November: What's in Your Fall Garden?

November already?
Here in Colorado, we've had several freezes followed by some periods of really cool and really warm days and nights. My garden is winding down quickly and not much is left besides a few herbs like oregano and thyme. I've also got a couple calendula hanging on, as well as beets, kohlrabi, black radish's, and some red onions that still need picking. There are some beans that I'm leaving for now so I can save the pods for planting next year. Peppers, tomatoes, squash, and basil are long gone. Overall I had a pretty successful garden this year.
What do you have left in your garden?

As of this mornings 23 degree freeze....nuttin honey.

Being in warmer climate where we don't typically get our first frost until Mid-November early December I have a lot still growing.

Winter Squash: spaghetti sq finishing up, butternut all over the place, potimarron sq are probably done but I'll leave them until the frost.  

Summer Squash:  some stragglers in my outdoor gardens, I planted a mexican zucchini in my greenhouse that we'll eat the first off of this week.  

Tomatoes everywhere, grape, cherry and purple cherokee (that have been a terrible disappointment with disease and rotting fruit before they were ripe and probably won't even ripen for the second harvest)  I have an experimental variety in my greenhouse this winter "snow fairy" which can survive temps down to 28 degrees if they aren't touched by frost.  Our lowest temps last winter were 22 degrees outside, but normal is more like 25-28 degrees.  I also have a tomato plant in the greenhouse that is now 18 months old and produced like crazy last winter so I'm letting her just keep going!

Cucumbers:  lemon cukes in the greenhouse still producing away.   We'll see how long they'll grow this winter, last year I had them probably until January.  

Mini bell peppers and hot chili peppers (in greenhouse, grew all winter)

Kale, swiss chard, broccoli, lettuce, radishes and garlic.  I have potatoes that are taking off all over the place, I expect them to die back and start again next spring. Sweet potatoes are awaiting harvest. I'll dig them after the first frost or so. Our ground never freezes.

A few weeks ago, I pulled everything that was still growing in preparation for a winter garden.  I didn't do one last year, so this is my first winter garden!

Amended, and started planting:

red romaine lettuce
bloomsdale long-standing spinach
swiss chard
radishes
peas
touchon carrots
cosmic purple carrots
italian red bottle onions
catnip
borage
lovage
cilantro
golden beets
chioggia beets
early purple sprouting broccoli
purple of sicily cauliflower

there may be more things...hard to remember them all...

Most everything has sprouted except the onions and carrots and lovage.

We're in the 60s for the next few days, then a week of 70s, so here's hoping everything does well.

A few different kinds of kale, marvel of four seasons lettuce, red giant mustard, purple sprouting broccoli, banana peppers, a few tomato plants, malabar spinach, chard, and lobelia flowers, as well as a few herbs like sage, mint, oregano, and basil.

Tomatoes are ripening very slow if at all, so there's not much reason to leave them in except for the hope of getting bigger green tomatoes. But I like those and use them in chutney, so there's the temptation to leave them in. But ... half of them are starting to split now, so I just don't know ...

Good to here from you again Rooster. My winter garden is Jester lettuce (the best ever), Simpson lettuce, Russian and Siberian kale, radishes, spinach and carrots. With luck (we are a little warmer and much dryer than you are) we should go into Jan. with a little heat in the cattle panel greenhouse.

Big blow coming thru here right now so I'm actually not sure what I'll have out there once it's over. But this morning there were collards, kales, spinach, daikon, chard, cucumbers, tomatoes, 1 summer squash, carrots, chives & scallions, sugar snap peas, arugla, romaine/Buttercrunch/Marvel/Grand Rapids lettuces, beet sprouts and bush beans.  

I was supposed to plant garlic today but that's on hold until after any threat of snow from this storm has passed.

CC

I have a lot but not sure how much will survive the first freeze we will get tonight.

Gilbertie tomato still hanging on by a thread.
Broccoli
Brussel Sprouts
Winterbor kale
Leeks
Spinach
6 different varieties or peas
Carrots
Radish
Garlic just planted
Winter pea cover crop/Green manure

My big boo boo was lettuce.  I planted 16 squares (7 different varieties) and not one single lettuce germinated.  Guess I will have to do some more research for the spring planting.

I just brought in all the green tomatoes that I think have a chance to ripen in a box in the house.  I ate the last 2 cucumbers off the vine.  The greenhouse is officially done for the season. 

Growing outside there is still chard and thyme and lavender.  I planted garlic and have not found any tulips to inter-plant with them.

It is time to turn my attention to some serious compost pile building.

Turan wrote:
It is time to turn my attention to some serious compost pile building.

I hear ya

Still have cabbage, cauliflower, onions,carrots, swiss chard, lettuce, possibly a collard plant. I direct seeded some collards with no luck. Now I see one small plant started and they all look so similar.

