November 2010 Archives

Today is officially the first day I've noticed frost on the ground this fall.  I have to admit that I may be noticing the frost today rather than a previous day because my darling cat decided to wake me up early this morning. 

Anyway - the garden is definitely toast now.  So I now need to go salvage the last of the peppers and tomatoes.  One happy day I'll rip out the old plants and prep the beds for next year.  That is so not happening today because my list of chores has already been determined, and it is lengthy.

Speaking of frost, here's a nice article from Organic Gardening magazine about Predicting Frost. (I haven't been making predictions; I've just been waiting for it to happen. :P

I took these pictures on Halloween.  That was two days ago, and as far as I know, it still hasn't frosted yet. Curious.

The green tomatoes I picked finally started to ripen.

Next year, I guess this will be my strategy for getting tomatoes before the critters do - pick them green and ripen them inside.

Here are pictures of the gigantic zucchini.  The plant is looking pretty unhappy now (so I figured I'd better hurry and take a picture of it!), but it was huge.  The leaves were as high as my waist.


I'm supposed to be growing mustard in this big terra cotta pot, but so far only mushrooms, left-over chard, and the radish I impulsively stuck in the dirt are visible.  The mustard has sprouted, but it's hard to see the purple sprouts against the soil/leaves mixture.  I have no idea what kind of mushrooms these are - I didn't plant them.  (And don't worry, I'm not going to eat them!)

I also didn't plant this tomato.  I had a tomato in a bucket in the general area last year, and so I guess that's where this one came from. (I rearranged it so that it's draped onto the front porch.)  It has a few blooms on it, but it's running critically late on the whole fruit-production front.


This is what the beautyberry looks like in the fall:

I was hoping that the golden leaves would hang out on the branches so I could enjoy the color contrast between the berries and the leaves, but no luck - the leaves turn yellow and hit the ground shortly thereafter.