Where Has the Time Gone?

August flew by so quickly and now here it is September and what do I have to show for it? Well a few photos...that's a good place to start and how about a bit of a catch up on the garden? A highlight are the White Acorn squash, each a porcelain beauty bright against the dark soil of the fall garden but looking quite smart on a black napkin don't you think! The flesh is surprisingly mild though and white inside as well so the question remains, grow for beauty or taste. I would like both please ;-)

Technically it isn't autumn yet, but goodness, it certainly smells and looks like it. The brights are so brilliant and the darks so deep, the camera just doesn't like the challenge of making a good photograph. So here are some of the best from the last many weeks.

Dragon Tongue, yellow wax bean (both shrub) and Fortex pole bean

Beans were late getting going but they have been cropping well. My favourite pole bean is Fortex because even when mature, they are still tender. My favourite bush bean is a French Filet called Tremblant from OSC . It's a great cropper for our climate here in Nova Scotia, and delicious. They hang like chandelier earrings from the plant.

Most of the carrots have been dug up, lettuce mostly gone, but the Brussels Sprouts have a lot of growth, even though the sprouts are small. This purple variety is called Red Ball and they are growing in my raised bed.

The garlic is cured, cleaned up and in their open wire baskets for our use, but below shows where we hung them after removing from the ground. Old garden rakes make great hangers; who doesn't have a rusty one with prongs missing they just don't want to part with!

Please note the long garlics with the scapes still on. There is discussion on whether removing scapes makes the bulb bigger and I think indeed, in poorer soil it certainly would. But this garlic is quite large and as large as last year's crop. The variety is Susan Delafield, a hugely tall and later maturing garlic so at least for this variety, I would leave some scapes on as long as possible as I use them (after being whizzed in the food processor) in my salad dressings and also boil up the scape ball with new potatoes.

The above bed inside the fenced garden is still producing well but as I mentioned, the carrots are gone and that section was seeded this week with Dwarf Pak Choi and Red Kitten spinach and germinated in two days with the lovely cool weather we have been having. It is certainly time to scatter some radish seeds, any of the cool crops we planted out in early spring like arugula, mache, tatsoi. Then, when the weather gets even cooler to frost, cover them with a row cover, or cold frame lights, and you will enjoy the crop for an extended period.

So a final photo of the wildness of the late August garden.  As the hummingbirds head down south may I make a kind reminder to keep your feeders full, helping them on their journey as well as the other feathered migrant garden workers who don't spend the winter with us yet are extremely valuable to us for their strong work ethic.