September Garden

These yellow sunflowers are called Jerusalem Artichokes. They are neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke, but that’s another story. Although their tuberous root is edible, we rarely harvest them for food. I use them as a screen for our compost area, and they are a valuable addition to the compost with long hollow stems that bring air into the inner areas of a well-constructed pile.

It’s clean-up time as food production winds down. I didn’t do a good job of garden maintenance this year, so I’ve got a lot of weeds to get rid of. I’m now doing most of my weeding sitting down using this rolling tractor seat. With the heavy rains we have had, the soil is soft, and weeding is relatively easy. I totally cleaned out this bed in a little over an hour. All these weeds become compost, so essentially I’m growing my own fertilizer.

I should have sprayed my tomatoes more with copper sulfate. The plants are rapidly succumbing to blight. The spread of the disease was increased by high humidity and lots of rain, but we’ve harvested so many tomatoes, and have so many more ripening that we don’t care that much. I’ll do a better job next time.

We planted green beans later than ever this year. They are just starting to flower. Barring an early frost, we should still get an excellent harvest. I plant beans in the garlic bed, just after I’ve harvested my garlic. The beans love it, and I’ve never had a bad crop or pest damage with the late planting.

This bed is mostly peppers and eggplant with a trellis of tomatillos at the end.

The plants have died back, and each clump of stems represents a hill of potatoes ready to harvest. I always marvel at the amount of good food we can grow in a small area. All it takes is time.