Fall Gardening

I got the idea of planting a fall garden from an email garden ad.  I had not been as successful at summer gardening as I would have liked, so the idea of starting over again appealed to me.   

I pulled my tomatoes and zucchini and pepper plants and decided to plant beets, broccoli and mums.  At least the garden looked good and I knew the mums would grow if nothing else did.  

For the first time ever, I grew a vegetable from seeds.  The Candy Cane beet seeds came from a nursery in St. Louis and were on sale for $2.  I figured I had nothing to lose.  To increase my odds of success I even soaked half of the seeds before planting.  I got this idea from the seed packet envelope.  It said soaking the seeds can cut the time it takes for the beets to germinate in half.  

A week later, both Mike and I were surprised (given my lack of green thumb), to see beet plants actually sprout and broccoli plants growing larger.  

We decided to wait until Emily visited to actually pull our beets.  I sent her out to the garden telling her she had to pick her own dinner although I was not sure what she would collect.  I was afraid I might have to go to the grocery store to get the the beets for our dinner.  

Fortunately, Emily found actual beets at the end of those plants.  I made her pick them all and she got Frankie to help her.  

When we brought in the beet plants, they took up the whole kitchen counter.  However, once I cut the beets off the leaves, the pile was considerably smaller.  Turns out we were growing a variety of beets that produces baby beets.   I had approximately 42 beets but many of them were one inch and a half in diameter or smaller.  

Nevertheless, they were delicious.  I went ahead and roasted the beets and we had roasted beet salad with goat cheese and walnuts.  And the chickens greatly enjoyed the greens.  

Unfortunately, Emily could not have any homegrown broccoli when she was here.  The heads were the size of our baby beets.  I left them in the garden hoping they would grow larger.  

I like fall gardening.  It is not as hot out in the garden and I am not fighting bugs and weeds as much as in summer.  It is even cheaper.  The plants were on sale and I already had prepared garden beds.  Definitely, something to try again next year.