Brrrr, frost!

(I would have taken a picture of the garden but it was too cold to go outside).

Fortunately, I picked a whole bag of poblano peppers this weekend. I left some on the plants, too, so I’m curious to see how much cold they can tolerate.

I’m hoping the parsley and Swiss chard will keep growing a little longer. The green beans are on their way out, though. The leaves are wilted and dark.

Share This

All those weeds I’d been planning to pull since July? They were looking just as overgrown and half-dead as the zucchini plants. Well, I pulled them anyway. I wheeled away two cart-loads of weeds and dead vegetable plants.

The sight of empty garden beds has me excited for next spring already.

The garden is still producing plenty of stuff now, though. I’ve been checking for frost every morning and so far we’ve been in the clear.

Here’s some Swiss chard (heavily harvested, but still growing):

We finally got poblano peppers this year, too. Hurray! This is the third year I’ve tried to grow these guys and the first time it worked.

After all that, you’d think we would have eaten at least one by now. Nope. They’re still sitting in the refrigerator and on the vine. Next year I may scale back the hot pepper section of the garden.

Share This

I find this guy hiding under the leaves. It looks like our squash section is back in business.

Thanks to all the rain, the neglected garden is coming along better than is should. We have quite a few hot cherry peppers turning red.

The tomatoes are looking good, too. A few more days and they should be ready to eat!

Share This

I’ve been working my way through “Teaming with Microbes” by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. I enjoyed the descriptions of bacteria, fungi, bugs and other creatures that live in the soil. Now I’m at the part where they’re telling me how to count my soil organisms, which sounds like fun but I don’t see myself having time to do it.

So in the meantime I just picked up “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” by Douglas W. Tallamy, which has been on my shelf for a while.

I’ve also been flipping through “For Love of Insects” by Thomas Eisner. It’s full of stories about the insects he has encountered throughout his science career and all the fun things he did to study them. There are a lot of experiments that involve feeding one bug to another to see what will happen, and getting bugs to fight.

What garden books are you reading to pass the rainy days? What books should every gardener have on their shelves?

Share This

When we got home, I decided to spend some time photographing the daylilies at my house (most of which came from that big field).

All my daylilies are ready to split, I think. This is at least the third or fourth summer for all of them and they’ve gotten noticeably bigger. I found some Web sites that say spring is the time to split (oops, missed that boat), but others say you can do it in late summer after they finish blooming. Perfect!

Share This

Now they look happy.

These are the jalapenos, which are the furthest along. My cherry tomatoes are just forming and there are blossoms on the poblanos.

Considering the grocery stores are predicted to face shortages of jalapenos because of the salmonella scare in imported Mexican produce,  I’m glad my little crop is doing so well. Now if my tomato plants succeed this year, I’ll be all set. Fingers crossed!

Share This

Hi, Dagny!
Yes, I just sprinkled human hair in the garden. I aimed for the soil around the plants, rather than the plants themselves, but you know how hair is. I used the tiny clippings left over from when my husband trims his beard and when we cut his hair with electric clippers. I just took out another container of hair this past weekend and sprinkled it on the soil around my hot pepper plants. Everything’s pretty big now so I think it’s safe (my chipmunks seem to prefer plants that have just sprouted), but it doesn’t hurt to add a little extra.

Here are some photos I took this morning of the plants that were damaged by critters and rebounded after I put down hair clippings.

Green beans:

Swiss chard:

Parsley:

I couldn’t resist taking some other pictures of the garden because everything is getting so big. Here’s my yellow squash in full bloom. I picked my first little squash this morning. I love the flowers on zucchini and squash plants.

Share This

A few weeks ago I wrote about the weeds that are taking over my flower gardens and how I’m not even going to try to keep up. Here’s a visual:

Here’s last week’s column about my pea plants.

Fresh off the vine, then the moment’s passed

I got this picture of a pea pod when I wrote the column, back when the wrinkles were just starting to show up.

Sadly, the peas are completely done now. They got all shriveled and yellow. This weekend when I was weeding the vegetable garden I pulled up the vines and took down the string trellis.

Share This

“A little gross, but it just might have worked”

In the past few days my damaged plants have rebounded even further.

Here’s a Swiss chard plant, looking perky:

And here are some green beans coming back:

We’re filling a second little cup with hair as we speak!

Share This

His coworker thought it wouldn’t need to be very high.

My husband’s response was to send him a link to one of the many YouTube videos of a sport called competitive rabbit jumping, which I discovered a few months ago. Here’s just one example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RejsRq0MtBI

Lets just say I’m glad the fence around my garden is 3 feet high.

Share This