Sweet Potatoes and Radishes.

Picked today remaining sweet potatoes from old garden; few beans for dinner, found one purple potato hiding in the bed, and whole lot of radishes. Later picked more carrots that didn't make it into large picture but were weighted and used for dinner.

I used the bed that had sweet potatoes to plant a lot of garlic for next year. There were couple of heads of Elephant, German Porcelain, extra hardy german, and extra large NY variety.

First week of october harvest

This week very slim pickings - some of the last cabbages and beans, some kale and peppers for dinner and whole lot of herbs that will be dried for winter. We're expecting frost this weekend so might as well pick the herbs and dry them now instead of wasting.

These two didn't make into the general picture but they were picked at the same time.

Maitake part 2

Nailed two  more beauties today on my way home from work - I spoted them from the car going through the canyon. I love this time of the year!

Another Maitake harvest

I went for a walk in a local park by my work in central jersey and just in time before rain hit i was able to pick these beauties. The first wave of early Maitake past but the October one is just starting and they're popping up all over parks under black oak.  These will make several nice alternative protein meals for winter.

Fall garden update

Today is another cold and wet day so I spent couple of minutes sniping just enough to eat for dinner. Unfortunately I forgot to weight it all so one picture instead.

While I was there I also took some shots on what is still alive and keeps growing as fall and winter.

 

Some greens like swiss chard and kale, lonely pea that survived the bunny attack; and a lot of brussels sprouts that are just now sizing up.

And just starting to grow are salads and winter carrots - these were seeded all over the garden.

 

End of September harvest

It's been very cold and rainy lately and definitely feel like fall time - trees flared up in colors and leafs are dropping down like a colorful rain shower. This weekend I cleaned out my tomato beds - which left me with quite a bit of green tomatoes on hands. Not quite sure what I'll be doing with them. Some of the large ones will probably turn color but others might do green tomato salsa.  I also picked a container of basil to dry for winter.

Some of the tomatoes were ripe or close to it so i separated them and put in the kitchen with some peppers, beans, first fall radishes, few carrots for snacking, one lonely eggplant, last two tiny cantaloupe and one small head of cabbage that I will use in soup.

I also finished cleaning up community garden - these sweet potatoes came from there. I'll get them cured and in couple of weeks they'll go back to the food kitchen.

Ordering more seeds

Garden can be cheap and/or it can be expensive at the same time. Depends on what you do with your space and what you plant. You can choose to invest once in only a handful of varieties of your favorite staples and just save seeds year to year to keep the cost down. Or if you're like me, who wants to try as many varieties as there are available - it gets very costly. Oh well. I always prefer variety so pay I will. So far for the next planting season I've ordered:

From Johnny's seed - Diva and Northern Pickling cucumbers,Butterbeans, Rocdor yellow bush beans, Red Noodle beans, Fordhook lima beans, Velour purple bush beans, Gita Yard long beans.

From Renee's garden - Sunflower Snack Seed; Beans - Bush Tricolor, French Gold, Pole Tricolor; Cucumber - Endeavor and Baby Persian; Spinach - Oriental Giant;  Snow Peas - Oregon Giant; Poppy - Hungarian Breadseed and Heirloom Pepperbox (great for baking sweets).

From Jung Seeds - Candy Mountain Foxglove, New Millennium Stars Mix Delphinium, Honeoye Strawberry,  German Porcelain Garlic

From Burpee - Blueberry - Chandler; Currant - Red Lake, Carrots - Big Top, Sugarsnax & Purple Dragon; Radish - White Beauty, Daikon Long.

Oh yeah, I also ordered row covers for both hoop house and for spring floating covers to avoid the bug problem I had this year.

I really need to keep out of the garden centers for a while to avoid buying anything else for the garden :)