Vegetable harvest just before the first hard frost -- whew!
When the first hard frost of fall is predicted, a gardener scurries around and quickly harvests all the vegetables left.
Some of the results of my last-day flurry to harvest all the vegetables in the garden. And then there were none....
Courtesy of Craig Summers Black
The vegetable garden is down for the count after suffering a devastating one-two punch:
1. Two days of winds gusting up to 55 miles an hour, without snow or a hurricane without an ocean view. This is the same kind of storm that sank back in 1975. (Remember ?)
2. Then our prolonged wonderfully fallish weather took a nasty turn overnight, bottoming out at 28 degrees F. (minus 2 degrees C), our first hard freeze.
But because I keep a watchful eye on the (our office manager didn鈥檛 call me Weather Boy for nuthin鈥�), I was forewarned and forearmed. I spent all day before the impending doom gathering every little last bit of produce before it was fated to turn into little beige sacks of goodge.
Gather ye spuds while ye may
Up came the last of the sweet potatoes, the last of the beans were snapped, 鈥檓aters popped off the vines, peppers pulled, gourds grabbed, squash squeezed鈥�
Well, the vegetable garden had a good run.
Now it has been cut back and an autumn鈥檚 worth of leaves piled on it and then mowed into little tiny pieces. I tend to mulch rather than till. Easier. Better for the soil.
Meanwhile, in the flower beds
While the vegetable garden now looks like a big khaki blanket, the ornamental beds still show some stirrings of life.
The cerinthe came back for its best show ever and is still blooming. , which tends to seed itself charmingly in every nook and cranny, still sputters out its dashes of yellow. And the roses: How do they do that? I wish I had half their stamina.
What else I鈥檓 into this week: Mulching. I buy a yard and a half of double-processed hardwood mulch at a time, and after far too many trips to the Mulch Mart, the guys now know me. I feel like one of those barflies in a film noir who walks in and says, 鈥淕imme the usual.鈥�
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Craig Summers Black, The Transplanted Gardener, is an award-winning garden writer and photographer who blogs regularly at Diggin' it. You can read more of what he's written by clicking here. You may also follow Craig鈥檚 further adventures in gardening, music, and rural life on .