Already December !!

Wow, its already December, and my garden is doing real well, especially since we've only had a  couple of light frosts, but no bad freezes yet.

A couple of pumpkin plants are still hanging on for dear life, still plagued by powdery mildew. I've picked all the pumpkins except one that still remains on the vine.

As you can see, the tomatoes are also hanging on for dear life too.  In total we got 11 pumpkins from the patch... not bad for the first time ever growing them.   Remarkably, my pole beans are still alive. Today I picked this monster green bean.  its the biggest green bean I've ever seen.

The cool weather crops are doing awesome.  My cabbage plants are so pretty.  They've been pretty easy to grow, and haven't had any problems with pests so far.  Here is the biggest one, which we'll probably pick next week to eat:

There are a bunch of smaller plants next to it. Hopefully once I pick the big one, the others will have more space to mature, and grow more.

Below are more pics of the garden. As you can see there is a bit of the pumpkin vine still alive there on the bottom.  We've harvested a lot of turnips greens and turnip roots already, and still have a lot left.  Behind them are the collards, and to their right are the broccoli plants  There is some spinach in there too, above the turnips.  They are looking pretty good, but getting shaded a lot by the turnips and collards around them that are getting pretty big.

Today was very warm for December.  It hit 80 !   Hope it doesn't cause my spinach to bolt!
Its supposed to stay warm next week to, in the mid 70's.  Perfect weather but still extremely dry, as it has not rained for over a month.

Update 11/4

Things are looking pretty good in the Cabal garden.

We had a frost over a week ago, and I had to pull out our huge tarp to cover the tomatoes and pumkin vines, since there are a few pumpkins still growing in them

But since then, the weather warmed up pretty nice.  For Halloween,  Elizabeth, Michelle, and Andrew cut three of the pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns:

We picked 2 pretty decent sized pumpkins from the vine too, making it 7 picked, and 3 on the vine still.    A  week ago, there were 5 on the vine, but 2 small ones withered... bummer.  

Its getting so late in the season I really doubt any new ones would have any chance to grow before we get a hard freeze.   This one is growing on top of the tomatoes.  I had to support it as its getting big:

Other plants:  The tomatoes are barely hanging on,  but there are a number of fruit on vine.  But most of the vine is brown now except the tips of the vines.    The cabbage are doing really well.  Here is one with the head now forming nicely:

I picked a few of the lower leaves the other day from it and other plants, and cooked them up like collard greens. It was pretty good.  They leaves were really shading some younger cabbage plants I have growing next to it.  

I also have spinach growing nicely now. Here are some of the plants. Should be a couple more weeks and we can start having some spinach salads, or cooked spinach.

Another thing I had to cover up during the frost was the pole beans. I have 2 hills growing along the fence.  I used 2 sheets and draped them over the plants. They survived well, and are bearing fruit like crazy :)

 There are some volunteer morning glory vines there too that I have to occasionally prune...

But back to the beans, I much prefer pole beans to bush beans. They are more space efficient cause they grow up, and I love the long big pods. But the drawback is that they dont seem to handle the heat as well.  But I can get a good crop in the spring and one in the fall, if I can protect them from the frost.

In this pic, you can see the turnips still growing, some bib lettuce growing (upper right) along with radishes, and in the upper left some young brocolli plants. 

Garden Update for 10/22/12

Its nearing the end of October, and the garden overall is doing very well.  I now have spinach, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, collards, broccoli, and some radishes (all cool weather crops) growing at various stages of developments.

Here is a picture of some of my cabbages. I think they are very cool looking.

As you can see , I am growing it with my lettuce. The lettuce has started to bolt, since it has been rather warm, in the mid-80s recently, but we have been picking lots of lettuce leaves and getting lots of fresh salads about 2-3 times a week.  Lettuce is so easy to grow, I highly  recommend it for any beginner gardener.   I will probably pull out these lettuce plants soon. I have some newer ones that should be ready to take their place soon.  That should give the cabbage plants a bit more space to expand, as they are getting quite big.  The inner leaves are starting to curl in, so hopefully they will start to form some heads,  maybe more so as the weather cools down later in Nov.  These are supposed to be very cold hardy, so well see if they can survive December/January, where we often get down into the 20s.    Unfortunately the plants seem to take a lot of space, and I might not have given them enough spacing.


My turnips are still doing very well.  My first patch is starting to form some nice roots.

  I've been picking many of the greens for some time now, and we've been enjoying them, and have started pulling out some of the larger turnips now, to thin them out and start using them too. I have a newer small patch growing next to this one.  

Now my pumpkin patch is doing OK for the most part. I have picked 6 pumpkins now, and there are about 5 other ones still developing.  Unfortunately a lot  of the original vine is now dead, I think mainly since that area its in hardly gets any sun anymore.  That shaded area has succumbed to powdery mildew very badly too.  But the part of the vine that still gets sun has expanded out into the tomatoes, which have not produced much at all lately, so I am not bothered by it:

So the area in the right side of this pic is the only area that gets sun, and the plants are doing well there, and still growing.

