Fall Projects

It has been a quiet couple of weeks on the home front.  I spent several hours split over the course of a couple of weekends scraping moss off our sad little excuse for a back patio.  It looks slightly less sad now.  In a year or two I want to completely redo the patio with actual pavers, and expand it by at least 50%.  But for now at least it is once again recognizably a patio.


My baby acorn squashes have germinated and are kind of adorable.

The Black Krim tomato plant that Nick's sister brought is is coming along nicely and the fruits are starting to ripen - so pretty! Plus, the jalapeno plant is finally putting out fruit, which is kind of exciting.  Even the bell pepper is flowering.  It's the hoop house that Nick built over the middle bed that is making the plants so happy, I think.  The fact that it's not 95 degrees out anymore is probably also helping.  Today we're going to build another hoop house to continue preparing the garden for winter.  We were originally going to expand it from three beds to four, but building and filling a new bed just isn't in the budget right now.  It can be a springtime project.  I'm already planning how to take over the back bed once the tomatoes are done for the season: lettuce, spinach, kale, and radishes!  Perhaps some arugula too.  We'll see.

We planted broccoli seeds but no sooner did they sprout then they were eaten.  Slugs, I suspect.  They absolutely wrecked our broccoli, kale and lettuce earlier this year - it was a disaster.  I haven't been pleased with the Bayer Natria slug killer bait that I bought this summer - it's organic, but the pellets did this weird moldy thing that was disgusting, and didn't really seem to slow down the slugs.  Although admittedly I was so revolted by their moldy fuzz that I did not reapply them as often as I should have.  So this time we took my sister-in-law's advice (she's our family expert) and bought some Sluggo, which is the go-to for organic gardeners plagued by slugs.  Just applied it on Friday - will have to wait and see how well it works.

I am also decorating a bit for fall.  Every year I am unable to resist the allure of small local decorative gourds and pumpkins, and the local farm store has lovely ones in stock.  Willpower is overrated.  Now I just have to find some money in my budget for mums to put out front...

Did you know that the small tri-color corn can be cooked to make popcorn-on-the-cob?
So said the lady at the farm store.  I hadn't known that.  Decorative and tasty!