Fall is good times

Sure, we get all tomato-sad at the end of the summer when the weather starts to cool off and our big beefy summer crops start heading toward the compost bin, but there's still good stuff to come out of this time of year.

In fact, there's tons.

Nasturtium are suddenly, GAME ON.

We've been psychos about pinching back the basil and, FOR ONCE, it's paying off in a good fall crop.

The Solly Beiler cucumbers are all about the cooler mornings and hot afternoons.

This year, we're having what's amounting to an Indian Summer. In the sense that it's unseasonably warm and predicted to stay that way for the month of October.

This means a few things:

1. Some of your summer crops will pick up where they started to leave off a few weeks ago when the temperatures took their normal fall drop in production when the weather *started* to cool off. They'll get all, "YAY! Heat!" and probably try to pump out a new round of blossoms or even crops.
2. You can get in a late crop of fall vegetables before our first frost shows up sometime around November 1. 

In the case of the test garden, we've sown a fall crop of bush beans that *should* be ready to harvest by mid to late October, we're bringing in lots of nasturtium and sunflower bouquets and we're watching the cucumbers, basil and watermelons spring back to life for one last shot at joining a meal.

Bush Beans acting all promising.

We never get tired of nasturtium bouquets. Or smooching moose.
That should be a bar name, "The Smooching Moose." Right? Right.

This Moon and Stars watermelon is a little late to the game, but we're letting it think it's still summer.

It also means that some of our sorta crappy looking summer plants that really should have been pulled by now are getting a few more weeks to do *something* before they're summarily chucked into the bin.

And, for this Jaune Flamme tomato that *something* is joining us for lunch today.

This is also a really good time to do some fall planting of perennial vegetables, pruning of herbs and feeding.

Artichokes, like this Green Globe guy, do well planted as younglings in the fall. They'll usually produce a small harvest in early spring and then be big and bushy for the next spring. We plant ours in the perennial landscaping beds since they don't need to be replanted every year like most of your vegetables do.

Feverfew, a herb used a lot for treating headaches (by regularly chewing a few leaves), appreciates an early fall pruning to remove old growth so that it can put on lovely healthy new growth. It self-seeds in our area (Zone 9), so if you have it growing this fall, you'll have some new seedlings cropping up in spring. If you don't have it growing already, it's a great seed to start in spring once the soil warms up.

This Meyer Lemon has seen some rough years, but is bounding back after its recent feast.

Growing citrus? Lemons, limes, kumquats, oranges, clementines, whatever - they're all prepping fruit for the California winter right now and would appreciate a little snack to get on their way. Generally speaking, citrus plants need to be fed three times a year - late winter (February), late spring (May) and late summer (September) - to produce reliable fruit crops.  We like Gardner & Bloome's Fruit Tree Fertilizer because it's organic, readily available (Yay! No hunting around!) and the application amounts are easy to calculate (Yay! Because we suck at math!).

So, we're not getting bummed about the forthcoming putting to bed of the summer garden because we're too busy growing fall crops and prepping for winter planting.