It looks like summer is winding down. The seed heads are drying on my zinnias. Summer crops are fading. Even though the fall crops are perking up, the garden has a different feel to it now. Its time to gather the harvest and save seeds for next year.
"summer's lease hath all too short a date" Shakespeare
I haven't been doing much in the garden this week. I picked lots of tomatoes, cucumbers and chile peppers of course. And this weekend I planted some radish seeds in the sunniest spot in my garden - an heirloom variety called Black Round Spanish. I'm hoping I can get the roots to grow properly this time, even though my last two plantings failed. I'm carefully tending four varieties of lettuce seedlings that I planted indoors two weeks ago. Once it cools down, I'll transplant them into the garden. My fall pinto beans and peas are growing well without my help. But I've been spraying my pumpkin and squash leaves for powdery mildew with a Safers sulphate spray. The squashes continue to produce fruit, but the leaves are heavily mildewed. I've read that mildew is because of too much shade, a constant challenge in my yard. I also continue to water the garden, all the while checking the skies for signs of rain clouds. We are having very dry weather in the Boston area that is close to being a serious drought.
"... the garden has a different feel ..."
ReplyDeleteIndeed it does. Nite-time lows here in 5a are starting to dip below 55 and daytime highs never exceed 84. Though my tomato harvest is at its peak I can see that some of the tomato plants are near their end.... while my indet. varieties have some life in them still, the det. ones are begging to have their last fruit harvested and pulled up for the compost bin. Little here usually makes it to avrg. first frost (Oct 10?).
-S
For some odd reason, we hit 96F two days ago. But now its cooled off.
ReplyDeleteWe usually frost in early October, like you. It seems that my garden didn't frost until November 20 last year. Nearly everything was dead and composted long before that.