Summer in TYs Veggie Patch Comes to a Close

yodelaaaaeeeeeeooooooooo! Time to cut back some of this summer overgrowth, among other things.

Out with the old, in with the new. A new TY tradition, new gardening gloves for the season. Goodbye, Summer 2010, and hello Autumn/Winter 2010-11. ")

Y wasted no time in ripping out the carcasses of our summer garden. Many trips were made to the compost bin holding areas.

All the while, I harvested about 140 pounds of worm castings.

Kitchen vegetable and fruit trimmings were turned into black gold, thanks to the mighty red wiggler worm. I gathered up the worms and castings from the bin, then split out the worms from the good stuff. Some wormies made their way into the garden, but the vast bulk of them are headed back to the bin where 120 pounds of fresh kitchen trimmings await.

This stuff is velvety-fine.

As rain threatened, we began to plant the fall garden. Here Y puts in heirloom sweet English peas. I asked Dad what his favorite fall garden crop was. Sweet English peas were at the top of the list. We've never tried these before, so hopefully we'll figure it out and will be as wowed by the sweet green delights as William Garner was.

As we began to plant, tinkling rain began. Here is a closeup of a pea seed about to be covered.

As rain poured, we moved into our outbuilding. Here I preps peat pots for broccoli, cauliflower and collards.

God willing, we'll actually remember which one is which tomorrow. Yes, there are name stakes in the peat pots. But Y couldn't find a grease pencil in time, so we're depending on geography and our wonderful memories to help us remember (please, Lord, let us remember which is which).

A couple of pictures of the last harvest of the 2010 summer. Y not only dug up the remnants of Summer 2010, but harvested along the way. Beautiful, ain't it? We took a lunch break and ate an amazing cut assortment of black beauty heirloom tomatoes, the sweetest, tastiest tomatoe there is (in my opinion).

Ooops.... forgot the okra. That huge one is for drying for seed. Next summer's planting will be here before you know it. :)

The first, albeit late, green bell pepper of the season! That'll be $2.99 please. (And DANG, it smells hot. I know Y has her hopes up, but so do I. Personally I love home-grown hot-as-holy-heck peppers, but she's sooooooooooo hoping a sweet bell arrives. Regardless of how this one tastes, it's win-win.)

I spent lots of time harvesting worm castings. I also screened and refined a batch to see, well, if we can sell this crap. (And I'm not speaking coarse here ... this is actual, truth-be-told worm poo, the best fertilizer in the whole world. Maybe someone will want to buy it off of eBay tomorrow. Let's see!)

Overview of garden - before and after.

Box #1 - before and after. We planted leeks & beets.

Box #2 - Before and after. Here we planted peas, turnips, garlic, spinach, kale.

Box #3 - before and after ... here we kept the bell peppers and fresh parsley. I added a top-dressing of worm castings.

Box #4 - before and after. "Thyme is on our side, yes it is." That's thyme in the foreground, with mariachi peppers allowed to turn red, plus and a little bit of basil in the background"

~J