October Garden Update

Looking down at the fall vegetable garden on October 29, 2014. I love fall’s palette of colors.

Looking upwards. There’s over 70 varieties of vegetables and herbs packed in here!

I love the textures and colors in this “Mild and Wild” Brassica seed mix from Osborne Seed Company.

Kohlrabi, invaded by sweet potato vines that have spreaded from 8 feet away.

This fennel is starting to form beautiful bulbs at it’s base. Not much longer!

We’re growing 4 varieties of cabbage this year… many of them are starting to head up nicely.

There are 3 varieties of endive pictured here. I’m waiting on frost to temper them so I can thin and eat some of these tightly-packed plants.

A July sowing of delicata squash allowed enough time for these beautiful delicata squash to form. Mature patisson panache jaune et vert squash at bottom.

A late-sowing of Asian greens. These grow so quickly, they will make nice stir-fry greens for winter meals.

Lots of parsley left over from last year’s winter garden (it’s a great cut-and-come-again plant). One of them has decided to go to seed.

A colorful salad of lettuces, romaines, radicchio, salad burnet, strawberries, nasturtium, hyssop, dill, and parsley.

These Tristan everbearing strawberries have caught a second wind, thanks to cooler temperatures and abundant rain.

Palla Rossa radicchio is forming nice heads that should be ready soon.

Spigariello, aka leaf broccoli, is a new favorite green to us; it’s great raw in salads, or cooked. Ruby Streaks mustard offers a nice contrast to it (foreground).

Fall cabbage is so beautiful — very few of the cabbage worms and harlequin bugs that plague it in spring.

Little Bo Peep loves watching the cabbage develop, and just being out in the garden, generally.

I’m loving this new-to-me kale called Russian Frills (from Adaptive Seeds) — a really, really, really Ragged Jack.

Lots of beautiful lettuce this fall — here’s one of 12 varieties that are mature at the moment.

I was late planting my sweet potatoes this year — not until the first week of July! I couldn’t resist checking them on October 2nd, and was pleased to find them nicely sized after only 90 days of growth in an unusually cool, wet summer.

Not a bad harvest for such a late planting and poor weather year for sweet potato growth.

Cosmos and zinnias are still producing like crazy.

Inchelium Red and Chesnok Red garlic. Love that blush!

Once the sweet potatoes and squash came out, garlic was planted. Here, my “intern,” Christin, gives me a hand.

This delphinium started from seed struggled all summer, but we finally got some flowers in late October — not their usual flowering time, but the cool, wet weather made them happy.