Hello Winter Garden

I almost don't want to admit this, given the fall loving blogs out there, but I am not thrilled it is September. It is not the fall necessarily that bothers me it is the cold and rainy season to follow.

This weekend thankfully was beautiful and for the most part we stuck to the house. The trails and the roads are packed for the Labor Day weekend.

So Nim worked on his smokey bone.

And I worked on my winter garden with some green onions, leeks, lettuce, and some overwintering like garlic (which I screwed up and planted too early).

I am not sure you would call my summer garden a success considering it didn't yield much but I enjoyed it well enough to not entirely give up and even learned some lessons...


Lesson 1: Sometimes you have to pull perfectly healthy plants for the benefit of the overall garden. I still don't think the Borage did what it was supposed to do considering not a single cucumber around it survived, although I am willing to take responsibility that I didn't really know what I was doing. Apparently it is a companion plant for tomato as well but I didn't try planting around the tomatoes. Borage is pretty and it grew successfully. Too successfully.

Lesson 2: Just because they sell the start doesn't mean you should buy it. Case in point: Brussels spouts starts sold in May which I eagerly bought. This is a fall/winter crop. If it isn't bad enough the took over my garden and drown several other summer crops, planting them early may result in bitter sprouts. At this point they just better grow some.

Lesson 3: Just because you don't kill the plant doesn't mean it will actually produce anything. My garden was full of this lesson. I actually did a pretty good job growing plants from starts and seeds, however getting them to produce decently or at all was an entirely different matter. Below are three lovely squash plants that were not casualties in Nim's garden...zero blossoms.

Lesson 4: And even if they do "fruit" that still doesn't mean you can eat them. Come on 7 tomatoes...you can ripen!

Lesson 5: Slugs burrow. I had no idea that they did this. And even more amazing they seem to stack several slugs in a single hole in your garden. Presumably to conserve energy for later eating that would have been wasted climbing in and out of the garden. No photo. Lucky you.

Overall what I suspect is that I probably have a direct sun issue which would be a problem in my yard anyway. I am going to have to think about this. The best sun spots are most likely outside the fenced yard area which means a. elk fortifying which makes deer/bunny fortifying look easy, and b. potentially creating a mud issue in an area that I have just finally started to recover after it was dug up almost 2 years ago.

Enjoy your Labor Day!