Fall Clean-up and Planting Garlic

Today, I finished cleaning up my plot (weeding, spreading compost and salt marsh hay), and I sowed my garlic for next year – 6 rows total, 15 cloves of hardneck garlic, and 20 cloves of softneck garlic.

New garlic patch
Plot at the end of today. Still growing: kale, Swiss chard, leeks, fall greens, komatsuna, a few carrots, calendula.

Late October Plot

Plot today after harvesting the squash and removing tomato plants

Today, I started cleaning up the garden plot. It is (unseasonably) warm during the day but there will be frost tomorrow night. I took out the tomato plants and harvested all the butternut squash. Over the next week or so, I will get an area ready for planting my garlic. I still have chard, kale, radishes, beets, fall greens, leeks, carrots and flowers growing.

Swiss Chard
Calendula
Fall greens
Radishes

September

September plot

Things are winding down in the garden. I have only a few tomatoes still on the vines. Still growing are winter squash, chard, kale, and leeks. On the right side of the plot I have my recently sown radishes, fall greens, beets and carrots. Plus flowers everywhere.

One of quite a few butternut squash
Fall sowings (that need to be thinned). From left to right: beets, carrots, radishes, fall greens.
Love these cheerful pinwheel marigolds
The dwarf kale is doing very well
Swiss Chard jungle

More Fall Sowing

Fall greens, November 2022

Today, I sowed one row each mache (seeds were from 2020, so my hopes of germination are extremely low), komatsuna (also known as Japanese mustard spinach) and French Breakfast radishes in the plot. I had sowed some radishes yesterday in containers on the back porch. The winter lettuce (Landis) I had sown about two weeks ago unfortunately never germinated. I have two rows of fall greens coming up (lettuces, chards, kale, arugula, mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, spinach, endive), plus two rows of beets (one Golden, one Chioggia) and a (spotty) row of early carrots. My plan is to have the mache and komatsuna overwinter under a row cover. And perhaps the fall greens as well. We shall see.

Today’s Harvest

Nice big harvest today. I keep forgetting to take pictures. I harvested a ton of Italian basil and made basil pesto (really just basil, olive oil and salt; no garlic, cheese or nuts), which I froze in ice cube trays. I like to leave out the garlic, cheese and the nuts to keep it more versatile, as I also use it on fish or roasted vegetables, where I might not always want cheese.