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Post by chaosisapony on Oct 7, 2024 0:52:54 GMT
Hi gardening peas! It's my garden's favorite time of year, fall! My veggies always do so much better once they get a little reprieve from the summer heat. The tomatoes are going nuts, new pumpkins are still forming on some of the vines, and I have more bell peppers than I know what to do with. I also recently bought a Rose of Sharon tree and I am loving the beautiful flowers I see out in the garden now. I've prepped a planter box for garlic and onions that I need to get planted soon. Just waiting for the last of the triple digit temps to hopefully exit this week before I plant them. I've never done any fall/winter crops before so it'll be fun to see how they do. How are your gardens doing this fall? What were your big hits and misses of the year?      |
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Post by lisae on Oct 7, 2024 1:28:31 GMT
Wow, you still have a lot of tomatoes. DH is eating his last watermelon. They were very late this year due to low rainfall for long stretches. They are also very small. I kind of like that as they don't take up much room in the refrigerator.
My dahlias are having a good fall after a poor summer. We had so much dry weather and bugs in the summer they did not do well but finally picked up in early September after some rain. Helene's rain drenched them again. We are back in a dry stretch but I probably won't water them again as frost will come probably by the end of the month. In the meantime, I keep 2 vases of dahlias in the house all the time. I've given out bouquets this year - a few less in early summer as I didn't have as much to give but some this fall full of dahlias and a few stray hydrangeas. I pulled up the zinnias - also late this year - after Helene knocked them over. They were about done anyway.
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Post by mom on Oct 7, 2024 1:42:14 GMT
My flowers from summer are still going - hibiscus, kalanchoe, geraniums (in the shade), Daisy's, Salvia. It can still get up to 90+ degrees some days so nothing new will be coming up til the temps get a bit cooler. I do have a huge mum blooming by my garage, but it's somewhat shaded by the house so it's not getting too hot. In another month or so, it should all be done blooming and dead.
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teddyw
Drama Llama
Posts: 7,156 
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Post by teddyw on Oct 7, 2024 2:40:52 GMT
Everything seems to be winding down. I had to replace some plants in my landscape beds in the front of the house.
I threw some seeds in to get some herbs going.
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Post by bc2ca on Oct 7, 2024 2:49:15 GMT
Love your pumpkins and so many tomatoes!
Our tomatoes have come back a bit and have new flowers but no fruit yet.
We have 9 butternut squash. They are the brightest orange I've ever seen and just delicious.
DH has beans, cabbage and Brussel sprouts in the seedling stage.
We are excited about our two apples and keep checking to see if they are ready to pick.
Olives haven't started turning purple yet, but I expect them to be picked by the end of the month.
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Post by malibou on Oct 7, 2024 2:51:10 GMT
All those tomatoes and adorable pumpkins, I'm jealous! We got ground squirrels this year. They stripped the newly formed fruits off all 3 apple trees, the nectarine, and our pomegranate as well as every single tomato. Grr!
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Oct 7, 2024 3:06:00 GMT
So many tomatoes! In April we had two raised bed beds and an arch installed and are just getting into gardening, although we both grew up with parents who gardened. We are zone 9 and cleared out the summer plants about 5 weeks ago except the okra, vinca and a few flowers. I am still harvesting okra! The team I use replanted a few things for fall - cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, arugula, basil, oregano and thyme - which have all gone crazy. It's been in the 90's since then and really won't cool down for a few more weeks. So in the next week or two they will come back and replant the winter plants. This is our first time to attempt winter gardening so we are treating it as an experiment. We are trying spinach, kale, broccoli, and some other fall/winter veggies I can't remember right now. Here is what we have currently: Basil, oregano and rosemary (planted Aug 28)  Cherry Tomato, bell pepper and arugula (middle of the back edge)  2nd cherry tomato  This was the garden when it was refreshed on Aug 28:  |
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Post by lisae on Oct 7, 2024 11:43:19 GMT
What beautiful garden beds @**GypsyGirl**
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amysolovay
Full Member
Posts: 343
Sept 4, 2022 6:25:20 GMT
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Post by amysolovay on Oct 25, 2024 21:14:58 GMT
I was hoping to have a garden this fall, and I did plant some things (tomatoes, beans) in pots.
