Planting our fall garden and other miscellaneous tidbits

Today we FINALLY got around to planting our Fall Garden.  We were supposed to do it last weekend but thanks to Hurricane Irene that got put off a bit.
So while I worked on shucking and preserving corn from the farm nearby my hubby plowed the bed closest to the house and prepared it for planting.  A few weeks ago we purchased some sand, more top soil, and a bit of composted manure (since none of the Craigslist advertisers answered back about their free manure.  Oh well, can't really complain too much.)
After working all that in thoroughly into the bed we started planting.

First row in that bed is Leeks.  Some of these will be started from seeds I already had, some will come from the bottoms of already grown but cut leeks.  See one of my previous blog entries for that!
Next is sweet onions grown from cut bottoms of onions or seeds.  I'm not quite certain what kind of onions the seeds will grow so I guess I will have to wait and find out.
Next was celery.  Once again, one of these will be grown due to a tip I found that is very much like onions.  I really never knew you could do this with celery too!  In the celery row I'm planning on trying to grow Kohlrabi again but this time from seeds.  I really don't know how successful I'll be.
Next row is spring onions (sometimes called scallions).  This is how I first learned about growing onions from the cut off bottoms of grown ones.  We go through massive amounts of these every week as we like to add them to eggs, soups, stews, herb butters and homemade yogurt or kefir cheese that we like to make every so often.
Very next LARGE area is the mixed salad greens area.  Our sons favorite.  Between the slugs and our son during this last spring, we really didn't get to eat much of our greens IN our salads.

Hubby planting the spinach.

Last area was the spinach in this bed.  Earlier we had absolutely miserable luck with spinach so I'm really hoping our fall planting goes better.  

Next bed is already somewhat established so we could only till this up by hand with my garden claw.  We already have two cabbages in here that are almost fully grown.  Today I planted Chicory Greens and Swiss Chard.  Once again, I have to say we had very little success with the seeds actually sown in this bed with swiss chard.  I'm hoping we see better success this time. 

Next the two plants kind of in the middle and to the left is the brussel sprouts.  They're finally recovering from the cabbage worm episode.  One brussel sprout plant (which you cannot see in this photo) was eaten slightly in the middle by slugs and then knocked over by Hurricane Irene and broken in half is slowly recovering.  I don't know if that one will ever do much.  Our Red Russian Kale actually did the worst in the Hurricane as Irene managed to strip a good portion of the leaves off of each plant.  Weird.  I would've NEVER predicted that one!

Hubby also planted crunch and munch carrots and Parisienne carrots from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds as well.  

Since Hurricane Irene drowned my Salsify that were coming up I replanted a bit more of that as well.  I am REALLY hoping that they come up and actually produce! I'd love to try it!

As for our other beds, well that was more or less just maintenance work.  Pruning branches, cleaning up plants, spraying with Diatomaceous earth for the flea beetles, the Sluggo (Iron Phosphate) for the slugs, the BT for the cabbage worms.  Our cucumber plants are just about at their end.  I don't think those have much left in them.  Same goes for the tomatoes.  

Oddly enough, our eggplants were doing great and then they just fizzed out.  We have about 7 baseball sized eggplants sitting on all the plants but we're still waiting for them to get just a bit bigger and it never seems to be happening.  

I told Edward today that I'm mighty tempted to allow the okra to just go to seed.  I'm so tired of blanching and drying the okra.  I know come March I'll be thankful but for now, I just want them gone.  They've gotten so tall!  They remind Edward and I of trees.  

I've noticed even the Stevia is looking a bit sad now a days.  Almost time to harvest that. When it's time for that I just plan on pulling the entire thing out, throwing it in my dehydrator until crispy. Then reduce down to a powder to be used as a sugar substitute. 

Our blue hubbard is also showing the signs of a plant nearing the end.  It has one definite squash on it and now two that we're not certain about.  Heck, even if I end up with three of these squash I'll be happy.  

One of our Brandywines ready finally.  These have taken so long between each series of fruitings,

Ah ha!  We finally know what this tomatoe plant is.  Its a  Golden Girl.  Now how it got in this bed we have no clue.  One of those many mysteries of life.  

Our harvest today. Two Brandywines, 3  Rutgers, 1 Golden Girl. 6 Okra, and one bunch of Kohlrabi greens.