hardfrost and harvest

The weatherman promises that there will be a hard frost tonight with temperatures dropping to the low to mid 20's.  After consulting Marcia, I harvested the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce,  There was one pound after cleaning.  Picked a large bunch of radishes the day before and pretty much cleared out all that were ready to pick.  I wasn't really thinking about harvesting the local wildlife, but came on this large group of wild turkeys on the way to the garden.  Cut the heads off the lettuce, but the turkeys are still roaming, blissfully unaware of a certain holiday later this month.

People ask me every day, "Garden must be done by now??" and are amazed that we are still picking things every week.  We have picked 31.25 pounds since the last posting in October.  The lettuce would not have survived the overnight temperatures, but the mustard, kale and turnip greens will all be fine and continue to produce.

The last of the floral arrangements were distributed on Oct 29th.  There was not many remaining flowers, but some holly, nandina berries, cosmos and herbs from other gardens combined with  snapdragons, okra foliage and some other flowers to make 5 bouquets.  The staff at the health department send a very nice "Thank You" card for the arrangements they received.

The Rogersville Review  printed a very nice article about the garden in their October 20th edition.  It was on page 16, however this is the first page of their Life & Style Section.  It was a full page long with several photographs.  Our thanks go out to Joel Spears,  feature editor, and the Review.

We have located a supply of horse manure and intended to pick a truckload up this week.  The heavy rainfall that morning canceled the loading, but we intend to get a big batch of compost started before the end of this season. The delay will also enable us to incorporate a truckload of partially mulched leaves to the pile.  The wind, rain, sleet and hail of today and the past week have almost ended the leaf peeping season.  The cyclone rake gizmo was ready to pick up, but it was too wet for the operation today. 

The initial work on the Blurb book has started.  We are gathering information from the web and have a draft outline that is being reviewed.  A meeting to evaluate this year's garden and plan for next season is scheduled for later this month.  There is only a little clean-up work left to complete, so this is a good time to start the review and think about improvements for next season.