. Destroyed our corn completely, and all but a handful of the other squash.
And winter’s early this year – 5″ two nights ago, another 5″ here this morning, 19 degrees when I got up, and going down to dingle digits tomorrow night. At this rate, we may have to consider a greenhouse, because while we’re very accustomed to adhering the seasonal patterns, all those patterns are now going out the climate-change window despite our best efforts to adapt very fast.
Aji
@Aji: Gah. “Single” digits.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
We brought home a load of lumber yesterday for our above ground planter boxes. I’m building three of them, each six feet by two with sixteen inches of soil. I’ll cut all of the wood for the first one and assemble it. Hoping that my carefully drawn plans (Thank FSM for Sketchup) actually result in something that looks decent and that doesn’t fall apart under the weight of a few hundred pounds of damp soil.
Ripley
Really outstanding photos, smart composition and attention-grabbing perspective. The photographer has a gift; kudos, despite my ambivalence for cauliflower.
Ramalama
@tybee: Cilantro is not a hot weather plant? It’s the patron saint of my tastebuds. Why has it taken me this long to learn this?? Wowee.
Mj_Oregon
Talk about seed catalogs next March?? I’ve already gotten three in the mail and expect a few more next week. In my area of the Willamette Valley it’s been stunningly clear and cold for the last week. I’ll put up with the cold if it means sun. Fog for weeks on end make me cranky.
Let’s talk seed catalogs for a few weeks – I’m not quite ready to leave gardening behind for the year.
SectionH
ALL: if you want more participation from Left Coast Gardeners, might I politely suggest you don’t post the SMGT until an actually imaginable time for ppl in Pacific Time to be up? I am frequently awake by 5 or 6, but even so I’m not usually up for posting that early, and I expect more commenters like to sleep in a bit on Sundays. Maybe you could at least schedule it for 8 or 9 eastern time during the winter?
SectionH
Ok, garden report, even though the thread’s veryvery old now:
We finally had some rain the past week, although lots more fell around us than on us. Still an improvement.
We’ve been harvesting the last of our volunteer cantaloupes, and they’re delicious. Saving seeds from each of them. I don’t know how long they’ll be viable, but considering they’re all from ones that sprouted after a winter in the compost, I guess “for quite a while” is a good guess.
Still getting tomatoes (Brandywine and Stupice), although the plants are showing their age. I think the eggplant has given up the ghost, and Mr S says he has Habanero and Fresno ripe for picking when we get home.
On the ornamental side, our Camellias are in bloom. This is their 2nd year, and they gave me a scare earlier with some scale-looking branches, but they seem fine now. And The Birds of Paradise are giving us the best bloom ever. They’re about 3 years old now, so getting established. I will miss them. Gorgeous flowers, and you can’t ask for a more maintenance-free plant.
We’ve been traveling *waves at the Seattle BJ’ers from SEA* so there’s a lot of scut work facing us, but since it’s cooled off, that’s not so bad.
schrodinger's cat
My garden is dead, we had a dusting of snow last night. Right now, the wind is howling outside, it is in mid 20s and with windchill it feels like 11.