fall gardening

Besides the insanity that is the 2004 election, one of the non-work activities that I have been spending a fair amount of time on is wrapping up the summer and getting ready for late fall and winter gardening. I still have to figure out which garden plots will be left idle with a cover crop until spring and which will have a cold box built over them. I'm also considering building a tall cloche over my second planting of green beans and see how long they will keep producing.

One thing that I have been intentional about is letting some plants go to seed, which is part as a result of over planting, part bad timing, but also rewarding plants that were strong enough to both produced food for me and health enough to also produce seed. The garden has been thick with honey bees at several points, they are currently in the broccoli patch gathering pollen in the very noticeable yellow flowers. Previously the honey bees were all over the many sun flower plants I have growing around the yard.

This summers garden was reasonably successful, with the biggest problem is the tomato plants produced a lot of leaves and not many plants. I did apply some biogro, which is a fish fertilizer but I guess it through the NPK balance too far off. The good news is we have plenty of leafy greens, but I have to plant starts way from the flock of birds that like to live in my garden.