We Meant Well

The plan was that we were going to plant a healthy amount of fall crops and when the temperatures began to fall we would cover those crops with some nifty new row houses. As you can see in the top photo, the row house construction went rather well. However, what the bottom photo shows is that the actual planting didn't go as planned.

Actually the planting did start out quite well, but we ran into some unforeseeable mishaps between the time of the first planting of greens in late August to when the covers went up in late October. The first unfortunate incident happened to our crop of greens. September brought about some unusually hot days in southeastern Pennsylvania. The heat plus one neglected watering and the entire crop fried. Then our bush beans and peas fell victim to some deer and rabbits with a case of the munchies. It's odd, we never had any problems with deer and very few issues with rabbits, then in one night our garden became a salad bar. By the time we patched the holes in the fence where the rabbits squeezed through and raised its height from five feet to seven feet to keep out the deer, the window for planting was over. We planted some desperation chard (because it's wicked hardy and Mmm, Mmm, delicious) sometime in October and covered the bean and pea corpses with our fingers crossed for a miracle.

No such miracle arrived. What we are now left with are some carrots, sage, spring chard (wicked hardy), and some mighty fine looking row covers.

Good Day of Pickin'

We drew a nice variety of herbs and produce from the garden this afternoon. Pictured here are carrots, parsnip thinnings, celery, chard, thyme, and sage. I was the most excited about the celery because this was actually our first cutting. We had a good bit going earlier, but the damn deer managed to get in and make a salad bar of things. Luckily the celery bounced back enough to yield a few late stalks.

Plastic Forts

With the threat of frost forcasted, Meg and I set out to cover our fall crops. The frames are made of 1/2 inch PVC and the plastic was generously donated by Meg's father, Mick. When we have more time we'll fasten the plastic a bit more snug around the edges, but this should do for the time being.



There's something about this photo that reminds me of when I was a kid and draped sheets over the kitchen table and pretended it was a fort.