Lower South Oct 216

What are you growing for you fall/winter garden.  I have Brussel spouts and collards in buckets and kale and mustard greens in beds.  Planting more mustard in buckets as I pull the tomatoes to try to kill soil pathogens over the winter.  Eggplants are still blooming and producing and my long beans and Kentucky wonders are FINALLY put out some beans.  Planting mustard seed under them hoping the underplanting will spout and survive when the beans die back after frost.  They have a good chance as the beans are on a trellis.  

Filled my compost pile with fall leaves and hope to get a supply of raw horse manure to get them started composting.  Short on greens.  Worm bin gets most of the kitchen scraps.

The wood chips that I spread in my front sand area have been composting for 2 summers now and there is a thin layer of black showing.  We have been getting some rain almost every day for the past 3 weeks due to tropical storms coming up the coast, so I planted some annual rye grass in the chips. It is about 2" high now in some places.  Hope that will also add enough to the soil to prevent erosion and maybe get a small grass area in the front of the house.

The fruit trees that got planted in 100 degree Aug heat are surviving and one of the pear trees decided to bloom.  The plum tree lost all of its leaves and I thought it might be a goner, but when the temps dropped new leaves popped out.  I kept watered them every day until the rains started.  Blueberries, figs, and grape vines are all growing.  

Can't stand to walk out in my back yard much.  The wood chips are loaded with stinkhorn mushrooms and spores and the smell is unpleasant.  My pregnant DIL lost it.

Last Oct duty is to finish repotting the citrus trees and get the greenhouse heaters set up just waiting for the cold.  With repotting I only have room for 12 citrus trees so am giving the other 5 away.  I don't know if they will ever bloom and produce but we are stlll hoping.  On the 4th year now for the calamuncie.  The key limes have bloomed and produced a few pea and marble sized fruits.  


 Kay

The immature 'egg' of certain stinkhorn species is edible*. I've eaten it -definitely odd. (*Do not eat wild mushrooms unless you are absolutely certain of the exact identification - preferably via training by an expert.) If you do the woodchip thing again you might want to try to seed the fresh wood chips with a nicer fungus - I think there are places that sell King Stropharia/Wine Cap mushroom spores. A much better edible than stinkhorns, and a far more tolerable garden companion even if you don't eat them. Puffballs like woodchips, too, but although they aren't malodorous, they are messy and hang around longer.

I really wanna get some Concord grapes going here, really miss them.  

Puffballs are edible too, I believe I have eaten a couple.  Not my cup of fungi.....

Who knew squirrels would eat garlic.  After harvesting my sweet potatoes, which the flying rats did not touch, I amended my concrete tubs and planted my garlic on Tue.  Yesterday I checked out the tubs and had to shoo the little monsters off.  All the big cloves dug.  Still have some of the bulblets that were on the stems.   GRRRR.   Fortunately I still have some bulbs from the summer harvest, but I need to get something to keep the squirrels off.

Kay