Cold, Rainy October Garden Update

Turns out I spoke too soon about the fungus gnats. They came back in force. I think I need to repot this in some new, dry soil, and maybe add an inch or so of sand on top. Right now it's just sitting on the back porch in the dampness (which I know isn't helping anything) but I don't want all those bugs in my kitchen, and quite honestly I've been in something of a funk this past week, so I haven't done anything about it

And since I seem to have a habit of leading off with bad news...

Today was my first day out into the garden in almost a week. It has been cold cold cold and wet wet wet. Today it was still wet, but at least there wasn't anything drizzling down out of the sky. So we ventured out, and got a good big basket full of greens, and a beet, and a turnip, and a rutabega, and I'm pretty sure I have one nice big purple kohlrabi that's about ready to come inside to be sampled, and all of that is good news of course, so wait a minute...what the heck?



Now as anyone who has been reading this blog for 6 months knows, I have done some battle with bugs. This is NOT the work of a bug. As you can see from the bottom front of the picture these two plants are right by the rabbit-guard fence, and this has the look of some animal that reached over the fence and just started a-munching. I would say deer, but that just seems awful far-fetched. I know that the rabbit guard wouldn't do doodly against a hungry deer, but you see I have a six foot high privacy fence around my whole back yard. I suppose a REALLY determined deer might, possibly, jump it, but I've had the fence for about 5 years now and have never seen a deer inside of it.

My second guess would be groundhog. We have a nice plump one living under one of our sheds, inside the castle grounds, so to speak. Is it possible that he's tired of eating grass and has only just discovered the buffet? We'll have to keep an eye on that. Up till now I've been pretty live and let live with the groundhog (giving him a running start before I let the dogs out, and all that). But I have my limits.

Below you'll see a smattering of turnip seedlings. (The big ones are the turnip seedlings; the little ones are weeds.) This is from my newly planted crop which I'm hoping to have for storage. I actually thinned them out a lot and then replanted about a dozen of the seedlings in new holes. I don't know if that'll take, but they seem pretty doggone hardly, so I don't see why not.

This little beauty is a volunteer hierloom tomato of as-yet-undetermined variety. It'd be nice if he lived.

You'll see my hansel eggplant is STILL blooming and still forming little eggplants, though I have yet to eat one.

And this...ah. This. This would be my nicely planted rye seeds after 5 days of rain have pounded the heck out of them. All right, so I wasn't THAT careful about planting them, but I did kind of hoe up rows and I did make sure they were covered with the requisite 1 - 2 inches of dirt, and then FIVE DAYS of relentlessly pounding drizzle. However, there is a bright side. Two bright sides actually. The first is that the birds haven't eaten all the seed. The second is that upon closer inspection, these seeds seem to have sprouted little white tails, so it would appear that all is not (yet) lost.

Among the good news is that my jalepeno plant, indoors for a week now, is still growing lustily, and we're still picking peppers. Hang in there, big fella. I can make it worth your while.

And we DID have broccoli for dinner a few days ago. Broccoli and collards, in fact, in a lovely fall pasta dish, with shrimp from the freezer, garlic I wish I'd grown, and plenty of hot red pepper flakes. Yum!