Fall is finally coming into its own here in Georgia on most days. This morning my feet were actually cold! We are looking forward to some cool weather crops starting to come into season.
Our tomatoes are winding down for the season although we are still pulling off handfuls of cherry and large fruited cherry tomatoes every couple days.
We absolutely loved the large fruited cherry tomatoes from Ferry Morse that we grew this year. They are about the size of quarters in diameter and have great flavor and firm skins.
We tried a few heirloom tomatoes out front this year but weren’t incredibly impressed with them. They got green shoulders constantly in the heat of the sun and split anytime it downpoured for a day or two, although their flavor was really good.
We have a few eggplants fighting their way through the cool mornings trying to make it out front. We have had varying success with our eggplants this year. This one little plant as straggly as it looks has been the best producer hands down. We had a few others including a very nice large one in a pot that were ravaged by pests and would grow these big beautiful purple eggplants and then at about goose egg size turn orangey brown and stop growing entirely. It was extremely frustrating. Any ideas on why this would happen?
We have some baby Bok Choi sprouts under the lights right now which are looking good. As well as a few Brussels Sprouts which don’t look very happy, hopefully after transplanting outside this week they will perk up a bit.
I snagged a few purple cabbage to tuck into the beds out front a few weeks ago and they are looking happy…..
As well as a few brocolli starts that got tucked into the sweet potato bed and the front tomato beds.
Speaking of sweet potatoes we are hoping for a good harvest from them! I planted them really just for the foliage this year since the soil hasn’t really broken down up here I wasn’t expecting much. But since the soil is still pretty much raw goods, we can actually pull it back easily to check their progress. This shot was from a few weeks ago:
We are hopeful that at least a few sweet potato fries will grace our plate this fall!
We just put in a big order for some bulk Mixed Green/Red Lettuce, Spinach and Swiss Chard from Johnny’s Seed so we should hopefully have those to us and in the ground within the next week or so!
After surveying our time and energy levels this fall we decided to let the main back bed in the backyard garden to rest overwinter as well as the trellis line and side beds back there. This leaves us with just our original bed to work this fall and spring back there. We have one half open for the lettuce, spinach and swiss chard and the other half is still going super strong.
We have crazy looking Dr. Sues Kale trees that have continued to produce all summer without a smidge of bitterness which was quite a shock to us:
Collards which I never actually ended up cooking much with but the rabbits love…
And two patches of Walking Onions (perennial onions) which are doing strong and hopefully should be established enough next year to start really harvesting from.
One bed that won’t change at all is the trellis line for the berries. We lost the raspberry due to my fertilizing mishap at the beginning of the season. But the blackberry bush has put on an impressive amount of growth in just one season.
The big bed that is getting rested for the fall and winter still has an entire row of peppers that are still churning out banana peppers and jalepenos. Some of the jalepenos are growing on the ground now because they get so top heavy.
I am excited about our decision to let these beds rest. With everything going on this last year I have felt super strung out with all the beds going and we haven’t harvested nearly as much as we could have because of it. We are hoping to build the soil back there over the fall and have some really nice stuff ready to go for next year.
We also were gifted a TON of pots so we are making soil and starting to plant those.
We have some beets and cilantro planted right now in some of them and will be transferring the bok choi into some of them this week.
We are hoping to create some plastic frames to cover some of the beds around the house and I will be taking some cuttings of all of our herbs to have inside soon just in case they get killed by a surprise frost. Our mint got hit pretty hard by the crazy amounts of grasshoppers we had this year but the 3 kinds of basil, oregano, thyme, sage and ginger are all doing great.
We are looking forward to trying our hand at fall and winter gardening around here and will be sure to keep you up to date with how things go!
What about you? Do you grow things at all in the fall or do you just bask in the lack of gardening chores?
I love to see your garden. I am sure it is still rather warm where you are, but here we are getting freezing at night and it’s slowly killing off my garden
I always dislike seeing my garden dieing away even though it must happen. Although this year is my first year doing a fall garden and so far its going pretty good…i just hope it keeps going good. My saddest thing to see go are my tomatoes. They are still hanging on but die a little more each night. Do you know anything about harvesting and keeping sweet potatoes? This was my first year doing them and about a week ago the cold killed the tops. Love you Sis, can’t wait to see you
Ooh, you definitely need to get them out of the ground ASAP. Without the tops they rot pretty quick I hear. I am pretty sure that if you want to store them they need to be cured for a while too…..yup here you go: http://www.motherearthnews.com/grow-it/harvesting-sweet-potatoes-zb0z10zkon.aspx
Im so excited to finally see your gardens! I love the kale! I wish I had the enegry to keep it up, i keep saying: next spring ill start.. Yours looks great tho n like lots of fun! And i wondered..how do you make soil??
Yes, energy is always a struggle around here too. Keep it small to start is great advice. Even just a few pots with lettuce and spinach are great fall ideas. Maybe I’ll do a post on easy things to start with soon. We “make soil” by combining small amounts of bagged soil with lots of organic material, mostly lawn clippings and leaves, rabbit manure, and table scraps. When you pile leaves up they break down into what is called leaf mulch. We had a lot of these piles on our lot from previous renters negligence and have made some of our own. We use the Lasagna Gardening method primarily here.