Yesterday, I planted the rest of the garlic, and the onions (not recommended for this time of year, I’ve read, as onion sets in winter will likely only yield green onions. Last year we planted them in the fall and lost the whole crop. this spring i planted seedlings and got 2 onions- the animals kept digging up the bed and eventually I wasn’t able to replant them all). Zak did some re-mowing in the garden. I picked some strawberries. I cut them up and froze them that night.

There were all these things that we would have done if the #norovirus hadn’t been in town.

I did make it out there at sunset. I picked some dino kale in case I can eat greens tomorrow morning, and picked what broccoli I was able to find in the older bed. I was second-guessing myself and wondering if some of those heads were actually collard greens. We need to come up with a better way of marking beds. The seedling labels tend to get moved around by our little assistant. Z was surprised when I told him tonight that I’d like to cut out the old broccoli plants – there’s a lot of leaf for not much broccoli. I tried to explain that it’s our first time growing it – and we’re experimenting with varieties, aren’t we? We planted De Cicco and Waltham varieties. Hopefully we’ll get bigger heads next time.

I also want to cut or pull out the corn. I keep finding bent-over plants and parts of ears on the ground. I doubt that the raccoons have left us much. Next year we need to plant corn much earlier (and more often, as this was our only planting). I think the nights this fall were too damp to be able to dry corn properly. I’d been fantasizing about grinding up the corn and making cornbread to share with family around Thanksgiving. Ha!

I think that our best crop of peas in what remains of this fall will be the first planting, the one that’s flowering now. Maybe we will even have some for Thanksgiving. The other plantings are too far from the newer trellis, and in some cases too wet.

The raccoons dug up a lot of the garlic last night. I think it’s because I put out fish meal in some places. Grrr! I think that next time we use it we have to leave the bed fallow for a bit so the raccoons can dig it up. Maybe I’ll do this with the corn bed, although I really want to get some cover crops planted…