Veggies in Autumn

Parsley in front with snow peas behind.

     I am repeatedly surprised by the huge number of people who give up on their vegetable gardens a couple of weeks after Labor Day. Our season at this latitude is short enough without chopping off the hind end of it. Today is November 1, so I thought it would be a good time to give a "state of my garden" report.

     My cukes and zucchinis made it into the first week in October before giving up the ghost, along with their last fruits. Our Italian basil gave up about ten days ago, but it appears that Thai basil is made of sterner stuff. The leaves are small and sparse, but still healthy, and a little bit goes a long way.

     We ate our last green beans last night after we added all their leaves and stems to the composter.

     We had a frost scare last night, so we picked any tomato or pepper that was turning red, while leaving the green ones alone. Years ago when I had more time and energy, I would have rushed out to throw a tarp over these plants. Now I am too lazy. I just hedge my bets and go to sleep soundly. Sure enough, it was a false alarm. The tomatoes and peppers are fine.

     These are the "tender" veggies and will be lucky to go another two weeks. But there is a lot more out there. The parsley is luxuriant, and the broccoli must be working on its 12th harvest by now. Our Swiss chard is going to give us harvest number 5.

     We pulled one Brussels sprout plant too early just for fun, but we have the real harvest here ahead of us. The spinach seeds we planted germinated only spottily, but what we have is doing well and will probably be added to the chard when the time comes.

Flowering Snow Peas

     But the star of the fall show is our patch of snow peas. You may recall that our spring crop ran out of gas in mid-July. We waited about three weeks, then planted a new crop in August. This is what they looked like yesterday. The 30" plants on the right have already given us one crop and are still flowering like mad.

     The plants on the left were a big surprise. They are over 5 feet tall and everything else about them is over-  sized as well. They only began to flower last week and are in a real race to produce before the cold gets them. For these guys I might actually get out with a tarp just once. 

     All of these plants will survive a series of light frosts -- the kind we get frequently in late fall. Their speed of growth slows down but they do continue growing and producing. I hope to be harvesting some of these crops over Thanksgiving weekend.

     So why rush out and end everything? Yes, it is true: when you finally do your garden clean-up, it will be colder. But you don't have to do anything now and you get rewarded with more food as well. A genuinely lazy gardener like me cannot pass this up.