New England, October 2015

I guess October belongs mostly to MA on south.  Raining cats and dogs here right now, day 3.  Maybe the water table will actually inch up a bit after this summers drought.

My garden is still going strong, but leaning over due to the high winds and beating rains.  Temps are in the 50's day and night but I'm hoping for a bit of a warm up mid next week.

This garden tour is dedicated to Quiltbea, because she likes them.  

Cukes, carrots, greens w/ baby lettuce across the front & interspersed:

Kale and collards box still producing like crazy:
Ha, didn't even notice while I was out there fighting wind and rain that last hoop is falling over.

Greens, cherry tomatoes (ripe ones harvested before this crazy weather started), leeks:

Greens w/ PM , chives, beets:

Peppers at each end and recently harvested chard:  
The box in the back with the hoops had Marvel of the Four Season in it that I was testing to see how well it would grow in summer - it bolted.  I harvested all of it the other day, since Marvel doesn't turn bitter when bolting, so won't need to cover anymore.

Beets, greens, bush beans, sugar snap peas just beginning to flower and one tromboncino squash that has done nothing:

Outside the box-
Row garden has parsnips, asparagus, zucchini, volunteer grape tomato, 4 butternuts ready for harvesting:

Dunja zucchini in ground:

Dunda in pot:

Overall with Tromboncini, ground cherries, grape vines and strawberry beds on the left:
The fruit trees orchard is behind me - pears, peaches, figs & apples.

Lotsa green! Everything is still looking nice.

Re marvel of four seasons lettuce, mine bolted too, and did get a little bitter. I was expecting to be wowed by the lettuce, but wasn't. It put out lots of smallish leaves, which if I plucked them soon led to a very tall stalk that had trouble supporting itself, only to put out more smallish leaves.

Marc Iverson wrote:Re marvel of  four seasons lettuce, mine bolted too, and did get a little bitter.

I've heard that they get bitter for others, too.  But this is the 2nd batch of them in my garden and both bolted but neither got bitter.  I like that.  I mean, I wish they wouldn't bolt, but 90 degrees is HOT for lettuce me thinks.   I'll keep growing them, since any others that bolted were horribly bitter.

VERY nice, CC!

CC, Thank you for the nice tour. You have a little bit of everything. 4 butternuts and nice looking zucchini to boot.

Messy messy messy! Acorns, tiny twigs and branches, leaves plastered to everything. This 5 day nor'easter has just about run it's coarse. The rain has stopped, leaving us with 4". It's 51 degrees out and the winds are only 20 to 30 today instead of over 50 miles per hour so maybe I can get out and do a little harvesting. I'm missing my daily greens.

How'd everyone else hold up?

Lovely, CC! What exactly are ground cherries? Do you just eat them straight up?

[quote="Scorpio Rising"]Lovely, CC! What exactly are ground cherries? Do you just eat them straight up?[quote]

Ground cherries have paper around the like tomatillos, but they are much smaller and they are sweet. Yum! Peel and eat!

CC ... Your garden is very nice and you have quite a good variety of things.  My wife grew a large ground cherry plant this year.  The squirrels like the fruit so we covered it with one of the chicken wire cages from the SFG.

For SR here is a ground cherry pod and fruit.

Nice photo, TD!  I was just in the garden to access the damage and was able to salvage a bunch before they blow away in this crazy wind we're having.

Woops...have to switch over from Firefox to Chrome to post photos...brb....

Poor Striped Romans are freezing out there:

Black Cherries are cracking from 4" of rain:

and Brandywine & Super Beefsteak leaves are turning purple from the cold:
Hang in there, li'l guys...warmer days are on the way.

There were also 3 beefsteak casualties laying on the ground but I think they are far enough along to ripen on the counter.

I need some of those ground cherries!!!!! Where do I find them? Is that what they are officially called? One per SF? Late set out like tomatoes/peppers?

SR ... we bought a transplant at a big box store or garden center (can't remember which).  Mrs TD planted it in the Spring around the same time as we planted the tomato transplants.  She had one last year which we thought had died over the winter but it came back this year (or perhaps it was a volunteer from a seed from the original plant).

I will keep an eye out for them, TD, I am really rural, have to travel for a big box store. I would love to try them!

SR, You can buy seeds for both ground cherries (sweet?) and tomatillos (tart-ish) from Baker Creek. I'm sure other seed companies carry them - just check their online catalogs.

Scorpio......A good method to get seeds is to post in the spring what you are looking for and a helpful SFGardener will usually respond and send you a few.  I usually send them back something they request so its a fair swap.   I've had good luck with that each spring.

CapeC.....Thank you so much for the walk thru your garden.  Its so lovely.  Mine right now is a couple of pots of thyme that I brought indoors for the winter.  The Rosemary outdoors is still going strong regardless of the cold nights.  I'm loving having fresh thyme for my cooking.  Amazingly two of my rose bushes still had fresh rosebuds so I cut a couple for the house.   Even the Monarda (Bee Balm) are falling over and flowers gone but lots of seed heads for the birds.  I've put up two feeders right outside my kitchen door so I can easily feed the birds all winter.  No more trudging across the lawn to the outer limits which is impossible when the snows begin. 

Below, the darker rose, Camisole, has the sweetest scent which I just love.

Cape, keep the photos coming.  I enjoy my walk thru your greenery.
Hugs, S

OMG, those roses are SO BEAUTIFUL!  They look good enough to eat!  What's the name of them?

CapeC......On the left is Teasing Georgia, a light apricot, and on the right is Camisole, a deep apricot.  Camisole has the most heavenly aroma.  Not overly sweet but just pleasant.

Beautiful!

Perfect day today, 65 and actually sunny for a change.

This mornings harvest:

Mid day pizza pile harvest:

OK, CC do you grow that kale all summer? And it doesn't bolt? I tried a square for FAll and it sprouted but something got it.

Thanks for the advice on getting/trading seeds. I currently have NO saved seeds, but lots of store bought ones, because I only have 4 re-purposed window boxes. Not a whole lot of SFG.

Learning!

I grow a lot of kale all summer as a cut and come again leafy green .

And, I have to grow kale all winter as a cut and come again leafy green

What a gorgeous day, New England! I'll have to get serious about seaweed collecting now that the tourists are gone.

Scorpio Rising wrote:OK, CC do you grow that kale all summer?  And it doesn't bolt?  

Yes, both collards and kale. Plant in spring and harvest the outer leaves all season as the new growth comes up from the middle. Then I get some to winter over so I have leaves for next spring while waiting for the new seeds to pop up. The wintered over plants are the ones I collect my seeds from because they DO bolt in the summer of the second year, and the third, fourth and so on. My oldest collard greens plant gave up the ghost in it's 5th year..

CC, if I left my kale in for a third year, do you think it would give me any decent leaves? It put out a lot of pods this year and I wonder if it should just be composted by now.

It certainly could, Marc, but you won't know unless you try. Every spring I ate off my collard and every summer I collected seeds, until finally just this spring it didn't make leaves any more. Guess last winter was just too much...true for A LOT of things in my yard.