At the Community Garden

Over at the community garden, things are winding down a bit. Scarily, it's starting to look a bit like fall! The plot looked a little dead when I photographed it, and I had to remind myself that there is still lots going on under the ground: four potato plants whose tops have died but whose treasure troves remain to be dug, an empty patch freshly planted for a winter parsnip harvest, and still lots of carrots to be pulled. (Also, note to self: Use LOTS of mulch next year! I pulled up all the grass around the squashes two weeks ago, at which point I couldn't even see the squash plants anymore).

The flowers I planted in our plot have done wonderfully. Zinnias, yarrow and sunflowers are making gorgeous bouquets together.

We haven't been overly pleased with our winter squash production. Out of six plants, three died, and the remaining ones produced very few fruits. These are Sunshine, and are getting close to ready for harvesting.  None of the Red Kuri made it, which is a real bummer.

Our sole Queensland Blue still has a little while to go, it is huge but should turn a much paler blue-gray color.

We have an excellent yield of carrots from the plot, although we had a lot of gopher damage, so the vast majority grew weird and stubby with strange limbs!

The rainbow chard is coming along nicely. We'll let it get a bit bigger, then begin blanching it and freezing it. 

 Our two lonely corn plants have about eight ears between them, not quite ready yet but looking healthy.

This random packet of sunflower seeds I found has given us seemingly hundreds of little sunflowers in multiple colors for the last month and a half. These pinkish ones are my favorites. 

We didn't do a great job taking care of our green bean plants. We got a large harvest at first, but didn't pay much attention other than picking the beans, until the plants started to go brown and a few died completely. Upon investigation, I realized that between our laziness when picking, and flopping the bushes over none-too-gently, and watering them roughly, we had exposed many roots and also broken some of the stems. Had we been more gentle and attentive, we probably would have gotten twice as many beans as we did. 

When I was at the garden yesterday, Jessa and Elliot were there, harvesting from their plot. They planted a hops vine back in the spring (Elliot is an avid home brewer), and yesterday he picked all of his hops and was giddy as a schoolgirl about it. He was headed home right after to brew with the hops while they were fresh. Here he is, celebrating (potential caption: "Man like hops!")