High 50s at night, low 70s during the day. Humidity about 80%
Finished drying dill. Planted cover crop of oats and field peas behind west rhubarb garden. Placed cardboard down to extend garden. Need to move gardens another foot away from fence. Hard to get behind gardens to remove weeds and maintain herbs and flowers there.
Harvest
Very active squirrels
Tomatillo salsa experiment. It was ok.
Sunrise 6:29am, Sunset 7:07pm, about 12.5 hours daylight
Watered the garden on 9/10/22. Then it started raining after midnight and rained all the next day and night. Supposed to rain until almost noon tomorrow. Probably will get 2-5 inches. Oh well. Not the first time it has rained after I watered. Rain has dropped daytime temperature to 60F and nighttime temperature to low 50s. We are getting about 12.5 hours of daylight per day now. It will be interesting to see how the recently planted Fall lettuce and root crop gardens do.
Blackberry and Rays rhubarb garden. It's a good thing it's raining because I want to cover the recently cut grass with cardboard to kill it to make the garden triangle shaped so the grass is easier to cut. Peppers are doing well in open cold frame. Celery and romaine ends are growing. Sylvetta arugula still has some leaves and is making seeds. New Zealand spinach is growing more leaves. I had to spray my hat with insect repellent due to the mosquitoes trying to bite my face. I think they come from our west neighbors' friendly chickens' forest that overshades some of the west gardens.
I really enjoy the bird bath on the patio. Volunteer ground cherry, cilantro, and really yummy arugula. Actually just about all the cilantro is volunteers. I generally let it sprout up. Then cut it back to use as mulch except for what we eat or let bloom to go to seed. Tithonia is finally blooming. I need to collect the seeds because it was hard to find these seeds. Lot of green raspberries. Grasshopper on brussel sprouts in patio garden. I don't know if that is a problem or not. Maybe the birds will eat him and any other ones that are around.
West gardens. Volunteer pumpkins getting orange and their leaves are dying although there is a new tendril that is going on top of the fence behind the cold frame.
West bedroom garden. Cut back Kale and used its leaves a mulch. The leaves were getting in the way of the lawn mower and shading the other plants in the garden. Now the other plants such as basil and red orache can be seen. Next year this will be the tomato garden so pulled up the volunteer tomato plants and put them in the tomato garden as mulch. Like to keep similar mulch together in case pests are on the plants. Hopefully by rotating plants through the different gardens along with planting flowers among the veggies will keep any future pests down. Weeded sedum garden on north side of house.
More tomatoes.
An interesting article on how to overwinter tomatoes can be found at https://savvygardening.com/can-tomato-plants-survive-winter/ .
I think the easiest and best option for me is to save the root plus short stem in the fridge method. We have limited south window exposure and space along with a cold house so the stem sprig method won't be easy to do. My plastic greenhouse is neither vented nor heated. The coldframe only goes to about early December with cold weather plants. Meanwhile I'm giving the orange-hat tomato plants to my cousin to overwinter in her new house. I wonder if I can save the 5 gallon pail tomatillo and ground cherry plants by first putting them in the garage so they don't freeze then storing in our 40-50F east basement once their leaves fall off? I wonder if I can do the root plus short stem in the fridge with these?
