Okay, back to gardening business… Has anyone else given up for the season? It started pouring today in Portland and I have pretty much thrown in the towel at this point.
Aphids larvae is crawling all over my nasturtium. I chopped all the swiss chard off to the ground. The chicken coop door is wide open for the girls to free range and wreak havoc. The zucchini plants are starting to waste away in the shorter Fall days. Good reminder that next year I need to be better about making sure there are enough flowers in bloom all season long to support the ladybugs. I think they have abandoned the garden and let the aphids win. Yuck.
Everything is going to just compost in place, but it’s time I gather any leftover produce from outside and make quick work of it in the kitchen. A friend sent me this great article in the New York Times called Making Over the Much-Maligned Eggplant. It was entertaining to read and gives me some new ideas for harvesting the last of the eggplant. Either I had good luck or they are just the easiest thing to grow.
Ha! Renee you made it longer than I did. I gave up the ghost on all my flower beds, my tomatoes and my cucumbers last week when it started to rain. We didn’t get a single cuke this year…
I think it’s safe to use quotations when you type “summer” referring to this year’s season. We are still holding on.. mostly to planned vegetables, like beets that we store in the ground.
Our chard is got a bit of dust smut on it (don’t know the name, white powdery stuff), but much is still holding out. The Lacinato kale is looking fine and I think we’ll try to overwinter it.
The tomatoes are busting left and right, though most did ripen before the end, which rocked.
Our huge, ginormous, impressive “Love Lies Bleeding” decorative amaranths are still holding strong, and the birds are starting to harvest the ripe seeds. They’ll be thrown to the chickens soon though, perfect fodder — greens and seeds.