Planting for the Fall

This week I've been planting cantaloupe and crowder peas for the fall garden. I double dug the beds and put compost in the bottom of the trenches. They both have come up and I plan on trellising them.

The oriental cukes are doing fine as I have mulched them now that the weather has become drier and hotter.

Just picked some more brocolli and cauliflower. Linda is processing the turnip and kale greens. She cooks them, them puts them up in quart size freezer bags. That will last us through the summer. The kale will produce all the way up to 1st frost.

I'm now having to water once a week. I don't have enough material to mulch this year so I'll have to just use a dust mulch. I normally mulch my tomatoes with half-rotted compost but do not have enough this year. I'm saving my cardboard scraps to use as mulch.

This year's summer crop was an total disaster. The 100 deg weather came early and stayed for weeks on end. As a result the tomatoes, beans, oriental beans, bell pepers, etc did not make. The beans of coarse fell victim to the spider mites and never recovered. The cukes, bell peppers, and tomatoes did make in the fall. We haad a nice crop of small green tomatoes for frying. Next year I am going to plant a week earlier to see what happens.