Started cauliflower, and round 2 of leeks and green onions

Cauliflower = Early Snowball.  First time really trying cauliflower.

And more leeks and green onions because the green onions had bad germination rate and not enough leeks.

Started round 2 New York Early onions -- directly in mix

I decided it's way too annoying to sprout so many onioni seeds in paper towel and then try to plunk them into mix when they cling to fingers etc.

So for round 2 of New York Early onions, I put them directly from the seed pouch into my mix, in the ~6x6 tray of cells.  Put only one seed in each cell.

Wakey wakey, tuberous begonia!

^^^

Started broccoli (Belstar & Piracicaba), parsley, and celery

 Started broccoli (Belstar & Piracicaba), parsley, and celery.

Belstar is new to me this year, recommended by Susan M.

Started leeks (Varna)

^^^

Started onion seeds: Frontier, and green

And so it begins!

Started in PT:

•  Frontier onion seeds x 16 (left over from last year -- didn't realize so few seeds were left)
• Green onion seeds x a lot (from 2018 collected seeds)

GA: Completely finished for the year

I've officially finished pulling all the things, after a final harvest of chard, leeks, carrots, and beets.

It was a fun and rewarding year!

Key take-aways from this year:

- Insects were NOT a big problem at all!

- Weeds were a HUGE time-sucker!

- Next year I hope to put weed cloth or whatever it's called on the paths to reduce the amount of weeding needed.

- I loved it!

GA: Beet harvest (wimpy)

Harvested all of the beets sown July 18th.  They never bulked up -- a lot are quite small, a few are a bit bigger, but no really good nice big ones.

The yard beets never did great this year either other than a few big ones.

GA: Final carrot harvest -- TONS AND TONS!!!

Wow, I had no idea how many carrots there were!  Will definitely be donating a good chunk of them!

The original sowing, of Bolero, whose greens always looked wimpy so I thought there wasn't much carrotness underground, actually were great!  Tons and tons!

The ones sown July 17th -- "Red Cored Chantenay" -- their fronds always looked strong and sure enough, a great harvest there, too.  These ones were broad at the top with a quick taper, a shorter carrot overall.  Definitely a different shape than the narrow Bolero.

Did a taste test -- at first I thought Bolero were sweeter, but really actually I think they all taste the same!  (yum)

Leaf collection in full swing -- putting pre-soaked alfalfa below leaf layer

So far, have collected 2 garbage bags and 1 garbage bin worth of leaves.  I estimate 2 more garbage bins will probably be enough to cover the rest of the yard.  It's a lot less now that the central bed has gone back to the dogs as of a month or two agol

Below the leaves I'm scattering pre-soaked alfalfa pellets.  The only place that doesn't have the alfalfa is under the big rock pile in the south part of the west bed -- that's where I'll put carrots next year.

Garlic: Planted the rest of it

The second half of the garlic (some Elephant, some "regular") went in today.  Elephant in the north section, Regular in the lower section.  Two of the elephant bulbs were MASSIVE (they're the first two from the left in the northmost row here).

And, I added kelp as well as pre-soaked alfalfa to these ones, and scattered that over top of the first half garlic too.

All is covered by a thick layer of leaves.

One of the "regular" garlic bulbs was half-bad/shrivelled -- very disappointing at $25/pound plus tax!  But overall I still had enough to fill my ~4x4 foot garlic bed area.

First hard/killing frost in the yard last night

The massive volunteer cherry tomato by the hydro meter is mostly kaput now, along with any other remaining tenders.

Garlic: First half planted ("Elephant" and "regular")

Several weeks ago I bought $54.50 (!!) (including tax) worth of seed garlic from Ritchies' (all garlic was $24.90/pound and my purchase was 1.93 pounds):

- 2 x Elephant garlic

- 4 x "Regular" garlic (bulk)

So that's a total of 6 bulbs of seed garlic.  The elephant ones are HUGE!  Will be interesting to see how they do.

Today I planed half of them:  1 of the elephant and 2 of the regular, for a total of:

- 10 cloves elephant (in 2.2 square feet, the NW-two-most squares in the garlic bed) (4 per square)

- 20 cloves regular (in 2ish square feet, the two SW-most squares in the garlic bed) (9 per square)

The bed prep consisted of loosening the soil, sprinkling a generous amount of last year's shredded leaves from the basement; then afterwards (because I forgot during), sprinkled mrp and azomite over top.

In a few weeks I'll do the second half.

Yard hasn't been hit by frost yet, though car windows frosty this morning

^^^

GA: Hard frost hit this week; removed everything except the hardies

As of now, the only things left at GA:

- beets

- carrots

- lettuce

- leeks

- chard

I think that's it.

Lettuce seed heads full of aphids

Dang, the backyard lettuce seed heads are full of aphids, so I might just not collect any lettuce seeds this year.

GA: Watermelon harvested! Delicious!

It wasn't huge -- the size of a large grapefruit -- but it was tasty!  There were quite a few seeds, but they were very edible too -- crunchy and inoffensive.

I had waited until the tendrils at the top where it connected to the vine had dried all up.  The stem itself was a bit dehydrated but not brown.  And it was perfectly ripe.

One more awaits harvesting.

GA: Caterpillar at top of an corn ear

A plump beige/grey caterpillar was at the top of one of the ears of corn I harvested today.  The rest of the ear was perfectly fine though, so just removed the damaged part and ate the rest.

Potato harvest in yard -- north of the broccoli

Today was part deux of reclaiming the central part of the yard for the dogs!  So I pulled the rest of the potatoes -- these ones being from north of the broccoli.  The plants had long since flopped, but were very green, so I'm sure if I had left them in longer, the smaller ones would have kept growing, but that was not the priority this year.

A good harvest from that patch!  Many nice big ones!  These were Kennebecs.  They did at least as well as, maybe even better than, the AC Chaleurs.  So, I will definitely grow both of these varieties again in future.

Re-reading my note from the spring -- I had done the following experiment:  "The experiment is that in each type's northerm-most row, I added 1 Tbsp alfalfa (in addition to the above amendments)."  Well, ha!  I completely forgot about that, and have no idea how the northern-most rows did.  Oh well! :D

Potato harvest in yard begun -- the west part of the south bed = "AC Chaleur" has beautiful big potatoes!

Some are smaller, but overall I'm very happy with the size!

One was HUGE but had a sizeable hole drilled into the middle of it by some critter, and it had some rotting with various critters nibbling at it, so obviously tossed that one.