I don't have a fence, and there are massive numbers of deer in this area. I thought maybe I could put the pots up on a pile of construction rubble to keep the deer out of them, but that didn't work. Bambi and friends climbed all the way up there and ate every last thing.
Most of the tomato plants got totally uprooted. There was one that Bambi ate all the way down to the soil, but I watered it, and it grew new leaves.
I also had a bean plant like that -- had been eaten down to just the stem, but it now has new leaves and even a flower.
It'll be a miracle if we actually get any beans or tomatoes out of the deal, though.
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milocat
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,613
Location: 55 degrees north in Alberta, Canada
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Post by milocat on Oct 25, 2024 21:49:09 GMT
@chaosisapony that's a cool purple spikey thing.
Everything has been pulled out and cut back already. My geraniums, bacopa and alyssum, creeping jenny still looked amazing, it's always harder to pull when they look nice. I had 2 huge coleus pots. One was so big and growing outwards that it was starting to break.
My mom has the garden. So we're enjoying sweet garden carrots and of course potatoes.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Nov 22, 2024 9:21:55 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2024 0:58:26 GMT
Sadly mine is all cut down and everything is put away for the upcoming winter. We've had some nights in the low 30s and frost/freeze occurrences and everything was ready to come down.
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Post by LavenderLayoutLady on Oct 27, 2024 11:12:52 GMT
All the fun veggie stuff is cut down.
I added the finished compost to the veggie bed to be incorporated by bugs/worms for the winter.
I started a new compost bin, and will keep adding to it.
I had hopes of planting a ton of tulips, or maybe making a small raised bed for carrots, but that's not feasible this year.
I'm mostly in fall clean up mode now.
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teddyw
Drama Llama
Posts: 7,156
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Post by teddyw on Oct 27, 2024 11:19:20 GMT
I started planting more daffodil & allium bulbs for spring. I wish I could have tulips but the deer decimate them here.
Undecided if I’m going to save my dahlia tubers. I tried once and they dried out.
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anaterra
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,132
Location: Texas
Jun 29, 2014 3:04:02 GMT
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Post by anaterra on Oct 27, 2024 12:04:04 GMT
I love reading all of yalls great outcomes...
I dont garden.. I am the only one who eats veggies.. and I am in HOT west texas so we dont have any pretty flowers that grow here... I do have like yellow and orange bell flower shrub things... but i do enjoy this thread... especially all the pictures!!!
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Post by littlemama on Oct 27, 2024 12:18:02 GMT
**cries in Northern
Gardening has been over for a while and we had to pull out the last of our flowers a couple days ago. Even the mums are gone
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Oct 27, 2024 16:35:13 GMT
The garden is doing really well so far. All the 90 degree days we've been having this month are part of it I'm sure. The basil and arugula are ready to harvest, a bell pepper is getting close and those okra plants are still producing. I'm giving them another week before I pull them up and put something else in. At the rate we are going I may have some cherry tomatoes before Thanksgiving! The vines are going over the top of the arch now so it is going to require a ladder for me to harvest! The photos above were taken Aug 29 and Oct 6. The photos below were taken yesterday. Such a change in 2 months time!   |
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Post by bc2ca on Oct 27, 2024 17:40:14 GMT
I have garden envy, **GypsyGirl** ! We harvested and ate our two delicious Anna apples. Really hoping for a bigger harvest next year.  The fall bean crop starting to come in, along with couple tomato plants and peppers that have fruit. Both were dud crops this summer but somehow decided to come back with cooler nights.  I've harvested about half the olives and started brining last week. Last year we had to use a 5 gallon bucket for brining so this is a much, much smaller crop.   |
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Post by chaosisapony on Oct 27, 2024 20:04:39 GMT
