Fall Garden and General Improvements

[MsDDC]

I stood up my blackberries today (thorny erect, but the tender new canes need some help standing at first). I know they need pruned a little (late growth spurt given the extended summer). It took me longer than I anticipated to pound the posts into the ground (just because they were taller than me, so I had to take a lot of breaks to get blood flow back in my arm), so I didn't get to it. Will do in the next couple of days.

My brassicas are getting big and the oldest ones should be headed for production in not too long here! The biggest one in the front is a broccolini, the other large-ish ones you can see are romanesco. There's a decent-size cauliflower lurking behind the broccoli that you can't see from this angle.

You also can't see the lettuces, greens, beets, and turnips sprouting on the first level (they're shorter than the wall lip, still), but they're there!

[lakngulf]

Looking Good. I have some thornless blackberries behind my house that were going crazy. So I devised a frame for them I call Lincoln Logs. This picture was more to show tomatoes than the frame but you can see the blackberries runners on the side.
I will try to get another picture. It is now covered.

[MsDDC]

Blackberries are both a blessing and a curse. They do take over! Fortunately, that uppermost bed has walls on all 4 sides that extend more than a foot below ground, with the surface anywhere from 2.5 feet to ~8" above ground (total distance from bed surface to wall foundation bottom at least 2 feet on all sides), so mine aren't going anywhere!

To head off all the questions about why I went with thorny ones, it's mostly a security feature. The person I got the starts from used them for the same reason. Note that they're planted near the back fence line. They're not right up against it, so I can maintain them and the surrounding area on all sides, but close enough that if someone jumped my fence, they'd smash into them on their way in. The plan is to eventually have them along the entire width of that bed, but the 3rd start I got failed, so I'll have to do it from the other two plants next spring. That would be a painful lesson in NOT entering my yard (the gate is locked, so they can't just walk in). The fact that they kind of stand up on their own once they mature a bit is also a nice feature, but the primary reason for the thorns is security. I don't live in the worst neighborhood (the guy I got them from lives in a far worse one), but there are occasional problems, and a little security goes a long way in moving the problem folks along to a softer target.

[applestar]

You don’t have to wait until spring — just bend as many tip of the BlackBerry cane down and make sure the tip stays in contact with the ground — you can pin it down with ground u-pins or bury a little and put a rock or brick on top. They will root and establish a good root system this fall through spring as long as the ground isn’t frozen

If yours are all pruned already that you can’t arch them down, you could still bend and kink, even half break as long as part of the cane is connected.

In spring, cut the cane and you can transplant the rooted end where you want it to grow.


...my BlackBerry care in the fall consists of keeping the cane tips from touching the ground, and pulling up the ones that touched down and rooted in undesirable locations..... They start growing roots even before touching the ground if they find their way into heavy grass, etc. where there is enough moisture — I have to pull them out of under the siding and behind utility meter boxes, too.

[MsDDC]

HAHA...nothing has had enough moisture here for "undesirable" or even not "actively supported" (that is, watered, shaded, and otherwise babied like crazy) growth, for over a month! If you look carefully, you can see there's a rain gauge mounted in the lowest bed, and it was so disused in the later part of this summer all through September that there were cobwebs in it I had to wash out! I counted a grand total of .35 inches of rain in it for the entire month of September! Of course the day that we had foul weather in the last half of the summer (way back in July) was the day I flew back from my summer trip (nothing terribly interesting, or I'd call it a vacation ), so my flight got delayed.

The canes to the left of the bigger plant are probably long enough to root by ground contact, so I'll drop them down to the soil and give that a try. If it doesn't work, well, that plant is huge (after just one season! everything in the photo except the two canes furthest to the right is that one plant), so I can certainly divide it up in the spring.

[MsDDC]

Er...I should say everything you can see except what's growing through the fence on the left side. THAT is ivy, which I am going to destroy indiscriminately this weekend. If you look at my intro on the new member forum, I said that WEEDS are my biggest problem, and they are EVERYWHERE. I cleaned them out of the garden to give you these lovely pictures, but my parking pad behind the fence here is in absolutely abysmal shape (I don't own a car, so they didn't get driven over, even), as are certain other parts of my yard. I'll post the adventures in cleaning those up elsewhere (they're mostly flower beds, edges of hardscaping, and the lawn, so not related to veggies).

[MsDDC]

We FINALLY got some rain and consistently cooler temperatures, and as always, if I leave for a few days, the garden goes CRAZY. Only 3 days out of town was enough for the first signs of production! I preface all photos below with I know I need to weed and thin, that's on my weekend to-do list.

These are the lettuces, beets and turnips you couldn't even see over the lip of the wall 2 weeks ago:

This is romaine and one kale you can't see well. The spinach didn't germinate, it was in the same bag of seeds that got thrown in my hot patio box this summer. I'm going to try one more time and see what happens, and if nothing, get a new pack of seeds and just sow for the winter garden (will go in the empty middle section of the lower bed):

And here are the brassicas, the biggest "performers" of my time out of town. The biggest are almost as tall as the wall, which is the size when they'll start to produce based on my spring production. The smaller ones easily doubled in size in a week, so they're well on the way. The inner leaves are curling hard in preparation:

And, that largest one is a broccolini that has its first bud. Will be eating off this plant so soon!

