From loyal commentor Marvel:
I hope that the end of the Hectic Season finds you happy and ready for a break from gardening.
There’s still armloads of fresh fruit & vegetables littering every countertop hereabouts (and plenty of peas & other Fall crops patiently waiting it out under cover out back), but we’ve processed the last of the tomato paste/sauce; canned all of this year’s plum jelly, cran-apple sauce and spiced grape/apple juice; frozen the last of the peppers; stored all the potatoes and tucked all the cabbages & cauliflower into crispers galore.
We’re pulling up spent crops and readying newly-vacated beds for next year’s planting. Soon we’ll clean our tools & put away the freezing & canning supplies, happy to have seen another wonderful, robust growing season (and frankly, happy to sit down for a minute or two — sheesh!).
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Here in New England, it’s been mizzling down since Tuesday, and Fall has most definitely fallen. Assuming the weatherpersons are correct that the sun will finally emerge this afternoon, I’ll be taking down the last of the tomato ladders…
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
raven
The girl has lots of colors going on in the garden but this shot is all I have right now. The bad thing is that the master gardener has had a flare up of her bad back and is having to back off. I moved some of the giant potted plants she has onto the porch to protect them and I’ll see what I might do today to keep thing going.
OzarkHillbilly
They were calling for frost last night so I picked everything close to ripe as well as much of the herb garden. Even built a fire in the wood stove to knock the chill out of the house for my Mediterranean wife. But it clouded over during the night and the low is now supposed to be 41. Sigh…. I really had other things to do today.
I’m still picking maters and zuchs and I have been giving my little bro sweet peppers (30-40 lbs in 2 weeks) for his restaurant. Still, it’s getting close and it is time to put most of it to bed for the winter.
Got my garlic yesterday so I have to put that in the ground too.
Arclite
What’s happening is they changed the lock on my apartment, and only gave me one key instead of two. So now either my wife can go out, or I can go out, but not both separately. As a result, I haven’t watered my garden in a week. It’s been raining off and on, but I’m worried…
JPL
It’s cold! My thermometer says 40 but weather.com says nearby locations are reporting 37. The house stayed warm over night but since the high is only suppose to be 69 today, that won’t last. It’s to early to run the heat.
Raven
@JPL: Death to the kudzu!
JPL
@Raven: It’s raking season here.
GIndy51
Picked the last of the cukes yesterday, one more salad to make, and the chipmunk tomatoes are still going strong. I hope that some more will ripen before I have to pull them off and dehydrate them. Still have marigolds blooming in the “real” garden and some sycamore seedlings to move as well as a couple of maples and catalpas that sprung up in there. I pull the weeds but leave the free trees until fall so I can move them to our old horse pasture. All my hoses are put to bed, drained and ready for the cold weather. Next up is trimming things for the winter weather,
Mustang Bobby
For the first time since May, it was cooler outside the house than inside when I went to get the paper off the driveway. That’s the first hint of the dry season starting up in South Florida. I have the patio door open and it feels nice.
In the hibiscus that is my orchid nursery, the blooms have fallen off my chile pepper vanda but the “butterfly” is still going strong. The dendrobium is still adjusting, but it is putting out new stalks, and the vanda that has the blue blooms is putting out stalks and roots like crazy.
Shakezula
Weeds weeds weeds weeds,
weeds weeds weeds weeds!
(Oi don’t loike weeds!)
satby
@JPL: I agree, but I got back from a short overnight trip to find the temp inside my house a nice balmy 41. I left windows open a crack and it got cold overnight. So I grit my teeth, closed all the windows, and turned it on, but set it at 61. I hate turning on the heat this early, but the whole summer was kind of a loss, so I’m working on just accepting it.
Mobile RoonieRoo
It’s the beginning of the hectic season in central Texas as we come out of our gardening break and jump into the fall and winter gardening season. These past three weeks I have planted 36 broccoli and two beds full of carrots, beets, various greens and turnips. I’ve got three more beds to plant up over the next two weeks. I’ve also put in 144 cloves of garlic that will be ready in June.
Our gardening bread is the end of July and August but if you want you can garden that to with cowpeas and okra.
Schlemazel
Frost was threatened last night so we brought in everything tender. It did n’t frost but this probably the end of it anyway.
We still have a few daylilies that need to move before next springs road construction but I have a couple of plumbing issues that take precedence. I had to replace the kitchen faucet & (I’ll skip the long story) ended up having to pull the sink to do so. Now the drain leaks around the basket and at the top of the P-trap. so those need some work.
Aimai
@Shakezula: i didnt know you were a gardener, shakezula.
currants
Marvel: those trellises. Are they the kind of rebar that goes in sidewalks? I saw a lot of them in Sweden this past summer–they make terrific trellises but I’d never seen them used here.
jurassicpork
We may need a garden after the news we got this past Thursday. Then yesterday the SNAP bureaucrats showed us just how incompetent they really are. The Mrs. and I are really, really screwed for the foreseeable future and not in a loving way but a prison shower type of way.
raven
@currants: I cut them in about 4ft pieces and make killer tomato cages from them.
Gvg
it got down to 52 last night. earliest it ever has per the news here in N Florida. I am wondering/worrying if we are going to have a really cold winter. my oranges might not have time to finish ripening. this is way too soon for our climate. pleasant righ now though. I will weed today. last years chemo wasted a whole year of gardening and recovery was slow. the last few months have been catchup for nearly 2 years of doing the minimum. Looking much better. I had to hire help to wack the overgrown hedge back a few months ago.
Marvel
@currants: currants: We use “hog panels” for trellising our veggies. It’s available at livestock & farm stores (and i t-h-i-n-k I saw some at Home Depot once). LOVE the stuff.
JoyceH
I’ve only done ONE thing of a gardening variety this year, and that was the Great Virginia Chayote Experiment. I love chayotes (a small pear-shaped squash, you can eat raw or cooked), but they’re expensive. They grow in Mexico, Central America, and California, but I wondered if they would grow in Virginia. This spring I ordered a sprouted chayote from a nursery in California and planted it along the fence. It came with a vine already started.
Well, the first thing that happened was that my mower guys weed-whacked it down! A vine growing out of a cleared piece of ground with a stake beside it? I complained mightily and planted a little palisade of sticks around it, and the vine came back. It vined mightily on the fence, but I was afraid it was too late for the actual fruit; chayote has a long growing season, but just recently I noticed a bunch of chayotes growing bigger on the vines! I’ve harvested and eaten two, there’s one ready to harvest, and a whole host of little bitty chayotes. So I’m hoping the freeze holds off and they get to grow up.
I’m going to mulch heavily and see if it winters over, and also leave a chayote on the vine to try to develop a seed for next year as a backup plan.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: I love that striped fence piece and those blue morning glories! I hope the Master Gardener’s back improves quickly.
(will pay for seeds from that^)
Mj_Oregon
It was 83 here yesterday – normal is 69 – with a forecast of more of the same today and tomorrow. We had 1.5″ of rain last week but nothing since. Our fall veggies needed to be watered yesterday – the very first time I ever remember watering anything in our garden in October and we’ve been here since 1993. Too hot, too dry for an Oregon October. But then we picked another cantaloupe yesterday and still have tomatoes, cukes, carrots, romaine and peppers for salads plus the winter squash are ready to pick, clean and store.
Jerry O'Brien
I continue to harvest zucchini, romaine lettuce, and radishes. I’m waiting for carrots, peas, kohlrabi, basil, spinach, and onions to grow more. Those were all planted from seed starting mid-July.
From earlier in the year, there are still surviving tomato vines with green fruit on them, and small potatoes.