Garden Update - The Fall Garden

The autumnal equinox is almost here!  On September 22nd at 11:09 P.M. EDT, it will be Fall.

What does that mean?  It means I've ripped up my tomatoes, birdfeeder gourds, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, beans, and bell peppers (the latter three didn't do well at all because of their location).  It also means that it's time for fall planting.

I moved one of my raised bed gardens (the one that didn't get enough sun) to the back yard in the middle of all the dead grass (lol), and filled it with good garden soil.  In it, I planted about 4 feet of double-rowed sugar snap peas (probably 40 or so plants), about 3 square feet of mesclun (aka, spring mix salad lettuce), and 6 broccoli plants which I purchased at Wal-Mart.  Hopefully, the broccoli will survive the warm September without going to seed.  We're still in the mid 80s to low 90s in the 10 day forecast.  The record warm summer might turn into a record warm fall, and I may regret planting my broccoli this early.

I moved the trellises that my cucumbers were on into this garden for the peas.

About 2 weeks ago, I also seeded a bunch more peas - 2 varieties of regular ol' peas and some snow peas.  Most of these seedlings were 4-8 inches tall now and needed to be transplanted, and that meant figuring out where I was going to put them.  I put 24 of them into my topsy turvy strawberry planter.   I decided that growing strawberries was too much work but it might work well for pea vines.  We'll see.  I also put 4 plants each in two 12" pots with tomato cages for the vines to climb on, and I planted more of the peas in flower boxes hanging off the deck.  I don't think these will do particularly well because the deck doesn't get much sun anymore (sigh).   I was going to just have them trail out of the flower box and essentially hang down but they really won't get any sun that way so I'm going to have to put some kind of light weight trellis in place for them to grow vertically out of the flower boxes.

I also have some sunflower seedlings growing and I put them into one of the side yard gardens.  They won't do very well, it's far too late to plant sunflowers and that garden doesn't get enough sun, but I've got nothing else to do in that garden so whatever.

I planted some leeks and green onions in seedling containers but I'm not really sure if I'm going to plant them.  They probably should've gone directly into the ground but I don't really have any place to put them where they'll get enough sun. 

Spring/Summer Garden Successes

Sweet corn, cayenne peppers, jalapeno peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, birdfeeder gourds, basil, cilantro.

I did learn some lessons here.  My sweet corn would've produced even better had I assisted in the pollenation, but it worked out pretty well.  Cayenne and Jalapeno Peppers did fantastically and produced a TON of peppers.  The cilantro did great until it got really REALLY hot and it was dead by July.  Too hot for cilantro.

Summer Garden Failures

Tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, green beans, cantaloupe, pumpkin.

I over-watered my topsy turvy tomatoes and they got diseased.  The tomatoes in the 12" pots were overcrowded and too difficult to maintain, and the ones in the ground didn't really have enough good soil to work with (only about 4" of garden soil on top of rock hard clay).  The eggplant, bell peppers, and green beans were in a raised bed garden that really only got 4-5 hours of sunshine and they just didn't do very well..

I only got one cantaloupe - probably not enough sunshine for it either.  I had two pumpkin plants that only produced one pumpkin.  But then, the pumpkin was in a 12" pot and it was far too difficult to keep watered - the vine died in July, and the pumpkin got to around 10" in diameter.