Around The Garden - November 24, 2012

Dear Folks,

I've been trying to do more seeding in of carrots, turnips, radishes, sugar peas and lettuces.  I have some onions just starting to sprout also along with the radishes - always reliable speedy germination.  I'm also trying 'yard long beans' a type of green bean with reportedly wonderful long and tasty edible pods.

Some of the prior plants and my garlic are going strong.

One of my Lacinto (dinosaur) Kale 'summered' over and the funny thing still has usable leaves, and sprouting along the stem.  I'm going to harvest the rest of the leaves today or tomorrow and cut back to the new growth and should get more usable leaves later on.

Meanwhile my sweet orange bell pepper got really going as the summer high heat started to reduce and has some lovely large fruit.  I've been picking some off but am really gratified that some of the fruit still on the plant are nice 'grocery-store' size.

I changed the garlic bed to this location this year and planted not only my regular purple glazer that I like so much but also elephant garlic (on the left side of the picture) which I purchased this summer in the Gilroy area of California.  I keep my garlic in the crisper until planting out on or about October 1st and that chilling gets the bulbs growing fast once in the ground.  This picture of the sweet bell and garlic was taken November 8th (the Kale was photoed on September 29th).  The garlic grew this much in about 37 days.

Next post I'm going to show the terrific production I got out of my Jerusalem Artichoke (aka Sunchokes).

Garden Tip:  Temps are going to start going down so have your frost protection ready for tender plants.

-- Catherine, The Herb Lady