The garden

My tomatoes are thriving, but I think we need to recover the greenhouse this weekend. It is getting close to the 30s at night and that will drop it too low in the greenhouse. We are HOPING to get lots of tomatoes before the plants are frozen! If we can get it recovered, we can possibly put a heat source in there.

Some baby butternut squash, once again I dont know that I will get any before the freeze but I will pick them underdeveloped to at least add to soups and stews or feed to the chickens. Anything that lowers groceries!

My peas are climbing fence, they are full of flowers. Peas grow well here, but like everything grow slow in the cold summer. I have a huge broccoli here that is not heading, disappointing.

These broccolis just started heading! I LOVE fresh broccoli and we will freeze all that we cannot eat right away. This is something I usually have to buy frozen, so if we can keep the greenhouse at 40+ I will grow it all winter. both cabbage and broccoli will grow at about 45 comfortably, a lot faster at 60 degrees though.

This is a bed of butternut squash. These were all started late, all of Frank and Nathalie's squash and pumpkins died.We set them out too early, so I soaked seeds and started more. They sprout faster if soaked. They are late ones, they were put into the bed in late June so I HOPE we will get something out of it. next yr, we know what to do different. Start inside VERY early and build a PVC and 6 mil plastic (double) hoop house over the ENTIRE garden, and make individual hoop houses for raised beds. It will be a good winter project, we wont put up plastic until early may as it cannot handle the snow load. We are hoping to create a southern growing season in this manner. We see other people here doing the same, and I think it will add value to the house. No one would buy this house unless they wanted to live at least sort of the lifestyle we live (I could be wrong) with the barn, winterized greenhouse, fenced yard and barn yard, cold frames in garden. It is very attractive to people like us.

These are my cabbages, they all have heads now about the size of Frank's fist, some a little larger. I am so proud of them! I have never had a fall garden down south so never grew cabbage, it needed cooler weather. These were all grown from heirloom seed, every plant I have on here was grown from heirloom seed. We did buy some plants initially, and they all died. The lettuce that I bought to jump start geese feed failed, but what I planted from seed is thriving, same with the spinach. Well, I didnt buy any spinach plants.

Another squash picture, the winter squash grows well but this one LOOKS like a summer squash. I do think that is deceiving, because I didnt plant any. They would not work well. I hope to have some more summer vegetables next yr in the cold frame but for now I am enjoying the winter bounty as it has been hard to grow it in the past because of heat. The garden is going well, the neighbor says this is an unnaturally cold summer so maybe next summer will bring a huge harvest with a cold frame and warmer weather!