fall garden

We are slowly getting our fall garden in. My boys were kind enough to build me two 4’X8′ boxes for raised beds.

These are beets and swiss chard. I’m going to confess and say that I’ve always thought I didn’t like beets. I think because I’ve only seen canned beets on a salad bar and they didn’t look very appealing. But my friend from Kenya has shown me how to put them in a salad (or slaw) and I love them. I even roasted some with some sweet potatoes and onions. So now I’m growing them.

As you can see, I’m having an issue with my seeds germinating…ugh… Most of the seeds I started in my trays got washed way when we had a huge storm a while back. So I thought I’d just direct seed since my boxes are ready. I’ve planted more seeds and I’m going to water every day to keep the ground moist so hopefully they will germinate.

I have a friend whose seeds are germinating just fine. She brought over lots of cauliflower transplants (way over 50). I planted 21 and shared the rest with another friend. I was in a hurry so I just used one of the beds that the squash had been in this summer. No box, but I think it will do just fine.

My sweet potato vines are coming back after being burned in our backyard  brush fire. I’m wondering if they’ll make it all winter. We’ve been going out and just harvesting what we need and then replanting the vine. I guess if we get a freeze we’ll go ahead and dig them all up.

Our hens are confined to their run for a while. We’ve had a couple not go back into the coop at night and have been attacked. We think by raccoons. It’s crazy, we’ve been here almost a year and haven’t had any issues with predators. However, we’ve lost hens these last couple of weeks. Benjamin and Gabriel are on the job so hopefully the issue will be resolved soon.

We still need to plant garlic and bulb onions. Hopefully our lettuce, spinach and carrot seeds will come up or I’ll need to replant those also.

Feel free to share what’s going on in your garden in the comments.

This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party, Clever Chicks Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop,

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