In spring, I’ve been told, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love. This may have been true for Tennyson, but when I was a young man, my thoughts of love weren’t light. Now that I’m old I question whether Tennyson was really talking about a young man at all.
Now it’s fall and this old man’s fancy turns to preparing for the spring.
This means lots of compost, another soil test and planting garlic. This year I ordered (working east) Kilarney, German Stiffneck (west), German red (East), Leningrad, and Chesnok. Actually, I have no idea what geographical area Chesnok refers to, but I’m pretending it’s in eastern siberia. As usual, I’ve gone with stiffnecks as I like the scapes and enjoy nice big cloves. They don’t store as well as softnecks, but I don’t have to deal with all the little tiny cloves.
There’s still carrots, kale, lettuce spinach, beans, sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts in the ground as well as some tenacious little hot peppers. Neverthless I feel the season is largely over. In keeping with the spirit of the high holy days, I’m reviewing my sins and thinking about what I can do better next year. Judgement is nigh. In this case judgement is the first freeze.
In any case I had a good harvest of garlic this year and lettuce. The beans and peas were abundant and I was satisfied with the potato harvest. Raspberries brought the greatest joy to the children. Several harvests were disappointing: tomatoes died too early, the onions didn’t get big enough, the sweet potatoes are getting eating by rodents, and the black beans didn’t stand up well enough so had moisture problems.
Keeping this blog (more or less) helped me to think harder about what I’ve been doing. Next year: more carrots, start the onions earlier, fewer green beans, trellis the black beans, start the peppers earlier, mulch the onions better, get the cat to eat the rodents, and smile more about what worked.
The chickens still aren’t laying eggs. It has been 19 weeks and 4 days. Are they really going to wait until week 20?
This fall has been a bit too busy for me, so I’m going to make my blogging hiatus official. I’ll be back at this in the spring when my course load is lighter and my thoughts turn lightly to dirt.
cheers.
