The Good and the Bad

Sweet potatoes in the rain

We did get rain which is good, but they were predicting 1-2" and maybe more. I was so hopeful. But like other high predictions we have ended up with just over half an inch of rain. We needed so much more. I looked this morning and in the last month we have had 1.4" of rain. Our lowest month typically has 3.5". September is one of our wettest months at 4.5" on average. I can only hope that this rain was a shift from the pattern of summer thundershowers to the fall longer rains. We often get tropical storms coming up the coast and hitting us in the fall. We could use that. Right now the trees are starting to lose leaves from lack of rain. New England is known for its beautiful vibrant colors in the fall, but when the leaves curl up and turn brown, fall is not so pretty. The farmers have suffered too this summer. Though the apple and peach harvest was large, the lack of rain seriously hurt the corn crop.

When I went out after the rain, I saw this - holes in the Agribon. These are made by the squirrels thinking that the cloth will hold them up. It won't. The fabric is too fragile. So I took some time and repaired the damage. Then I went under the cover and sadly found that the root maggot fly had gotten in. I killed the ones I could find. They tend to like walking on the ground and are easy to squish. But only if I can find them. I'm sure there were plenty that I couldn't.

The good news is that the bok choy seedlings are up.

They came up well. I did a bit of thinning. Now I just have to cross my fingers that the root maggots won't be too bad. I did put out a couple of homemade traps for them. They are just some small white plastic containers with soapy water in them. Yellow would be better, but white does catch them.

Other good news is that my Brussels sprouts are really growing well. After two sprayings of soap the aphids seem to be gone. I've got some nice spiders in there helping out too. The tallest in there is about 4.5' tall. It is just huge. I only made the cover to go to about 4', so it is straining to get out.

If you look carefully you can see the stem is starting to curve. It wants to keep growing up, but there is no room. At some point it is going to lift up that row cover. I really want to take it off, but the butterflies are still around. I don't have swarms of them anymore, but on a sunny day I regularly see them in the garden.

This and That

I haven't been posting a lot recently. Not much was going on in the garden. This last week I did get a few things done though. My zucchinis have gotten a bad case of powdery mildew and quit producing. All of their female blossoms started to get very very small. So I cut them back severely. I'm not expecting to get much from now on more due to low light levels than the mildew. Probably just tiny zucchini. But something is better than nothing.

I harvested the last of the melons. There were a few small melons left on, but they rarely taste that good when harvested in late September, so I pulled the vines and planted with bok choy. It is too late to plant in the main part of the garden, but in the circle garden it gets less shade in the fall. The light levels though have gotten much less and they may or may not size up well. It is worth the chance. Usually I'd plant overwintered spinach. But I decided this year to forego that and try something new.

I didn't take a before photo, but the landscape of the garden has changed now. I picked the last of the corn and then took down all of the stalks. So now it is much shorter. And I have seas of squash growing all alone.

I braided the last of the onions, which you will see on Monday. And tore down the drying rack. I also cleaned up around the compost piles as they were getting kind of ratty. I need to get a new broom. My old one barely has any bristles on it. It makes my brick path really hard to clean.

This year I tried to keep the morning glories from climbing up the compost pile. Obviously I wasn't totally successful. They sure are pretty, but they are hard to clean off and get in the way of the drying rack. And they make it hard to access the piles themselves. So I ripped them down again. It is sad to see them go, but now I can get to the leaf pile again.

An Overabundance

I was going to wait longer to pick the smaller Asian greens as I had plenty of food in my fridge, but they weren't going to wait.

They were all starting to bolt. Ok so the mizuna on the right was bolting a while ago. But the mizuna on the left has just started.

With about nine pounds of produce, I knew I couldn't eat it all. I kept about three pounds of greens. I gave my townhouse mates three pounds. But the last three pounds was too much for us to eat. I've never found that bok choy freezes well unless it is in soup. And I had no desire to make soup right now. So I sent out an email to my neighborhood list (BTW if you are a neighbor and want to be on the list, email me). Hopefully I'll be able to get rid of the excess that way. Most of the time I'm successful, but not always. So far I've got no takers though. I might have to deal making some soup after all.

In the afternoon I had time to rip out the roots and clean up the bed then prep it for the corn. I got the corn planted just in time. The rain splattered a few drops on me as I was getting the last seed in, but not enough to get me wet. I was in before it really let down. I love it when I don't have to water things in.