Thursday, September 17, 2009

The languishing summer garden

This season's urban crops here at the Noe Farm have zoomed past middle age straight into their twilight. It's a little embarrassing. The arugula gave up long ago, and turned into a clump of tall straw-like flower sticks. The carrots and beets started to falter and let their leaves get ugly, so we harvested them and ate them up weeks ago, leaving a desolate patch of dusty blank dirt. Now the zucchini is starting to yawn, and the cucumbers are getting dwarfed by the rogue dandelion that has just sprung up nearby. It's looking like last call at the Home For The Aged Edibles party.

Aside from the promise of late-season tomatoes, this is a pretty depressing scene. If we had a bit more foresight, we might have started some autumnal crops earlier in the summer, so that the new plants could take the torch when the old timers retire. But we didn't do that.

Nonetheless, I think the time can still be nigh for our little garden to get some rejuvenation. Luckily, it's not as if we have a big scary cold winter ahead of us here in San Francisco, so I'm sure we could get away with planting some autumn crops this late. So the question now is what to plant? Any suggestions out there?
Posted by Brad Thompson at 3:32 PM

1 comments:

  1. Snow Peas. I put some seeds in to grow starts, and they are growing like mad. My prediction is that SF winter weather will have them producing in great bunches.

    Lettuce and spinach should also do well here. Unfortunately I had some starts that I grew from seed, hardened a bit, planted in the ground - and they were promptly munched by some backyard critters. I am buying some chicken wire this weekend to build a trellis for my snow peas/cucumbers/whatever in Healdsburg and am thinking of building a frame to grow spinach in here, coupled with trying to grow some in a half wine barrel I am going to put on the back deck - hoping that the critters won't come up to the deck.
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