Things Are Coming Along....

We've been very busy with fall clean up projects around here; among other things, trimming low branches off of long-neglected trees. In the front of this picture you can see our big, lovely jalepeno plant on its way indoors for the winter...


Here's a recent harvest basket.

And the Daikon that's probably going to eat Southern Maryland...

Broccoli - that seems to be doing well despite the cabbage moth carnage going on earlier this month. I haven't seen any more larvae out there.

Last but not least, this lovely flower is in bloom again. I bought and potted this back in April and have pretty much ignored it ever since. From time to time it blooms. It's always a pleasant surprise to me.

Sheet Mulching

I learned a new vocabulary word this weekend – permaculture.

A friend invited me to join her in doing some sheet mulching and I eagerly accepted, not even sure, at first, what that meant, except that it has to do with preparing a patch of nutrient-enriched soil, free of weeds, that will be easy for plant roots to penetrate, and which will not require tilling or digging come time to plant in the spring. It turns out this is a lot like the lasagna gardening that Teresa wrote about this spring.

I wasn’t sure where to do this in my yard; I had a spot picked out that I thought would get sun all day but as it turns out, it won’t, so I ended up doing it right in the middle of the spent summer garden. One advantage to this is that the area is already fenced (to keep the dogs away) and also it will kill off a bunch of the insidious weeds that have quite taken that area back over since everything was harvested. I’m thinking right now that I might finish off that side of the garden with sheet mulching, and then plant cereal rye in the other half as a winter cover crop, with the plans of harvesting the grain mid summer next year. That way, we’re using all the space that we have for something useful, without over-using and exhausting the soil. I ordered some cereal rye seed this morning. As far as the sheet mulched side of the summer garden space, I’m thinking right now that I might be able to plant some things there in the spring after all, as long as I’m not planting the same things that were there before. More on this later.

Anyway, my friend arrived with bales of straw (half for her and half for me), which we unloaded out of a borrowed pickup truck into my back yard. Then we set out on our collection adventure. The first stop was to bag up dead leaves from a donor’s yard. We collected 4 big bags; two for me and two for her. Then we headed out to get the manure. We went to a local horse farm that was happy to have us fill up the back of the pickup truck and haul it away. It had actually been sitting out in a pile for some time. It was pretty much already composted, which was nice – no smell.

When we got back to my place we did the following:

1. Put down a thick layer of cardboard and newspaper as a weed barrier.
2. Wet it down.
3. Put a layer of manure on top of this a couple inches thick.
4. Put a layer of dead leaves a couple inches thick.
5. Covered the whole thing with a thick layer of straw.

And that’s it! Apparently now I just wait, and let nature do its work. Come spring I’ll have a nice spot of rich, workable fertile soil for planting. I’m going to finish up that half of the garden in this fashion and we’ll see what happens!

Stay tuned for the sowing of my first cover crop…

Peppers in Pots

It's been getting a lot cooler at night, though you wouldn't know it today. It's the 3rd of October and it's 82 degrees outside!

I wanted to show you my Serrano pepper, the larger of the two plants to the left. It survived the transplant pretty well and has been steadily putting out peppers ever since. And guess what that is there beside it? My habanero plant! Remember the peaked-looking yellow freebie that I got back at the end of July? Well, it recovered. It bushed out, and greened up, and is covered with little white blossoms and with little green peppers!

Surprisingly enough, the anaheim and carmen are both still alive. The anaheim is still putting out peppers at a decent rate, though they're about half the size they were when it was in the garden. Boy, I really blew it digging those up when I did.. That was really dumb. The carmen plant I swear has been dead but today I noticed it seems to have some new growth on it. So I brought them both inside too, along with the eggplant, which seems to be setting up another fruit. I'm going to see if I can't rig myself up a tiny greenhouse for these things in the vestibule on the south side of the house, where there's a lot of light. Eventually I might have to put a little heater in it, as it doesn't get enough light to keep it that warm. We'll see. I'm hoping that by the time that's too much of a probem that we'll have more house!

Cross-striped cabbage moth larvae

Does this look familiar?

I identified (at least one of) my pests!!!!! Read up on this guy here.

As usual, my control tactic is hand-picking. I guess I'd better troop out to the garden this evening and make sure there aren't more crawling around.

Even cooler, those yellow eggs that I showed you a post or two ago are cabbage moth eggs, so they are two parts of the same problem! I really feel like I've just learned and accomplished something!!!

What's Eating My Broccoli?

If you're asking yourself if you've heard this before - you have. Here's today's culprit. Actually, I probably killed 20 or 30 of them today, of varying sizes. What the heck is this? I've looked through web sites about broccoli pests; I've read descriptions and scanned pictures but can't seem to ID this guy.


