October 1, 2015

Good morning, it seems like we are in that transition time again. Moving from summer veggies into winter veggies. Fall sowing was delayed due to the soil being too warm. The only sowing that did not come up was the kohlrabi. I was really surprised because it was a 100% failure. It just did not like the hot soil. A second sowing and a few overcast days latter and I see nearly a 100% germination. Somethings you just can't force.

Funny how quickly the temps fell. It became somewhat difficult adjusting moisture levels with the amount of fabric covering the seedlings and the sudden temperature drops along with cloud cover. This caused a little dampening off of seedlings. I seeded heavy so I should have a full plant grid under the fabric.

I hope to begin harvesting chard and kale from the new bed within the month. This will coincide with boc choy, Asian greens and spinach to soon follow. There will be lettuce soon especially since I seem to have thwarted the lettuce”mower”. It really has been one bug after another this year.

The tomato pin worms arrived late this year but I am being diligent and keeping their population down. I am getting a few toms with damage but most of the crop is clean. The long keepers were a little slow to begin re-blooming and setting fruit but I am still optimistic to have some lat winter toms. Time will tell. The sweet harvest is progressing and I am almost done with the second bed. I am curious to see how the beds that I just stuck unrooted cuttings in the ground do in comparison to the purchased rooted cuttings. Save where I know there are root knot nematodes, the beds look lovely. I even saw some sweet potato blooms.

I mentioned that a javelina was visiting the garden I finally got chicken wire around the whole garden. I hope this remedies this potentially disastrous situation. I think it is a lone “wolf”. Otherwise I think the garden would be thrashed and trashed. All options are on the table to deal with it.

Funny thing with the Kohlrabi, some how I messed up with the sowing notes. It was the cabbage that did not come up, so now I have 4 - 40 foot rows of Kohlrabi. I hope it is popular again this year. There will not be any cabbage this year. My experience with cabbage seeded at this date do not mature until the new year and are in the first phases of bolting. The heads are no longer dense and energy is being put into flower preparations instead of storage. Such is agriculture.