New life emerges in the garden as cooler temperatures take hold. Brassicas, root veggies, citrus, and cover crops become the focus here at Gardenerd HQ. It’s our favorite growing season, and recent rainfall earlier this week makes it even more enjoyable.
Here’s some inspiration for hump day. May the promise of cool season harvesting keep you going this week.
New life emerges! Radishes have sprouted under garden fabric. Safe from the birds. This fabric will come off with the carrot seeds nearby have sprouted. Our kale is safe under floating row cover. Safe from rats, and from cabbage moths. Lemon verbena is back in action as temperatures cool down. Thousandhead kale is a first for us this year. Its leaves grow 3 feet long. We’ll see how this goes. Right now it’s protected by bird netting and clothes pins.
Don’t Get Too Comfortable…
The rats finally discovered our volunteer Azoychka tomato and sent a message.
In the Mini Fruit Garden
As an experiment, we left all the fruits on this branch of blood oranges. As a result they are tiny. A lesson that even citrus needs thinning sometimes. Mittens inspects the Meyer lemon tree, which is starting to ripen its fruit.
Harvest Happiness
After 7 years of returning sweet potatoes, it’s probably time to plant new. These are no longer abundant nor sizeable. But free is still great!We transplanted a pomegranate tree from a pot to the ground, and it rewarded us with super sweet fruit this year. Here’s a tasty fall kale salad with pomegranates, apples, and maple pecans. We didn’t harvest as much this year due to drought conditions. Just one super that was entirely cross comb and mostly wax.
