Suburban Vegetable Gardener

Ok, I have a rough time in the autumn.  I hate to admit that the growing season is over.  And what’s really funny is if I would get my act together, I’d have lettuce, spinach, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts going like gangbusters right now.  But every year, I go into denial and then the place suddenly looks like this:

So fine, I spent 45 minutes cleaning up the old squash, cucumbers and spent tomatoes.  Believe it or not, some of the original tomato plants are still going strong.  Out of the new ones that I planted, one is really wilted like it wasn’t getting enough water (and the soil was moist) but it has a large tomato on it, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  Four of the others are doing great: green, strong, and producing tomatoes.  The stupice is very vine-y and producing tomatoes but it just doesn’t look very robust and happy.

And you’re saying “Tomatoes…in November?”  Yeah, I know.  We had an unseasonably cold summer and now we’re having an unseasonably hot autumn.  It was 80F the other day.  It’s about 69F today.  The thing about the tomatoes is making sure it doesn’t dip below 50 (it got down to 48 one night & I missed it.  Maybe that’s what took out that one tomato plant…) and the length of daylight.  I am glad I have plants designed for cooler weather…but I really don’t know if it’s going to work due to the shorter days.  Time will tell.

The asparagus have gone dormant, mostly.  The ones that are over one year in my soil are doing fine.  Some still have really long stalks with a lot of berries on them.  The ones that I planted this past February are not doing anything.  I trimmed them down after they turned wheat color.  So we shall see.  Maybe those places in the soil are not really conducive to growing asparagus…it could be too many rocks, bad drainage, etc.

On the bright side, I have a lot of oranges to look forward to.  And oddly, the Myer lemon seems to be ready for harvesting.  Time to make more Myer lemon pickles in salt!