The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Fall garden begins to bear

Fall raspberries and peas

Even as the summer crops dwindle, the fall garden is beginning to pour forth its bounty.  Ever-bearing raspberries picked back up in mid August after taking a few weeks off, and I just noticed that the snap peas are starting to bloom.

Ripening pepper

Early fall is my favorite time of year for salads.  We don't baby peppers the way we do tomatoes, so we only have ripe, red fruits for a couple of months between mid-August and the frost.  During that time, salads consist of lettuce, baby kale and tatsoi, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, sprouting beans, snap peas, and probably more ingredients I'm not remembering at the moment.  Such a treat to pour so many colorful vegetables onto our plates!

Fall greens

Another highlight of the garden this week is the beds of Dwarf Siberian and Red Russian kale.  I knew the seeds I'd saved this spring were viable because patches of baby kale started popping up around the parent plants in July, but I wasn't entirely sure that the two varieties wouldn't hybridize.  I planted them separately and am thrilled to see that the two leaf shapes are quite distinct --- no gene-hopping there.  (By the way, the photo on the right is tatsoi, not kale.)

Despite all of these fun fall crops, though, I'm still knee deep in tomatoes and loving it.  I read about a frost in the Pacific Northwest last week and I'd like the world to know we're not nearly ready.  Anyone know a good anti-frost dance?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I don't know what frost that was. In Portland, OR, we had two days that got down to the 60s, so maybe some part of Oregon got colder than that, but we sure didn't feel any frost. This is the best year in the last four or five for tomatoes in my garden, and our peppers seem to be doing okay for the most part too. Two of our pumpkins have already turned orange and this is the first time I've ever been able to grow celery big enough to use. It's been a good summer for us, garden-wise.
Comment by bladerunner5 — Mon Aug 27 23:08:44 2012
Early frosts

bladerunner5 --- The report was on one of my favorite blogs --- http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/first-frost/. It was down in a frost pocket, but still! She says she lives "near the Columbia River Gorge".

I'm so glad it missed you and that you're having an awesome garden year!

Comment by anna — Tue Aug 28 08:11:25 2012
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