Showing posts with label fall vegetable garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall vegetable garden. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Vegetables in Our September Garden This Fall


Fall gardens can still produce good eatin' for your family. Just because the weather is cooler, does not mean you have to give up on gardening until spring. Today I share a picture tour of our fall garden. (The last post tells you what we pulled out of the garden. This one tells you what is still growing and producing for us.)


Please note, since the last post, we have no more sweet corn or zucchini. 


The strawberry plants are in the garden. Click on the previous post for information and photos of our new strawberry bed.


Now join me as we check out what delicious veggies we DO have!!


We have been very pleased with the Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Yes, they grew very tall and my DH had to add more concrete re-enforcement wire to make an eight foot support for them.


Pole beans are long, thin, and tender. Not what I imagined. A happy surprise for me.









Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are all good growers in cool weather.  


 Garden Tip:  Sprinkle one teaspoon of ammonium sulphate (21-0-0) around the base of these plants after they have been growing in the garden for four-five weeks in order to promote growth. (The numbers indicate the amount of Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium in the material.)






Broccoli is tasty again in the cool weather and no worry about finding the green worms on the plants with cold temperatures.





We are already digging up the sweet potatoes, but leaving some to grow larger. 


Tomatoes are flourishing on the vines. We have fantastic crops of these versatile red fruits.


We also have cauliflower, peppers, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, and onions in the garden. 


I hope you are enjoying some good eatin' from your garden this fall.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Vegetable Garden September Update

Clearing out the garden...end of season
Middle of September and the vegetable gardening season is near its end. Here is an update on what we have removed from our garden. You can see from the photo, there are large empty spaces now.

We have pulled out:
27 pole bean plants, the first planting
8 foot row of jade green beans
8 foot row of yellow wax pencil pod beans
8 foot row of purple beans
My DH reports we harvested approximately 50 pounds of beans from these rows. We are currently harvesting the next planting of pole beans.
We saved five large pumpkins for our grandkids. The punkins, not the kids, each weighed about 25 lbs.

Pumpkins and butternut squash harvested and area now planted in new strawberry bed (see previous post on 9/15/11)

One lonesome zucchini left

Pulled muskmelon and watermelon plants
Last planting of corn

Removed four plantings of sweet corn. There were four eight foot rows in each planting. We planted Northern Extra Sweet..each planting got sweeter! We ended up with short ears of corn due to the dry weather. Still tasted good.

Dug all potatoes--Red Pontiac, Yukon, German Butterball, and Fingerlings (which grew the best and our first year to try them)

13 Avalon butternut squash

Next posting I'll tell what is left in our September garden!!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Fall is Here in Michigan..Time for Pumpkins and Squash


Our pumpkin vines got the powdery mildew early this year and began dying off sooner than usual. My DH picked the pumpkins although not completely orange. But as you can see from the photo, the pumpkins are getting orange.

Notice the two outer pumpkins lying on their sides. They do not have bottoms. Our kindergarten grandson brought it home from school last spring, so we planted it in the garden. These football shaped "pumpkins" are the result. We do not know the variety, but it certainly does not make good jack-o-lantern "punkins"!

If you look closely at the pumpkin on the left, you will see how my DH carved our granddaughter's name in it early in the season. As the pumpkin grows, the name stretches larger. It turned out very well this year.

Here is a close-up of Aubrey's pumpkin


Last year we had way too many pumpkins, so my DH removed some to allow the fruit to get the nutrients and grow bigger. Well, we just barely had five for our five grandkids. Guess he won't get so culling happy next year. Whew!