The fall and winter vegetable garden is a work in progress. I vowed to do better than last year, which is proving harder than anticipated even though I began sowing cool season seed middle of July. The ratty-looking radishes are ready now and spinach bolted during the recent heat wave. The first and second sets of broccoli seedlings are leggy and flowering, having been decimated by cabbage worms whose parents I chased around all summer with a tennis racket. At the time the old racket sounded easier than row cover, though in hindsight seems perhaps less sanguine.
There are a few actual success stories, including a big kale crop and a patch of happy endive that’s put on nice growth. I’m finding that succession planting, or sowing seeds every couple of weeks, has helped get plants that are on track. Yesterday I took advantage of the grey skies to clear the fading cranberry bean bushes, and to transplant raddichio starts and yet another iteration of broccoli seedlings to the pea patach. Even with shrinking daylight and cool rainy weather, there’s still a bit of time before winter shuts everything down.
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September 20, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Laura
Glad to hear that I’m not the only one struggling with getting the fall/winter garden going. I’m still trying to figure out when summer came and went – it seemed to take forever to get here and then disappeared as soon as it arrived. My radishes are ratty too.
September 21, 2008 at 8:53 pm
audrey
Laura, good to hear it’s not just my brown thumb. Sometimes I really wonder.
April 14, 2009 at 12:04 pm
mustard greens « Eat Local Northwest
[…] Two days of sun and warmth followed by a good spring shower, and we’re starting to see our own food at the table again. Not to mislead anybody here, as a recent pea patch visit yielded one weathered radish, six spinach leaves and some sorrel, but also healthy bunches of kale and green mustard. Love that winter garden! […]