End of another season

Garlic and weeds, a delightful mix

All that is left of this year's garden

Carrot patch started in May

Carrots pulled today

Tomatoes in the greenhouse

More tomatoes and kale in the greenhouse

Kale outside

Broccoli heads coming along

We have had one frost day (28º) so far this season, not bad considering it is the end of October and I can remember many years of very cold evenings either following my daughter around as she went trick or treating or watching the Twilight Cross Country meet down on the Cape.

So, the outside garden is just about finished and I have started cleaning up the left over vines and weeds.  The garlic has started sending up shoots (I have 74 plants), so I am happy with that.  I bought the garlic from a young farmer up in New Hampshire and the bulbs were absolutely perfect.  These are the German white garlic plants that I have had for the last two years.  The first year I had them planted behind my small greenhouse right by the house and covered them up during the winter with a portable plastic cover.  This past year, I planted them inside my greenhouse by the pool.  This time they are planted in two long rows outside where they will get sun early in the spring and where the soil, I believe is pretty good.  I had potatoes growing there this summer.

I pulled out all the potatoes and the weeds, turned the ground, added some 10-10-10 and that is it.

I am finding that if I do not disturb the soil very much, I have fewer weeks to content with than if I rototill the soil.  So, I have been carefully pulling out the left over plants and the weeds and trying not to disturb the soil very much.

I am going to move the cow panels slightly so they face north-south, giving the rows further down the line more exposure to the sun during the summer months.  I will grow the tomatoes and other taller plants starting on the east and working my way to the smaller plants west.  I saw this being done in the Amish farms in Lancaster County and I think this will help in giving all the plants enough sunlight during the day.

I am going to get some more manure, but am finding that process a bit difficult.  My horse poop supply in Norton has gone to using a dumpster to get rid of his supply so I am not sure if there will be any available to me.  Plus the supply is fresh and will take a while to mature.  I bought 10 yards of a loam-compost mix from another guy up the street, but I am not sure where he gets his loam from.  I would hate to buy a mix that has toxic ingredients.  I know one other gardener has used this stuff to grow huge pumpkins, but he grows them to try and win a prize for biggest pumpkin in MA.

There is a diary farm about 10 miles away who also sells compost and he has a lot available and it is older.  That farm uses wood shavings rather than straw I think, making the compost less than ideal.

So I may have to do some more exploring.  My brother uses mushroom soil, which is very good, but we don't have mushroom farms up here in New England that I know of.

My larger greenhouse still has three tomato plants growing (I think they are Rutgers, as I forgot to label the seedlings when I grew them) and a couple of pepper plants.  I picked some tomatoes and peppers this morning and they look very nice and feel firm.

Kale and kholrabi plants are doing well outside. The kale is beautiful, no bugs.  The kholrabi are the size of softball and continue to grow.  I also have some broccoli plants that are finally starting to grow heads.  I had seeded them in July and had just about given up on them.  The moths has a fun time with the leaves and no heads appeared all the way through September.  I was going to pull them out, but left them as they were not in the way.  It will be interesting to see how the heads end up.  Right now they look very good, nice and tight and growing, albeit slowly, since there isn't much sun hitting them.  The carrots are also doing well and taste very sweet.  They were planted in May and are full grown now.  During the summer, there was little taste, but once we got some cold nights they developed a nice sweet taste.

All in all I am very happy with this year's garden.  The cow panels were great for the tomatoes and the other crops grew quite well despite a long summer of no rain.  The watering system of soaker hoses with individual shut off valves worked very well, and I will expand on that next year for the greenhouses as well.  It is an inexpensive system and easy to control water flow.

Weed control is always an issue, but I was able to do a much better job this year as the weeds were kept at bay until our Cape Cod trip in the middle of August.  The main area of weed problems were in the potato rows, which I did not monitor as well as the other areas of the garden.