Regardless of the toasty temps, the cool season crops are coming right along. Today, I harvested another salad's-worth of romaine and Red Sails lettuce and the first few pods of green ("English") peas...yeah! Then I thinned the beets (pictured below) and the carrots...and decided to let the spinach and the turnip greens grow in thickly. {Giggle!} I was a bit heavy-handed in planting the beets, wouldn't you agree?
If you are wondering about the diagonal wood strips in that photo above, you may recall my saying I had repurposed some lattice we removed from our deck surround to create a cucumber trellis (which worked great this summer!). I had a couple small pieces left over and am using them in the raised beds to help me lay out my plantings and space my seeds in the boxes (which are not as easy to 'eyeball' as the rows are for me). And I have learned (the hard way) to leave them in place to protect the tiny, young seedlings from Abbie's mad dashes. Yep, this is the SECOND planting of both beets and spinach this Fall. Sigh.
While we wait for some things to reach maturity, we are still enjoying the fruits of our warm season labors. Several of the Summer stalwarts continue producing in the Kitchen Garden, including the green and red bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, Sun Gold tomatoes, okra, and eggplant...as you can see below. Plus, most of the zinnias and all the roses are supplying us with flowers for gorgeous bouquets.
And guess what else is starting to open? The heirloom green Nanking cotton! You may remember that I got these seeds a couple of years ago at the Seed Exchange held at Old Salem. Well, these plants (all 36 of them!) are the result of my own seed-saving from last year's cotton crop...8 whole plants! As I've said before, I hope to raise enough fibre to eventually hand-spin some yarn and knit...something! Girl's gotta have a goal, don't you know?
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