The cool fronts are starting to clear the Kingwood area. In fact, it has been a bit chilly the last few mornings only to go up into the upper 80’s later in the afternoon. Makes you want to have a quick cup of coffee
and head out to the garden. Suddenly there are so many things to do, I almost don’t know where to start!
I have hung on to some of the spring tomatoes longer than I should have. Friends tell me they are getting little tomatoes, but so far none on my plants. Might as well bite the bullet and pull them out. There are the sweet potato plants that need to be dug out. Unfortunately, the deer have eaten the leaves off them so many times this summer that I am afraid there is nothing underground. A few of my spring pepper plants have revived and are providing a nice crop of fall sweet peppers. Eggplant, too, is doing pretty well. The deer ate all the foliage and most of the stems off the August planted cucumber, and did the same with the pole beans, so not much reason to hang onto those plants either. So, you can see I need to get out and clean out some beds.
It seems that I am always fixing or improving my garden beds. This year the ones that straddle Sand Creek are being reinforced. I thought I might lose them all together last spring when the County Flood Control decided to dredge the creek. Luckily for me, they did most of their work on the other side of the creek and my garden survived. I do borrow a lot of land from the County, but they have always respected my garden. Many years ago, Gudrun asked our then County Commissioner, Squatty Lyons, if it would be OK to put a garden out there. He told her, sure, just keep the grass cut around it! (At least that is the story.) I have always wondered if he made a notation somewhere that gives us squatters rights. So, before all my nice compost-enriched soil out there washes into the creek, I do need to do some rebuilding.
I have been hunting high and low for cole plants to plant in both my garden and the OFE school gardens these several weeks. All I can say at this point is that the selection has been terrible. Everything seems to be spindly or in some cases over grown and not properly taken care of. I was appalled to find that Warrens and the Kingwood Garden Center are now charging $2.99 for veggie plants. Heck, you can buy a head of cauliflower for less than that and not even have to grow it. But that is no fun, so I press on. In any case, I have ‘adopted’ some plants and do have my broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage in the ground. In addition, I have planted seeds of lettuce, radishes, and carrots. Still to be planted are spinach, beets and sugar snap peas and maybe a few turnips. I am sure the deer are just waiting behind the orange trees for all these goodies to start growing.
Speaking of oranges and other citrus, it looks like it will be a good year. The Meyer lemons, grapefruit, and five varieties of orange trees are all pretty well loaded. At this point some of the branches are hanging to the ground. More braces needed! Even the fig tree is getting ready to produce a new crop. Gudrun says, “Please, NO”. At the school garden we actually picked 50 oranges this past Thursday, October 1 from a tree that was planted about 15 years ago. Unfortunately, no records were kept of the variety but we suspect it is a satsuma of some sort. They are sweet, easy to peel, have few seeds, and already ripe. I suspect there are at least 100 more oranges on that little tree.
I hope you had a productive summer. It was too hot to spend very much time in the veggie patch. But, if you want a beautiful fall garden, now is the time to spring into action.