Hello...anybody home?

[Penelope Periwinkle]

Is everyone out in their gardens or is thing thing broken?

Penelope

[Gary Woods]

We're in the stage of gardening known as "remorse and panic," in which one realizes how quickly life untended gets away...

I found some turnips out there, but nearly needed a machete...

Peace,

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

[Katra]

Well, I did put in a small fall/winter garden last night. :-) Brocolli, kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, a few lettuces and a fairly mature sweet 100's tomatoe that the nursery had left over from spring.... It was producing and blooming, and it was only a buck and all my own vines are dead already, so I figured, why not?

K.

[Katra]

That's funny. ;-)

K.

[Cecelia Medbery]

I'm facing reality...it really is fall and I didn't plant any fall veggies! I do have lots of fall flowers blooming, but they don't last long around here (Nebraska). It won't be but a few more weeks and we will have snow. I'm trying to plan my "winterizing" between now and then. VERY busy time of year with 3 sons' birthdays (2 in October and 1 on November 1st), plus Halloween costumes (I sew them), the election, Fall carnival at youngest son's school...do I need to go on?

Cecelia

[simy1]

no kidding. deader than elvis. my radicchios are immense, and I did not even fertilize them this year. Next year I am going for 500 heads. too bad that they take as much space as a small cabbage head in the garden, and also too bad that, after having overwintered under cover (it takes easily 10F), pulling them from the garden in the spring breaks your back (their taproot is easily 2 feet). Their taproot is why this vegetable is a major soil improver in heavy soils, each plant forming a vertical channel for water and worms.

Other than that they are the perfect vegetable, hardy, immune to pests and diseases, disliked by squirrels, tolerates drought and average soil, matures after first frost, at which point it has a complexity of flavor that no lettuce can hope to match. The heads keep in the ground for months, too.

[Thomas]

[Penelope Periwinkle]

Oh. been there, done that.

When I got back from vacation this summer I had to take a weed eater to the lemon basil. It was swarming over the Bulgarian Carrot peppers

Did you find the bones of small mammals in there?

Penelope

[Penelope Periwinkle]

My reality is that I had some surgery last week, and can't anything for another three.

I won't be able to start any lettuce or spinach until almost November.

Yes, we're into the fall season here in South Carolina, only ours won't end as soon as yours. I am enjoying sitting on the front porch, and watching the butterflies and hummingbirds every morning, though.

See, I feel so left out. Everyone's busy but me. I even had to give a bunch of my peppers away because I can't process them fast enough.

You better believe I kept those last few tomatoes, though!

Penelope

[FDR]

Don't hurt the Fraggles and Doozers.

home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic