Fall garden resurrection

Feeling guilty over the morass of weeds that had taken over the back part of my vegetable garden, last weekend I got to work with a shovel and dug myself out of what was beginning to look like The Secret Garden – pre-resurrection (see before and after pics). Now I walk by the garden with a smug look of satisfaction, as it’s been re-ordered into neat rows of what I hope will be a fall crop of various greens and peas.

Fall gardens are tricky for me – I usually plant them too late, and wind up with token midgets in scraggly rows. The good news is, they winter over and surprise me in spring with what my neighbors assume is my really early, especially ambitious spring crop – actually an uber-delayed fall harvest. I keep trying for an actual fall success, figuring the worst that can happen is I put $1.99 worth of seed packet in the ground and it doesn’t come up.

This year feels more promising. I persevered through the slim pickings in three different stores (um, borage? calendula? who grows these things? I’m all for variety but what happened to kale and collards?). Then I discovered that Johnson’s has a full complement of more familiar fall seed options, and I got to work.

As I watered in the seeds, I gave them a little pep talk, “Come on, collards, do your thing!” There’s also kale, spinach, lettuce, scallions, beets, chard, and cilantro (not sure about this one but we’ll see), plus sugar snaps that I planted next to the rescued wire “trellis” they climbed in the spring (I probably should have planted in a different spot, something about nitrogen in the soil, but I didn’t have time to relocate). There's also one tomatillo plant I discovered in the tangle of weeds, a volunteer from two years ago that's now produced enough for one bonus batch of salsa.

Clara – who patiently indulges me when I enthusiastically point out yet another pepper or eggplant that’s made it from our garden to our dinner plates -- says we won’t have to buy any groceries this fall, if it all comes up. We’ll see.