I also found this nice little nest of sticky yellow eggs. Lovely. Gone...

Here's my spinach, coming along.

And one of the 4 or 5 kale plants that came up from seed, long after I stopped looking for them...

In other news, I pulled up a turnip, a rutabega, a daikon, and two long lost sweet potatoes that were about the size of my daughter at birth (or something that seems very like that....). I have tons and tons of greens to freeze. Things are really moing along now. I got my garlic yesterday and got that planted out. I ended up planting about 20 different cloves. We'll see how that all goes. I got a tarragon plant and set that out there in some of my empty space, and I also did another sowing of turnip seeds. What the heck. I have the space, I have the seeds, and I'm pretty doggone sure I have the time for them to mature, so I figured I might as well.

Weeding with a Hoe at Dusk

Ahhh...nothing like a few stolen minutes alone in the garden at dusk. The little one fell asleep last night at 6:30 and I was able to sneak out to pick some greens and check out the goings on out there. I have some huge Daikon, and it looks like I'll have some turnips in another week or two. It's no longer difficult for me to tell that this is the kohlrabi.



I came inside with a nice basket full of greens - collards, a little lettuce, some mini red bells (they're under the greens) and a generous handful of jalepenos.



Funny, I think I dreamed about peppers last night...I had a big bag full of jalepenos and serranos and I was handing them out to my father-in-law and brothers-in-law.....My serrano that I potted and that has been on the deck doesn't look fantastic, but it's putting out peppers lilke crazy, and has peppers all over it, and it's getting ready to bloom again. It's getting crisp around here in the evenings, so I brought it inside last night and put it in front of the window, where I'm hoping it'll live through the winter...

My cabbages look like they want to start heading up. I did find two little green worms on one head last night...

And this!!!! Yuck! This cabbage is FULL of eggs.

I checked out out all the others and this seemed to be the only one that was infested. So I trooped inside for a spoon and a big pitcher of water and I dug out and smushed the eggs as much as I could, and then doused the whole thing really hard with the water to wash the rest of the eggs away. I don't know if that was the best thing to do, but I had to do something. I figured that even if some of the eggs lived, hopefully without hatching on thier food source they wouldn't make it...

I did find some kind of clear slug-looking thing on a broccoli leaf too. Some of my broccoli and brussels sprouts are getting a little eaten, but not too bad. I haven't seen any more harlequin bugs. I hoping to get a chance this weekend to pick up some manure compost and give the broccoli and brussels sprouts a side dress of it. I could also use more straw (and some newspaper). I did weed quite a bit last night with a hoe, which went pretty well as the weeds are all small.

One additional note: I'm having so much fun doing this blog, that I've decided to start an additional blog chronicling various non garden-specific self-sufficiency issues. If you're interested in you can check that out here.

White Spot?

I think I'm getting some white spot on a few kale (below left) and collard (below right) leaves. I don't know for sure that's what it is, but my research indicates that white spot is the most likely name for what's going on. I pulled off the affected leaves, and it doesn't seem to be spreading much at all. Not sure at this time what to do about it or if I'll need to do anything about it at all. But it's a situation to keep an eye on.


I've been harvesting a few greens and radishes here and there, but yesterday, with great satisfaction, I brought in my first fall basket full of goodies: kale, collards, lettuce, easter egg radishes, mini red bells, and jalepenos.

Yes, I'm still getting a nice supply of peppers. I'm embarassed to say that I nearly killed my anaheim and did kill off my carmen plant trying to transplant them into pots. BAD MOVE. Though the serrano made it no problem, these other two were much bigger and I guess I disturbed the roots too much. It's really too bad, because I lost what would have been a bumper crop of both of them. I'll know better next time.

An update on my eggplant - it's still hanging in there, but I have yet to eat a single eggplant, since my daughter, in her great enthusiasm, kept picking my babies! I asked her to please not do that again unless I said it was okay. So the very next time we were on the deck, she was playing over near the pots and asked me if it was okay. A little distracted, I said, "Sure, it's okay", not realizing what I was agreeing to. The next thing I know, she'd popped off another baby eggplant. I have not one time fussed at her about this, because I'm happy that she thinks they're as beautiful as I do. But my hopes for eggplant this year have turned into a science experiment about whether or not eggplants picked prematurely will ripen in a window like tomatoes and peppers (they won't). And it looks like all I may get out of my eggplant experiments this year is experience.

But hey, that's okay. Next year I'll have so many eggplants I'm going to turn into an eggplant...