Most of the early fall planting is done so we’re down to one work day a week again.
Our harvest is quite small right now, but we did manage to pick a few Sungold tomatoes from last spring’s planting as well as a couple of Juliets from the fall tomato plants. The eggplants are still producing some fruit, but they are small and have a lot of blemishes, so we will probably pull them out before long. The leaf crops have done well for us and are beginning to get big enough to harvest. We were able to cut some mesclun, arugula, broccoli raab, Heirloom Italian lettuce and a bit of chard bok choi. One of the broccoli plants produced a head big enough for harvest, so we took that. A few others look like they will produce by next week or so and there are some really tiny Brussels sprouts beginning to form. We harvested a variety of radishes this week and also a few Tokyo Cross turnips. The crops in the row garden are doing well and the garlic that we planted last week is up several inches already.
The strawberry plants that were put in last week are starting to take hold. So we should have some strawberries next spring. The rest of the early fall plants look pretty good, although the peas seem to be smaller than they were last year. They’re starting to produce, though, so we should have enough to pick by next week or the week after. Some of the Malabar spinach is starting to bite the dust. We’re not sure whether it is because of the cool nights or just the fact that it has gone to seed. In any case, we had to pull it out of one of the beds. We also pulled out the remaining okra in the raised beds because it has run its course.
Despite weekly spraying with BT we are still getting cabbage loopers on the cruciferous veggies in both the row garden and raised beds. This week we sprayed them again after picking off as many caterpillars as we could find.
Most of the effort in the row garden this week was spent pulling weeds from a couple of rows that we intend to plant with late fall crops. That area had become overgrown with nut sedge and other nasty weeds, so the crew put in a tough morning digging it out.
We did some maintenance this week too. We replaced some fading wooden plant markers with permanent zinc markers labeled with plastic tape. We cleaned up the area around the big compost system, mulching up some garden refuse and clearing the weeds from around the bins. We also replaced a pressure reducer on one of the raised beds. They tend to get clogged with calcium from time to time and then they leak and waste water. So we replace them when we notice they are leaking.
The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.
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