What's growing for the fall?

As planting spaces open up throughout the plot we are slowly transitioning/planting fall crops. Here's what we have in the ground as of Sunday:
Kale - We were gifted 5 seedlings from fellow community gardener Marie (who provided our leeks at the start of the season). 4 of the 5 are doing really well!
Bush Beans - We planted a row of organic Fresh Pick bush beans. These are a Jade type green bean.
Butterhead lettuce - The Romaine was incredibly successful at the start of the season. Hopefully the Red Cross butterhead we planted will produce as well. Red Cross produces a mix of crimson and green heads.
Mesclun/Baby Greens - A mixed bed of Johnny's Selected Seeds Elegance Greens Mix, additional Ruby Streaks mustard greens, and Surrey (Arugula/Rocket with a 'wild arugula' look)
Onions- Egyptian/Walking Onions of course!
Beets - more Detroit Dark Red Beets! They were slow to mature and undersized in the spring because we planted late, hopefully this crop will yield larger end results.
Radish- A few interspersed plantings of Champion Radish
Spinach- A 2nd attempt at Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach. Our spring/early planting suffered from our lack of experience and weed identification skills. Trying again in the hopes of better results.

As more space opens up I'll fill it with more greens/fall type crops.
What's to come in your fall garden?

Harvest Monday - August 2nd 2010

This week was an explosive week in the harvesting department! The first full sized tomatoes were picked on Wednesday. 2 Early Girl and 3 Striped Roman tomatoes:

We headed to the garden to do some major weeding and prep work for the fall on Saturday. When we got there we had discovered one of the striped roman tomatoes was collapsing out of it's cage under the weight of all the tomatoes that were on it! For the sake of the rest of the tomato plants we pulled the plant and took home all of the green tomatoes. We also grabbed a few cranberry red potatoes, some baby onions, 3 more ripe tomatoes, and a hungarian wax pepper:

We ended up picking 2 more ripe tomatoes, and some small bunches of Basil, Chives, and Sage yesterday which didn't make it into a photo.

Harvest Totals this week:

1.55 oz Cherry Tomatoes (including the first cherry tomatoes from 7/22)

2.84 lbs Tomatoes

3.44 lbs Green Tomatoes

4.25 oz Potato

1.05 oz Onion

.50 oz Hungarian Pepper

.55 oz Sage

.65 oz Basil

.45 oz Chives

Weekly Total: 6.75 lbs/3.06 kg

Seasonal Total: 11.394 lbs/5.168 kg

Harvest Totals have been updated.

Now that full sized tomatoes have certainly been harvested, the tomato watch is over. I'll note the first harvests and keep track for next year!

Another First harvest this week:

2 undersized Cranberry Bean pods had already dried out, yielding 4 Ottawa Cranberry Beans. The beans came from Daphne by way of Ottawa Gardener.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Walking Onions

No time to post lately as work and non-gardening life have gotten in the way this past week, but I did receive a lovely gift today:

Gail took a day trip to Maine today to visit some family. While there she stopped by Beach Plum Farm in Ogunquit, ME and visited the community gardens on the grounds. She ended up chatting with 2 gardeners who gave her a few bunches of Egyptian Onions, the biggest one is in the above photo.

Egyptian Onions, known as Walking Onions or Tree Onions are perennial onions which are hardy to zone 3. When a bulb is planted and grows new bulbs form on the step of the plant. Eventually the cluster of bulbs (pictured above) gets so top heavy that it bends the plant and touches the ground, taking root and growing into a new set of onions.

As they are left to grow they will spread or walk across your garden. You can pull each set of clusters off and divide the bulbs in order to plant them. The stalks of the plants can also be cut before the onion clusters form and used similar to chives.

Planting a cluster or 2 should yield enough for stalks, bulbs and to save some for planting next year. Like traditional onions bulbs also will form below the ground. If planted in the fall they can be dug up as spring onions.

I'll be prepping and planting fall seeds this weekend and will most certainly be planting some Egyptian/Walking Onions, so stay tuned for future Walking Onion updates!

Below is the full hall of the 3ish clusters of Walking Onions I was gifted:

(Walking Onions: Some for Eating, Some for Planting, Some for...?)