Gardening happenings in November

Summer has come and gone, and I finally ventured out into the garden.  During August, the weather was so hot, that nothing much was happening in the garden.  And then along came September with all of that rain, plus school and activities starting, so gardening  unintentionally took a back burner to everything else.  In October, I finally took a look, and discovered the garden had been overrun with volunteer squash vines from the compost pile.

View from the SW corner of the yard.

View from the NE corner of the yard. 

 Besides climbing over all available trellises, boxes and containers, the vines also sprawled out into the lawn, making it challenging for my teenager to mow.  But I didn't mind too much, since they supplied us with delicious squash stir-fry.

Last of the tomatoes

Trompetta squash.

Bell Peppers

 In addition to the squash, there were still a few more things to be harvested before I cleaned out the boxes and got them ready for for winter and spring. I was able to harvest green, yellow, and orange bell peppers, long green eggplant, tri-color carrots, and actually some tomatoes! The carrots, combined with some apples, made a great stir-fry!

Carrot-apple stir-fry

Tri-color carrots

Buried underneath all the squash vines were some forgotten/hidden plants leftover from the spring planting. I found a patch of greens that I believe are leftovers from the spring mezclun lettuce, as well as some celery. I had planted 4 celery plants - 3 were in a sunnier location, while one was in the kale bed.  The sunny celery ended up bolting, but the kale bed celery grew much slower.  I ended up pulling the three sunny ones months ago, but just "found" the other one.

Mezclun  mix lettuce

The  hidden celery

Long green eggpla

Finally, I needed to turn my attention to fall planting.  I had really missed my opportunity.  Ideally, I was to start fall seedlings indoors to transplant outside in August and September, but the time got away from me.  Now it is November, and I'm wondering what could I plant now?  After doing some web searching, I decided there was still time to plant garlic, and I just happened to have a few heads that I had picked up in August while visiting my friend Mike in Pennsylvania. We had stopped at a farmer's market and I purchased some organic seed garlic from Eco-Sophy farms grown locally in central Pennsylvania.  I had totally forgotten about it!   I bought 3 or 4 varieties, and put them in separate bags with their labels.  They sat forgotten on the kitchen table for the next few months until I realized I could plant them now.  I went looking for them (I had just seen them last week) and couldn't find them, so I asked my husband.  Not realizing they were my seed garlic, he had removed them from the labelled bags just days earlier, and grouped them all together in my garlic bowl.  Heavy sigh.  Not to be deterred, I planted them anyway, so now I have will have a surprise come harvest time.  Not too much to worry about, since there were only 3 varieties, and are either Inchilleum Red, Music, or Kettle River Giant. Actually, two of the heads were labelled, so I know that I at least have Music and Inchilleum Red (I think).

"Music" variety of garlic.

Costco boxes w/frost covers

Now I've got to read up on garlic.  I know there are two main types:  Hard stem, and soft stem (good for braiding). This "Music" variety is of the hard-stem type.  I also decided to experiment with planting some hardy greens and lettuces using the "frost" cover for the Costco boxes.  I don't know that anything will grow this late, but it is worth a try.