last gasp harvest

[tielan]

Report from a late summer garden (in the southern hemisphere):

Harvest and planting for winter.

My area in Australia is mild enough that cool-weather leafy greens do pretty well over winter, so long as you protect them from frost.

I know most of you equatorially-north folks are just getting into planting times for your gardens - what do you plan to grow this year (and how's that coming along), and is there anything new you're going to try this growing season?

Speaking for myself, I'm trying to grow: cabbage, cauliflower, bok-choy, raab broccoli (I've never had luck with regular broccoli), rocket, brussel sprouts, onions (both the ones you use the leaf stalk and the ones you store the bulb), carrots, parsnips, sugarbeet, and the usual run of beetroot (which I have finally worked out how to cook: bake in individual wrappings of foil, and then after 40 mins, put a dob of butter on top and bake for another 40 mins).

Comments

[dantesspirit]

7 different tomatoes, 8 different peppers, tomatillos, eggplant, asparagus, cantelope, watermelon, zucchini, butternut squash, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, loofa squash, green beans...

[tielan]

Neat! That sounds like a wonderful range of food!

Are tomatillos a common food in the US? I'd barely heard of them until a friend from the US bought seeds and ended up passing them along to me since she had two children in three years and didn't have the time or energy to do the garden she'd originally planned.

Also, have you done cantelope and watermelon before? If so, do you have any advice on how to get them decently sized? I managed to grow both fruits to the size of baseballs, and then...they wouldn't grow any further. They were tasty, but tiny, and almost not worth the growing effort!

(Of course, this was better than previous years where they didn't produce a single fruit...)

[dantesspirit]

They're used a lot in Tex-Mex style food, like in a green chile sauce instead of tomatoes.}:)

We've tried cantalope before and they didn't produce. So this is an experiment to see if we can get any this year. Heh.

But the weather might have something to do with it too. If its hot and dry, they may not grow well. So I'd try keeping them very thoroughly watered, maybe that would help some.

[bridgetmkennitt]

Good luck with your cantaloupes!