**GypsyGirl** - Wow! Your raised beds are absolutely beautiful. My garden is functional, but not pretty. You have created something beautiful to look at and productive, that's amazing. bc2ca Olives! My family grows olives down the road from my house. We have about 20ish trees and usually pick around 1200 lbs every year and get it pressed into oil. I have never tried brining them. amysolovay I've never had a deer problem until about a week ago. They came through and munched on all my freshly purchased and planted pansies. I was so crushed. The triple digits didn't go away until about a week ago but the nights have been cooling off nicely. Plants that didn't produce at all in the hot summer and starting to produce which makes me so glad I didn't give up and rip them out like I was considering a few weeks ago. I have baby pineapple tomatoes for the first time ever!! I have planted a pineapple tomato plant every year for five years and I have never gotten even one tomato. There are now 4 little babies out there along with a few small lemon boys and bobcat tomatoes. There's no rain in the forecast at all so I am hoping these guys will have a few weeks on the vine to get to a harvesting size. Unfortunately, I have also found several massive tomato hornworms so my plants aren't looking too great at the moment. I also picked all of my pumpkins and used them to decorate my porch. I am so delighted by the fact that I didn't have to buy any pumpkins this year! I will take one of the white ones and paint it for our pumpkin decorating contest at work on Halloween. Not entirely related, down the road at my mom's house she's lost all but one of her chickens. We put a trail cam out thinking it was a fox or something getting in and come to find out it was a bobcat!! We have never had a bobcat pass through before so I'm thinking this one was probably displaced by some of the large fires we've had nearby this summer. While I'm sad the chickens are gone it's kind of neat to see the bobcat.     
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Post by Scrapper100 on Oct 27, 2024 20:23:52 GMT
Wow. I love seeing everyone’s gardens. Gypsy girl I really like yours it’s both pretty and functional. I’m impressed by the pumpkins I tried one year and something ate the stem long before they were ready snd another time something ate them  . I would love to grown some. I have never seen them growing up off the ground. That might make it more likely to survive here. |
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Post by bc2ca on Oct 27, 2024 21:57:36 GMT
bc2ca Olives! My family grows olives down the road from my house. We have about 20ish trees and usually pick around 1200 lbs every year and get it pressed into oil. I have never tried brining them. We don't get near enough to think about pressing, but get a real kick out of eating our own brined olives. It really is as simple as changing their salt bath every week and they are ready in 6-8 weeks. |
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Post by craftedbys on Oct 28, 2024 1:04:31 GMT
I keep having to check the calendar. It is the 27th of October, and this morning, DH picked over 5 pounds of tomatoes. Earlier in the week, it was another 4 to 5 pounds.
I have to cook them down because the freezer is getting full. I have over 2 gallons of tomato sauce, several bags of roasted tomatoes, and a good 4 gallons of whole small grape and cherry tomatoes.
The vines are showing no signs of slowing down, so I am going to keep harvesting until we get a hard freeze. It's a good thing we like tomato based dishes!
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Oct 28, 2024 1:49:02 GMT
**GypsyGirl** - Wow! Your raised beds are absolutely beautiful. My garden is functional, but not pretty. You have created something beautiful to look at and productive, that's amazing. I have baby pineapple tomatoes for the first time ever!! I have planted a pineapple tomato plant every year for five years and I have never gotten even one tomato. There are now 4 little babies out there along with a few small lemon boys and bobcat tomatoes. Thank you but I can't take all the credit. In the spring I hired a locally owned company (owned by 3 women!) who design and install gardens. I followed them for a year before I showed DH and he said to hire them. They did such a great job and provide education and support after the installation as well. Their Instagram account is GardenGirlsTx and their website is Garden Girls TX. They keep coming up with such creative ideas. I'm not familiar with those types of tomatoes so will be doing some research on them. Wondering if they do well in Zone 9? |
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Post by chaosisapony on Oct 29, 2024 4:21:59 GMT
I'm not familiar with those types of tomatoes so will be doing some research on them. Wondering if they do well in Zone 9? I'm in zone 9b and I specifically chose varieties of tomatoes this year that said they would set fruit over 90 degrees (except the pineapple tomato). I also wound up hanging 40% shade cloth. None if it really mattered, it's still just too hot here for a lot of tomatoes over the summer. For reference this year I planted Heatmaster, Lemon Boy, Bobcat, Pineapple, Juliet, Glitter, Sweet 100, Arkansas Traveler. The Arkansas Traveler, Juliet, and Glitter did amazing. Everything else was a bust in the heat of the summer and are only now showing signs of recovery. Every year is different but what I typically notice is that any heirloom variety will do well for me in the fall but won't set fruit in the summer. So I try to plant a variety of hybrids to give me fruit in the summer and a couple of heirlooms to take me through the fall. I picked literal hundreds of mortgage lifters & Berkley Tie Dye on Christmas day last year. |
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amysolovay
Full Member
Posts: 343
Sept 4, 2022 6:25:20 GMT
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Post by amysolovay on Oct 30, 2024 10:36:25 GMT
**GypsyGirl** - Wow! Your raised beds are absolutely beautiful. My garden is functional, but not pretty. You have created something beautiful to look at and productive, that's amazing. bc2ca Olives! My family grows olives down the road from my house. We have about 20ish trees and usually pick around 1200 lbs every year and get it pressed into oil. I have never tried brining them. amysolovay I've never had a deer problem until about a week ago. They came through and munched on all my freshly purchased and planted pansies. I was so crushed. The triple digits didn't go away until about a week ago but the nights have been cooling off nicely. Plants that didn't produce at all in the hot summer and starting to produce which makes me so glad I didn't give up and rip them out like I was considering a few weeks ago. I have baby pineapple tomatoes for the first time ever!! I have planted a pineapple tomato plant every year for five years and I have never gotten even one tomato. There are now 4 little babies out there along with a few small lemon boys and bobcat tomatoes. There's no rain in the forecast at all so I am hoping these guys will have a few weeks on the vine to get to a harvesting size. Unfortunately, I have also found several massive tomato hornworms so my plants aren't looking too great at the moment. I also picked all of my pumpkins and used them to decorate my porch. I am so delighted by the fact that I didn't have to buy any pumpkins this year! I will take one of the white ones and paint it for our pumpkin decorating contest at work on Halloween. Not entirely related, down the road at my mom's house she's lost all but one of her chickens. We put a trail cam out thinking it was a fox or something getting in and come to find out it was a bobcat!! We have never had a bobcat pass through before so I'm thinking this one was probably displaced by some of the large fires we've had nearby this summer. While I'm sad the chickens are gone it's kind of neat to see the bobcat. Chaosisapony, sorry about your pansies and your mom's chickens! ACK! We have bobcats here, too, and we also had mountain lions at the last place I lived. In my old neighborhood, I came face-to-face with the mountain lion one day while hiking one of the local trails, and it was absolutely breathtaking (not to mention terrifying). I wished I'd had my camera that day. I found your hornworm photo very interesting. (Well, for that matter, I found all your photos interesting!) Your porch looks fantastic! What a lovely harvest. |
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amysolovay
Full Member
Posts: 343
Sept 4, 2022 6:25:20 GMT
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Post by amysolovay on Oct 30, 2024 10:42:25 GMT
I'm not familiar with those types of tomatoes so will be doing some research on them. Wondering if they do well in Zone 9? I'm in zone 9b and I specifically chose varieties of tomatoes this year that said they would set fruit over 90 degrees (except the pineapple tomato). I also wound up hanging 40% shade cloth. None if it really mattered, it's still just too hot here for a lot of tomatoes over the summer. For reference this year I planted Heatmaster, Lemon Boy, Bobcat, Pineapple, Juliet, Glitter, Sweet 100, Arkansas Traveler. The Arkansas Traveler, Juliet, and Glitter did amazing. Everything else was a bust in the heat of the summer and are only now showing signs of recovery. Every year is different but what I typically notice is that any heirloom variety will do well for me in the fall but won't set fruit in the summer. So I try to plant a variety of hybrids to give me fruit in the summer and a couple of heirlooms to take me through the fall. I picked literal hundreds of mortgage lifters & Berkley Tie Dye on Christmas day last year. I am learning so much from this thread! My last neighborhood was a ski resort town where it snows all spring, and it can even sometimes still be snowing in June. Spring weather doesn't really start until June there, most years. Then it pretty much skips summer; sweater weather starts in mid-August, and it's usually snowing again by late October. I was balcony gardening in the shade, and there was no growing tomatoes in that environment -- just not enough heat. I'm now in a location that has really hot summers, too. I didn't realize there is such a thing as too much heat for tomatoes, so that was news to me! I prefer to grow heirlooms, so it was especially interesting to know that the heirloom tomatoes won't set fruit for you in the heat of the summer. Thanks for the info. |
