Autumn Is In The Air

The summer garden is still is peak production mode, though things are starting to die down a bit in some areas.  The winter squash have all but died back due to rampant powdery mildew.  I was told I could spray them with a fungicide, but I don't like the idea of spraying something I am going to eat with a potential toxin, so I just let them go.  They were mostly done growing their crop anyways and when they are completely dead I will just go through and pick the ripened squash.  The bush beans have also turned brown exposing legions of dried bean pods in their wake.  In my spare moments between processing the harvest I will pick and shell the dried beans little by little.  

I have made a few final plantings for the fall garden as of a couple weeks ago.  I filled out the remainder of the carrot bed which has started to come up nicely.  I hope they have enough time to grow to a decent size before the frosts hit.  The carrot bed is one area that will be going under a hoop house arrangement so I can pick fresh carrots well into winter.  I also planted another round of lettuce in the lettuce bed.  Some of the lettuce took so long to come up that I had given up hope of a decent fall harvest, but sure enough there were some tiny seedlings hiding amongst the overgrown weeds in that bed.  Looks like we will be having some delicious fall salads after all.

The cabbage I planted about a month ago have really started to fill out and look like they might even make some small heads for me before they are through.  I also squeezed in a couple sickly brussel sprout seedlings from the nursery though only time will tell if I will get any sort of crop out of them.  I just hope they went in late enough to avoid the aphid problem the other brussel sprouts have succumbed to.

The onions have started to fall over by the dozen now and are ready to harvest.  I have been waiting for a sunny day so I can pull them and cure them in the sun all day before they go into winter storage.  If we keep getting sprinkles on a regular basis I will have to cure them in the back room like the garlic.

Fall is fast approaching even though the days are still warm.  There has been a chill in the air at night and some of the trees have started to change color even though it is only August.  There was even snow in the mountains to the south of us a couple of weeks ago, though it didn't stick around long.  This summer seems like it went by super fast and was shorter than normal.  I am hoping the autumn is more drawn out, but with the weather behaving the way it has been I have a feeling we are in for a long winter this year.  I hope I grew enough to keep our bellies full through the cold nights coming our way.