[TomatoNut95]

Lovely broccoli! I decided not to get any this year. I went with Jersey Wakefield cabbage, red romaine leaf lettuce and cauliflower. I planted Green Romaine seeds, but they haven't come up yet. I just got through planting the cabbage and cauliflower after having tossed some fresh organic Miracle gro in the garden. A noisy but sweet little hummingbird moth fluttered about me, probably hoping I was planting something he could lick in. Poor little guy.

I prepared my kiddie pool- turned carrot patch for planting. Tomorrow morning I'll get the seeds planted before heading for work. Hope I'm not too late, but I've been so busy this week doing some early Christmas shopping. I can't stand trying to decide what to get for people.

[MsDDC]

Broccoli is coming along nicely. This pic is from 5 days ago, and the head is about twice this size now.

I do have a question. We had some nasty winds on Halloween, and it bent over the nearly mature cauliflowers and one of the middle age romanesco. The stems are intact, just bent to the side. Should I leave them to their own devices, or straighten them back up and support them a little until they right themselves? The cauliflowers are probably going to bud within a week or so (they're even bigger than the last pic and are gathering the inner leaves well in preparation for budding), the romanesco is probably 2-3 weeks, maybe a little longer, off of anything.

[MsDDC]

All the fall/early winter stuff (I didn't get around to doing a true winter garden...a home improvement project I'll mention below got complicated and in my way) continues to progress. Broccoli should be ready any day now! Old sheets are set by the door to cover the lettuces and, if budding (will check in the morning when I can see something), cauliflower tomorrow night (predicted low of 25).

My "winter experiment" is getting going. My house gets HOT during the day (okay, okay...low-to-mid 70's on cold days, but it made it to 76 today with a high of 70 and multiple windows open!), even in quite cold temperatures, owing to a southern exposure with lots of (good, mostly new) windows. So, I decided to see if I could grow tomatoes indoors in the winter. The seeds germinated and are growing well. They're Patio Choice from Park Seed, so they should be nice and compact. Once the work is finished upstairs (putting in the hooks to hang them), they'll hang in my upstairs office window. The upstairs gets even warmer, so fingers crossed!

The home improvement project that ended up taking forever and disrupting my plans to seed (direct) some cold-hardy things for mid-January to early March harvests was a new deck and awnings. They were a pain in my rear, but turned out great! The back awning (the curved one) looks a little...small and oddly placed...in the full pic (odd angle since my yard has weird topography, mentioned elsewhere), but the second one from inside shows that it goes out to the railing and is just above the door opening. I LOVE that I was able to find clear awnings (that aren't Amazon junk) so that I can have a little cover from the weather but not lose any light inside the house. I only have windows on two sides (I live in a "rowhouse" that is attached to the neighbors on both sides), so every little bit of light is welcome!

[MsDDC]

My experimental winter tomatoes are doing awesome! They're finally in their permanent home now that we found the joists and got hooks in them. Growing extremely well!

I didn't get pics since it's always dark before I get home now, but everything else is chugging along, with now stable weather that they tend to like (highs near 50 to mid-50's and lows 35-40-Ish). Did harvest some broccoli and greens!

[applestar]

I’m looking forward to progress updates about your tomatoes!

Are you providing supplemental light? IME, tomatoes need more light than you might think or they easily get leggy and frail. For individual plants, I find aluminum-shaded utility (automotive)/chicken brooder light pretty useful. I put daylight 100W equiv. CFL/LED bulbs in them. If I end up needing greater coverage than one bulb can provide, I use socket extension and a Y socket adapter and run 2 bulbs (which can be supported when using CFL’s and LED’s).

Another thing I‘ve had issues with are mites — they can be a problem in the drier air as the heated indoor humidity goes down. I also end up dealing with aphids, but you are less likely to since they are hanging, you don’t have other plants that were brought inside from outside, and you use pesticides in the garden.

[MsDDC]

The tomatoes are doing wonderfully, with buds starting to form. To answer Applestar's question, I'm not supplementing the light. I consider this experimental, and if they do well I'll keep it up. If not, I can plant something else. They do get full sun since that window faces south and there are no obstructions. Right now that's about 9.5 hours (you can tell the one on the left gets a little less, but the one on the right is getting sun up to sun down). The humidity level is also perfect for them since I keep my house at 50% using two large humidifiers, one of which is in the same room (the office next to my bedroom, so I get the moisture without the noise right in the same room).

I also got a crop of turnips out. There are 3 more in there that can get a little bigger. We've had warm weather this week, so the stuff out there is happy as a clam. I have more broccoli coming in (no pic since it was raining and I wanted to get inside).

[MsDDC]

Apparently it was worth the chance to cover the brassicas, when it seemed all hope of production was lost. With that and this nice little heat wave we're having, I have production!

Side shoots of broccoli off the big plant (can cut tomorrow) (some of the smaller plants are also setting main heads, so I should get a little more!):

A romanesco!

And a cauliflower!

Temps for the next 5 days are supposed to be at or above (possibly much above) 50, with no freezing temps for even longer.

[MsDDC]

Welp, nothing like a January that's been, largely, 10+ degrees above average...