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teddyw
Drama Llama
Posts: 7,156
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Post by teddyw on Oct 30, 2024 21:36:36 GMT
@chaosisapony what a shock to see a bobcat. My neighbor at the lake claims there’s a bobcat but no proof. I sometimes put my ring camera back at our creek and it only picks up raccoons. Gardening is all done here. I did plant garlic to harvest next July 4th. I hope I remember where it is. I need to move my raised beds because a tree nearby is growing way too fast and giving off shade. bc2ca I’d love to grow olives. Not the right zone. |
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Post by bc2ca on Oct 31, 2024 18:02:01 GMT
@chaosisapony what a shock to see a bobcat. My neighbor at the lake claims there’s a bobcat but no proof. I sometimes put my ring camera back at our creek and it only picks up raccoons. Gardening is all done here. I did plant garlic to harvest next July 4th. I hope I remember where it is. I need to move my raised beds because a tree nearby is growing way too fast and giving off shade. bc2ca I’d love to grow olives. Not the right zone. A friend in WA is experimenting with growing hers in planters and bringing inside for the winter. FWIW, my olives all came from $7 plants at Trader Joe's. The ones planted in the ground are doing best, but we have a few in very large pots that are also doing great. |
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amysolovay
Full Member
Posts: 343
Sept 4, 2022 6:25:20 GMT
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Post by amysolovay on Nov 10, 2024 2:24:24 GMT
Bumping this back up to ask if anyone else is still fall gardening?
So far, no frosts here yet, so I am persisting.
Here's a story of true resilience. Last spring, I planted a couple of plants in pots that I think are Tom Thumb peas, although it's also possible that they're a different variety. I normally keep a garden journal to track this stuff, but I didn't do a stellar job at that this time around.
They grew.
Deer ate them down to a few inches worth of stem.
They re-grew a bit, but then the summer heat set in. They got brown. I thought for sure they were toast, but I watered them twice a day. They didn't die but didn't thrive, either.
But when the summer heat subsided, they grew gloriously.
Then deer ate them again. Uggh!
They grew back.
Yesterday I harvested 30 small pea pods off the 2 plants -- not a massive harvest, but really pretty amazing under the circumstances. That was a lot more peas than I was expecting considering all the drama.
I also have one seriously resilient tomato that deer ate, for real, all the way down to the soil. It partially re-grew and now has a couple of little flowers on it. I will die of surprise if we end up with any tomatoes.
I also have some green onions growing in yogurt cups. Someone on Ravelry reminded me that green onion tips could be replanted, and so I tried it, and it's working fantastic!
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Post by genealopea on Nov 10, 2024 21:39:32 GMT
My garden's still going... I picked a big basket of peppers yesterday, along with some lettuce, carrots and two rampicante squash. In a week or so I'll have cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, chard, and kale. I'll be starting seeds this afternoon for another batch of cabbage and broccoli, rutabaga, radish, spinach, kale and collards. I'm learning to love gardening in the south - the season is so much longer than in Connecticut. I just avoid late July and August. lol. I'll try to post a photo - let's see if this works.  |
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Post by chaosisapony on Nov 11, 2024 4:46:47 GMT
That is a beautiful garden genealope!
Things are still going well here. The onions, garlic, and shallots have all popped up. I still have lots of new baby pumpkins on the vines so I figure I'll let them go until the vines die and then I will feed them to the neighbor's goats. There's plenty of peppers and tomatoes still and I've even been getting some raspberries here and there. I am keeping my fingers crossed for no frost until January so my Pineapple tomatoes have a chance at getting to be a good size.
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. I would love to grown some. I have never seen them growing up off the ground. That might make it more likely to survive here. 
