Fall Garden

Fall is almost here (its hard to believe) and that means only one thing: gardening. Most people don't bother with a fall garden. The gardening bug bites in spring when you're tired of being inside and want to work outside. By this time of year its hot, the weeds have mostly discouraged your effort, and you just don't feel like it anymore. Not us. Gardening is more than just a hobby around here. We do it to help save money on food, and to feed the family healthy stuff. Things have been at a lull in our garden lately. Besides the constant tilling I've done over the last few weeks trying to reconquer the garden from the weeds, we really haven't done much. It's pretty much been all about watering regularly.

This weekend we planted the last of the fall garden. Here's the tally of what we have growing: peas, green beans, pumpkins, watermelon, corn, tomatoes, various herbs, carrots, lettuce, bell peppers, jalepenos, strawberries, and buckwheat.

What is buckwheat, you might ask? Well, it's a type of wheat you can harvest, but we didn't plant it for food. Buckwheat can be used as a "green manure crop" in beds you don't currently have veggies in. That means you grow it because it is rich in nitrogen, will shade out the whole bed (preventing weeds and lessening water requirements), and will be tilled back into the soil before it goes to seed, so all that good plant matter can be composting in the bed over winter. It is a relatively cheap seed that sprouts quickly and crowds out the weeds. You can also plant bush beans or peas as a "green manure crop". We did in one section. The seeds are more expensive, but you get a harvest out of them, so it's worth it. This is our first time trying a "green manure crop" and we're hoping it works as advertised.

We also added some perennials to our garden. We planted 3 rose bushes for some color and so Regina could harvest rose hips (apparently they're good for you and can be made into a tea). We also planted some cherry bushes. The cherry bushes have done great and are sprouting green foliage already.

One valuable lesson I learned this weekend is to not let your gas-powered tiller run out of oil. I wasted a good hour or more repairing it because I was too stupid to check the oil. On the bright side, I didn't have to take it to a mechanic, and learned a little about how tillers work.

The majority of the work now will be watering and weeding until harvest time.

I will post a few pictures from time to time so you can see our progress.