Fall Garden Update

The temps have noticeably cooled down though I can still say its hot in the afternoon. Mornings are quite pleasant though. The afternoons have not cooled quite enough to forgo afternoon waterings of tender transplants... I seem to be learning that the hard way this year.

I fertilize weekly and the first Monday of every month I add a dry fertilizer. I prefer GardenTone by Espoma, but I've had to special order a big bag and it not in yet so I've been using Organics Choice. I ran out about 3/4ths of the way through so I did the rest in Sea Tea and made another batch of compost tea. I'm considering using compost tea twice a week instead, or maybe experimenting a bit to find out just what I need to do for abundant tasty veggies.

I strung up some neon orange plastic fencing... you know, the stuff that they use on construction sites. We managed to come by a large amount of it for free so of course we'll find a use for it. Right now its holding up our tomato plants. It looks a bit ghetto, but in time the tomatoes will swamp the neon orange and hopefully look a little less... well... ghetto.

I had also noticed, without any careful inspection, a dry and wilted patch in the watermelons a couple days ago. I did some research as it didn't look like anything we'd encountered before. Well, turns out its what we battle every season- aphids. That's the good news. They're fairly easy to control. The bad news is that they are only going after the undersides of the leaves making them difficult to find and time consuming to spray.

Sweet Chocolate bell peppers are beginning to flower. I did a third round of seeds on the Charleston Belles where I had such horrible germination. This time they did great so now I'm swimming in plants. I stuck one in a topsy turvy (where I had to evict 4 frogs that had taken up residence). I have had very poor production in the topsy turvies (upside down tomato pots), but am going to give them another go. I think part of it is too little light and part is never being able to tell if it needs water. More of my excess peppers are in other pots. I've heard peppers do better in pots than straight in the ground so I also have 2 buried pots (one of each variety) in the bed with the rest of them. They were transplanted later so it will be a while before I can adequately compare them.

I planted my first round of September seeds on Friday. Lots of turnips, a few cabbages, a small showing of broccoli and some dill are already sprouted. Got brussels sprouts, tomatoes, sage, and 2 varieties of lettuce waiting to pop. I expect these to sit in cups until I'm "back to action" after birth. Though I'm wondering now if, the turnips especially, will be far too big in less than 2 weeks. I just may be planting while in labor. Guess that beats endless walks up and down the street.