Cold weather tonight so I picked all the green tomatoes. Will cauliflower survive a couple cold nights. Used my last tarp to cover a car with leaking T-Tops and I'm starting to re-think that.



The first time I have grown any cauliflower. Thinking I read someplace that you need to cover the flower with the leaves?

Oh! What a lovely cauliflower!

we are in sunny Southern California and we got RAIN today! First time since March I believe! Our garden is growing like crazy. Potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, peas, celery basil, carrots, beets, lettuces, spinach, strawberries, asparagus, watermelon, all kinds of squashes, parsnips, tons of peppers, garlic, onions, horseradish, green beans, just about everything really!! Had to pull out some good plants to plant our fall stuff...ha!

Curly kale, Russian kale and rainbow chard, all over a foot tall in the 2 x 8 TT.
Green and red cabbages picture perfect under the tulle.
A few garlic starting to spout.
White Spanish onion transplants from a 6 pack and 2' tall snow peas from seed.
Waiting to go into the small green house before first frost are 13 peppers, 3 eggplants, and a volunteer tom.

Still hoping to get some bok choy and carrots seeded plus more garlic cloves.

Good to see you Rooster

some of our beds are resting.....also some of the veggies below are in containers

a little of something in each of our garden areas In our fall/winter gardens:

Green onions
Dino Kale
Curly blue kale
Russian kale
celery
herbs
sorrel
leeks
spinach
lettuce
borage
carrots
nasturtiums
green cabbage
purple cabbage
bok choi
swiss chard
broccoli
cauliflower
Brussel sprouts
Purple color mustard greens
radishes
kohlrabi
collard greens

and we just harvested the last few cucumbers this week

happy harvesting
rose

FG,  Impressive list

VJ72584 wrote:...
The first time I have grown any cauliflower. Thinking I read someplace that you need to cover the flower with the leaves?...

In a gardening context, it's called blanching: to cover the head to protect from direct sun in order to keep it as white as possible, and to prevent a stronger flavor, or even bitterness.  Some varieties are better than others at self-blanching.

If you choose to blanch, be sure to check underneath the leaves occasionally as it becomes a good spot for pests to get a foothold.

In our area we're still planting the winter garden.

So far we planted:  Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, carrots, lettuce, salad burnett, swiss chard, kale, mustard and radishes.

Tomorrow I'm planting:  leeks, beets, pak choi, kohlrabi and spinach plus more lettuce and radishes.   I'll wait till late January to plant onions and late February to plant peas and tomatoes.

We still have some holdover red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, bush beans, pole beans, eggplant and tomatoes. 

Passion fruit is just starting to ripen, saffron is just coming up and sweet potatoes won't be dug until mid month.

Let's see. They are still growing so this is what I have left in the garden: rapini, bok choy, turnips, kohlrabi, kale, carrots, beets, chard, celery, Brussels sprouts and leeks. I didn't get out there to plant the garlic yet as we had a cold storm pass through this weekend.

Cabbage patch and greens in TTs, wrapped in tulle:


Cabbage Patch back on Oct 7:
 The extra weeks of sunlight from raising the box has really paid off.  It would have been put to bed for the winter.

On the stalk, I'm getting down to broccoli, cauliflower, celery, scallions, beets, chard, kale, Bell and Anaheim peppers, carrots, cabbage, a few winter squashes that I didn't harvest in order to see what they'll do, and snow peas that are still getting blossoms but not many peas.

I started an experiment on 10/4.  I planted two identical containers with lettuce. I put one in the greenhouse and one indoors under a light.  This picture was taken 4 weeks later.


The lettuce on the right was in the greenhouse.  The lettuce on the left was under an old school 34 watt T12 florescent bulb.  No contest!  

I tried the same experiment with spinach.


The whitish container was under the light.   If you look real close at the left end of the whitish container, you can make out a 7-8 inch tall volunteer tomato plant!

I love your experiments.

Shows how irreplaceable light is, eh?

A few stalks of kale and I planted my garlic on Oct.   I'm on vacation until Feb.

Kay

Marc Iverson wrote:Shows how irreplaceable light is, eh?

I'm thinking you're right.  The only other variable is temperature, and the small variances  were  within the optimal growing range for lettuce, so I'm guessing temps had little influence.

I forgot to mention that I left the light on 24/7.  I was recently surprised when I read about a Fairbanks commercial greenhouse operation that leaves their lights on 24/7 in their lettuce greenhouse.  It had been my understanding that plants need some dark in order to 'rest'.  So, I thought I'd try it.  

Basically, the results contrast the difference between 12 hours of natural light per day, and 24 hours per day of artificial light.