The Official End of Summer

Well, this weekend I pulled out what was left of the tomato plants, and harvested what I think are the last of the sweet potatoes. It's possible that there may still be some sweet potatoes in the ground. I won't know for sure until I really start pulling out the vines.

This weekend I managed to get two bales of hay into the garden. I'm doing a much thicker mulch than last year. As my root veggies get a little bigger so that I can do it without squashing them I'll be mulching around them too.


Here's some sweet potatoes I prepared this weekend. I wanted to show you this because there are a couple of the potato ends that broke off during harvesting and I wanted to show you how they kind of scab over (the white part). I think it's called "corking". I was surprised at how incredibly easy it is to scrape and nick the sweet potatoes when getting them out of the ground. They really are thin-skinned. I've been "curing" them (I put that in quotes because I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. I guess time will tell by how long they last me) in the vestibule in cardboard boxes in front of the window because it's been both warm and humid in there. This weekend my Root Cellaring, Natural Cold Storage For Fruits and Vegetables book by Mike and Nancy Bubel arrived. It seems to be awesome and unbelievably comprehensive. After reading about sweet potatoes I decided to leave this weekend's batch curing where they were, but added a damp towel to drape them with for extra humidity. I have to redampen this towel every morning. But so far so good.

The verdict is still out about whether or not these green sprouts are spinach or weeds. If they're weeds, then not a single spinach seed sprouted. It seems reasonable to hope that it might be spinach, as I covered this area with spinach seeds. We'll see.

Here's a few tiny heads of red-speckled romaine lettuce coming up from seed.

Ah...and this is the piece de la resistance, my GRAND IDEA. I want to actually start composting, and I'm going to do it in this.

When I say "composting" I mean as opposed to what's going on above in the left of the picture. This is a dog kennel I bought last February that the dogs refused to be kenneled in. We've been using it as a double fence along one of our fence lines to keep our dogs and the neighbor's dogs from scratching and digging at the fence line and getting into a barking frenzy, and it's actually worked great, but it's in the way of the addition we're putting on the house right now and so needed to be moved. Since I needed a space big enough to build an actual compost pile this fall, and I also needed to keep the dogs OUT of it, this will work great. It's 10x10, big enough to build a 4 x6ish pile on one side, and have room to turn it to the other side. It's full of grass clippings right now. My next step will be to get out there and get all of the grass clippings heaved up in a pile in one corner, probably the front left one, so that I can start piling up other kitchen scraps in the back. I have found a "recipe" for building a compost pile in Steve Solomon's Gardening When It Counts, Growing Food In Hard Times so when I get around to actually doing that I will be sure to fill you in. That'll be great because it involves me getting a new toy.....a pitchfork!!!!!