Tag Archives: gardening

So, remember how were super-hungry and tired the day we made shakshouka for dinner? That’s because I’d been gardening all day, and Zac had been building this fantastic potting table for the greenhouse! I swear, it belongs in Country Living.

It’s quite shallow, but runs about 2/3 the full length of the greenhouse, and is exactly the perfect height for me. There’s a lower shelf for storing flowerpots, seed trays, and other big things. But the best part is the slatted section for potting, which features a drawer to catch and reuse any extra potting soil. Just another reason to look forward to winter– I’m in love!

It’s an ironic truth that the late summer– when it’s hottest and driest, and gardening interest begins to flag– is the busiest time of the year in the garden. Not only is there harvesting to be done (although the crazy heat put a damper on some of that), but it’s time for the fall garden to be put in, and there are preparations to be made so that next spring’s garden is as fruitful and floribundant as it is now. It’s a time of year to test any gardener’s dedication, and a time of year that will pay off for the longest time.

We had a couple from Texas stay with us for a farmstay this past spring who joked that the summer was their winter, and that the coming of the cool weather in the autumn was their springtime. I think it’s a pretty fair assessment and a smart way of looking at things to consider the late summer and early fall a second spring in the garden.

As such, we’re doing lots of work to get the garden ready for fall. These are those cabbage seedlings from a few weeks ago:

We’ve thoroughly enriched the old garlic bed with compost for transplanting the seedlings once they get a little bit bigger:

We’ve also got a few beds in cover crops– cowpeas and alfalfa– which will help protect and enrich the soil for the next 8 months:

It isn’t all work and no play, though! The herb garden in the front that Diane helped me plant is doing great!

The sunflowers and German chamomile are worth their weight in gold– I feel so happy whenever I see them. Zac and I are thinking of planting the whole fenceline with sunflowers next year, but I don’t know whether or not we’ll have the energy (or if Jerry will reach his long llama-neck over the fence and eat them all!).

The tiny, tiny crop of raspberries is nearly ripe:

and I have a feeling that, in about two weeks, the coronets of blossoms on our second-string tomato plants will be replaced by wreaths of fruit. We’ll be ripping out the beds of tomatoes pretty soon to plant peas– we’re hoping to squeeze in a fall crop– but these plants will stand along the garden fenceline until the frost comes.

And the brave leeks that Emily helped me plant are also doing wonderfully. The super-thick layer of mulch they’re growing in not only keeps their stalks blanched, but also keeps their roots cool and moist.

How is your garden doing in this record-breaking heat? What are you doing to get ready for the fall?

We’ve got a whole bed of peppers waiting in the wings behind the corn (thank you all for your kind– and very helpful!– comments on that post, by the way), peppers which, by rights, shouldn’t be here in the first place.

Since we lost our first set of pepper seedlings in the Great Tomato Freeze of mid-April, I remember planting the seeds for these guys in early May. During our Spring Shearing party in mid-May, the little overloaded (my fault) greenhouse collapsed, which wiped out a full half of the seedlings– all our jalapenos and most of the Thai chiles.

The plants that survived have endured all sorts of disasters. I remember planting the tiny seedlings in June with Charlotte, and, honestly, I think we half-forgot they were there. With the dramatic and beautiful rows of corn acting as a screen, who remembered to bother looking at some scrabbly little pepper plants?

Somewhere in there, Zac put a thick straw mulch on them, but we’ve otherwise left them to their own devices. Luckily, they love the hot and dry weather we’ve been having.

The large majority of our plants are Alma Paprika peppers, which, the seed packet promises, change from a creamy white through yellow and orange to a cherry red. After ripening, you can either eat them fresh or smoke them to make paprika (guess which one we’re planning on doing?).

The plants are loaded with peppers, glossy, healthy, and still flowering– all there is to do is endure the wait for these I-can’t-believe-we-actually-have-them peppers to ripen.

Once the season’s over (come on, Autumn!) I’m planning on digging up a few plants, in the hopes that I can get them to produce peppers throughout the winter in the greenhouse. If any of you have ever done anything like that before– maybe with an ornamental pepper?– I’d love some tips!