Seed and Bean

Somewhere between summer and winter there’s supposed to be an autumn, right?  I remember it used to start somewhere around mid-September – chillier nights, crisp mornings, but soft afternoons.  While living in the south, I missed the intense fall colors that only cool nights and warm days can bring.  And there was a rush to get everything done before winter finally hit – rake the leaves, pick the fruit, clean up the garden beds…  But we seem to have skipped right into winter this year.  We went from 30 deg. C to freezing with snow in a couple of days and this former Texan gardener has been caught unawares!

Previously, my fall cleanup in the kitchen garden consisted of picking up the pecan nuts and then raking the leaves into the beds as a mulch over the winter because harvesting was usually mostly completed by July and August (too hot to grow much).  But here, I still had food to harvest when the temperatures dropped – root vegetables like carrots and beets, Rainbow chard, and plenty of herbs (except basil, which I’d harvested and turned into pesto at the beginning of September).  As you can see, I managed to dig up the carrots and beets and they were probably the better for a little frost – it sweetens them up – and I cut back the lemon verbena hard because I plan to overwinter the pot in the garage but the chard was done for.  It was a bit of a relief, actually, since I’d underestimated how well it would grow here and I was overwhelmed with the harvest.

Fall cleanup always makes me sad – I dread winter and the dark, cold days ahead – but it does allow me the chance to assess what worked and what didn’t in this brand-new garden.  I’ll be planting less of some things (chard and nasturtiums), space my successional plantings better (radishes and cilantro), and reconfiguring the garden slightly to allow easier access from the garage and alley. But that’s in the spring.  For now, I’ll dig up all the vegetation and compost it, transplant the perennial herbs into temporary beds, and tidy up my tools.  Winter’s coming, and me and my garden need the rest.