The Fall Garden is in!

The summer garden is producing well. We have been enjoying it's abundance. Today we ate tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, carrots, blackberries, peaches, and peppers from our yard. Oh, and a duck egg. One duck is a female and one is a male. Our female, Tulip, has been laying for about three weeks. During that three weeks she has only missed two days. Hooray for Tulip!


We started the fall garden last week. This is our new sourdough experiment. We made our own "seed tapes" using tissue paper with sourdough for glue. I'll have to report on how it works when we know more. So far, it made life MUCH easier. It is so much easier to "plant" carrot seeds at the kitchen table than bending over the dirt with mud caked hands. I cut out the tissue and the girls took turns marking it at every inch. Then we glued the seeds to a square of tissue (we do square foot gardening and a square was easier to seed in my mind than one inch tapes). Each square holds 100 carrot seeds. (That's a lot of carrots. So yummy.) When the "glue" was dry enough, we took the sheets out and laid them in the garden. We sprinkled some dirt and sand over them and covered them with shade cloth. Now they should grow if I don't forget to keep them watered.


I lucked out and found starts of Kale, Cabbage, Collards, Lettuce, and Mustard Greens at Walmart. I have looked around every year to find fall garden starts and nobody ever has any. I was very surprised. They look a little leggy, but I bought them anyway and planted them. Hopefully the shade cloth will help them live until cooler weather arrives. (I actually have learned to cook greens this past month, so we will eat them this year - Go me!)

We also planted peas around our peas tower. I haven't ever had any luck with fall peas before but I keep hoping that this year will be different.