Currently, our garden is producing jalapeno peppers, a mix of Better Boy, Cherokee Purple, and Sungold tomatoes, a couple of different varieties of zinnias, and that’s it. The parsley is still present but fading. It's mid/late September, and we haven’t planted a single thing for the fall. Time has just slipped by, and here we are without a single seed in the soil for a fall harvest. It's really easy to let it happen. The thing about growing a garden in a climate with mild to cold winters is that you have to time your plantings within the windows available. The growing season is only so long.
So here we are without a seed in the ground, and our first frost is around the corner (around 10/15 here in North Alabama). What are we going to do? Well, we are going to have the biggest, best salad garden we’ve ever grown.
But first, I need to mourn the fact that potatoes, peas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage will not be harvested from our garden this fall. And that’s sad because I believe all of those crops taste best in the fall after a few really cold nights.
However, we will get to plant some fun crops that we will eat well into the winter. Leafy greens like kale, arugula, mustards, Asian greens, turnips, and collards will grow really well with a little protection during freezing nights. If temperatures remain somewhat moderate and avoid the teens, the greens can be harvested all winter. We will directly seed all of these crops into the garden. It will make for a beautiful display and some tasty salads during the coming months.
So if you're like us and haven’t gotten around to planting anything for a fall garden, it's not too late.
🔍 Find us elsewhere!
👩🌾 Instagram - @_acommonlife (Morgan)
🛸 X (Twitter) - @RiverFlyFarms (Taylor)
👨🌾 LinkedIn - @Taylor-Myers-ACL
Mulching the garden
This past month, as I was harvesting tomatoes, I noticed that the soil in the garden was exposed in several areas. This is not ideal, primarily because exposed soil will become hard due to erosion and drying out, particularly in the middle of summer. Protecting your soil with mulch is important, especially for those of us who do not till or cultivate.
Whenever I encourage gardeners to consider not tilling or cultivating, I usually get scoffed at. And that’s okay because I do understand how significant the distance is between annually tilling/cultivating your garden and completely stopping. It’s easy to imagine hard, crusted soil with a ton of weeds. This, of course, is impossible to plant into and would be a complete disaster! To avoid this, gardeners must keep their soil mulched. I had some bagged leaves that I’d been keeping around for this time of year, whenever the garden soil begins to peak through last years heavy mulch application. I applied a heavy, heavy layer to my garden and I was back in business.
(I also shared some of the leaves with the chickens to be used in their run. It’s also extremely helpful in a coop, and I write about that here:July 2023.)
👉 One of the first videos I saw on this topic was the Back to Eden garden documentary. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. It’s a good watch.
👉 Not sure we have any garden-farmers here, but this is another video you might find interesting and informative. It’s a garden-farmer from a commercial operation that employs “no-till” practices.
Raspberries are fruiting!
I love raspberries. So do the kids. If I find a peak raspberry, with peak flavor, I think it’s my favorite fruit. Peak satsumas and peak strawberries are right there though :)
I’m not sure why more people don’t grow raspberries. They are easy. And you get two harvests a year - one in spring and one in fall.
Unfortunately, all kinds of critters like raspberries too… So the kids made a scarecrow!
🌕 Harvest Moon Plans
Something that is important to Morgan and I is the establishment of family rhythms and traditions. This year, we are planning on eating dinner outside under the full Harvest Moon ( September 29th). We are envisioning this becoming a tradition… We will see how it goes! And I’ll let you know.
I love your family’s rhythms and traditions!