The Mid-September Garden

Oh September, how I love and hate you all at the same time!!!

The gentle glide into fall is a time of year I look forward to every year.  The cooler nights, the comfy clothes, the hot tea and hot toddies, pumpkins everywhere and Halloween right around the corner...Oh, I do love it all!

However, the sad, declining garden and all of the clean up that comes with it, is something I really, really do not enjoy!  The ripping out of once happy, healthy plants, and the end of bountiful harvests...let alone all of the work that goes back into the soil and the drying and preserving of the remaining harvests...yes, all of the time that it takes to wrap up the season and set ourselves up for success when the weather once again breaks next spring.

If the last several days of rains and flooding is any indication of the fall and winter that lie ahead of us, we're in for a pretty intense, cold and wet season. According to the Farmer's Almanac, it just might be a heck of a winter for most of us around the U.S....

We're definitely due for some substantial snow, but I guess time will tell if it really dumps this year or not.  In the meantime, there's work to do...

There's all the clean up to do in the coop and run after all the rain we've had recently and another broody chicken to break before it gets too chilly for me to feel OK about putting her in solitary confinement...

There are the onions to pull and cure and the tired (and a few sick) tomatoes to pull the last fruits from or simply pull out all together...

There are bees to think about ordering to fill our empty hive with in the spring and the pallet beds to tally up, clean up and assess whether or not they're carrying their weight...

There is the Echinacea to wait to be ready for me to harvest a few of it's roots and there are nasty pests to find so they can stop eating what remains of the summer bounty...

And, of course, there are the beds to strip and leave to rest and there are the beds to prep and get ready to re-plant for the fall and winter:

First up is the squash bed that was decimated by Squash Vine Borers (vile creatures, they are!) which will be the home of our (ordered, yet not received) Garlic.  I have promised myself that, with this round of garlic, I will protect it from the roving chickens throughout the cold months!  I'm thinking about putting some kind of wire mesh over the bed secured by nails or screws driven into the sides of the bed so the chickens don't even have the option of jumping into the bed.  Thoughts?

The Three Sisters bed will be over-wintered with carrots and greens (spinach, chard and kale) that have been started under our grow lights inside.  Everything beneath the plastic covering will be heavily mulched with straw and I am keeping my fingers crossed for some early greens and carrots next year!

And there is so much more work to do that isn't mentioned here, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.

With so much work ahead (and a baby on the way in three short weeks), it's a good thing we enjoy this little urban farm of ours...all of it's bounty and work and challenges!  So now, right now, with a break in the rain that sun shining softly on the backyard, I will go for a walk and harvests a few things, because that's the point of it all right?  To actually enjoy the space we've worked so hard to create :-)  Imagine that!

Harvest totals for the past week:

• Peppers 
• Jalapenos - 4 oz
• Ring-o-Fire Cayenne - 6 oz
• Shishito - 4 oz
• Tomatoes 
• Bi-Color Cherry - 15 oz
• Black from Tula - 8 oz
• Indigo Rose - 2 lb 1 oz
• Orange Flesh Purple Smudge - 4 oz
• Roma - 10 lb 13 oz
• Yellow Taxi - 4 oz 
• Eggs - 56

How's everything going in your garden as we shift into fall?

xoxo,
M

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