I have not seen any SVBs or any eggs in about a month now, so I am glad that is over!!

So some lessons for next year, is to avoid this part of the yard for a late pumpkin planting, as it gets very little sun in the fall. It would be OK for a spring planting of pumpkins or squash since they would mature in summer, where it would definitely get good sun.

Here is the best pumpkin so far.  Its the biggest once we have growing and should be a beauty when its ready.  

The Good Guys

The aphids have been real bad lately, especially around the pumpkins lately, and between that and the powdery mildew, it been getting me concerned lately as to how much longer my pumpkin plants have.  Today I tried spraying a diluted milk mixture on the leaves as I read that helps with powdery mildew.  The aphids are just insane...there millions of them probably, and they seem to congregate mostly on the blossoms, so I guess that's not such a big deal.

But today looking around I did notice some good guys around...   I've seen this fly around quite a bit, its a small metallic green fly. Here is a pic I took today:

I looked it up on Google, and found that its a long-legged fly, a beneficial insect that eats aphids and spider mites...  Cool!  Here's some info on Long Legged Fly

And as I was looking under leaves, I would find this:

See those small tan balls?  Well I had no idea what those were, so I picked a few and looked at them under a magnifying glass. I then realized they are bloated dead aphids.  Doing more research I found out they are "mummy aphids", which have been parasitized by tiny wasps.  Awesome... I've seen many of these so hopefully when they mature, more wasps will come out and kill some more aphids.

And here is a traditional good guy, a ladybug, which I found hanging around:

I wish I could get more of these to show up. I read about how in some places they are almost pests as they swarm around.  It would take a swarm of these to wipe out my aphids.

And I also noticed these things... which I then identified as green lacewing larva:

Those guys are voracious aphid eaters.   So it seems I have some help.  Just need some more of it. I need to be careful when I spray soapy water, or blast with the hose, that I don't hurt the good guys too.  

Pumpkin Update 9/27

Two days ago I decided it was time to pick 2 of the pumpkins, which were almost completely orange, so we could use them as decorations for fall.  So my 2 girls, Elizabeth and Michelle went out and each picked their first pumpkins. I had them use pruning shears to cut them from the vine.  Yes, the pumpkins are pretty small but they are real cute.

Today, I decided to let Elizabeth pick another one of her pumpkins.  So we have three now that have been harvested, and there is a bigger one still on the vine that is about 70% orange now.   Here is a picture of them along with a nice acorn squash a harvested a couple weeks ago.

So there is one mostly orange, and 3 bigger green ones still growing on the vine, plus 2 small ones the size of a baseball, bringing me to a total of 9 pumpkins, if they all mature.  

I've been slightly disappointed because I've had 4 other potential pumpkins wither and die, even after the flowers and opened and been pollinated. I don't know why that's happened. Maybe because its gotten into the mid-90s again, or maybe the plants aren't healthy enough to support more than 1 fruit per vine?  Well I should thank God that we have some success.  The other disappointing thing has been the aphids and powdery mildew. The aphids have been going nuts, attacking especially the older leaves.  There don't seem to be many predators around, and soapy spray, or blasting them with the hose has not helped much.  Also I am seeing more powdery mildew now.  I need to figure out how to keep it at bay so it doesn't cut my season shorter than it could be.  I think part of the problem is that my plants aren't as healthy anymore because they just don't get as much sunlight anymore. With the lowering of the sun and the shorter days, I think only small portions of the plants get sun for more than 6 hrs a day. Pretty much the middle of the patch looks dead, with most of the older leaves dead or dying. The growing tips of the vines still look pretty good and vigorous.  I hope I can get a few more pumpkins before they are done.   The good news is that the SVB activity has diminished, and I have only seen a few eggs the past week. But I need to keep looking every few days to make sure.  

Pumpkin update 9/17

Here is an update on my small pumpkin patch.  So far I have 3 that are turning orange. Here's one:

This morning I had a large beautiful female flower open up:

And here is a male flower. You can see the this one has a bee inside it that came out totally covered in pollen.

Here is a picture of a one that set a few weeks ago and is my biggest so far:

And the past 2 days I have had 2 more fruit set.  Here is a pic of one of them.

My goal is to have at least 10 pumpkins.  Counting the 2 freshly set ones, and the flower that opened this morning, that makes it 7.  I see some more coming along too. Unfortunately it seems at least half the female flowers become yellow and die before even opening, but I find once they open, they usually survive.
I have been monitoring the vines for SVB eggs again, and have continued to bury more vines.  The past few day I have not found any SVB eggs, and this weekend I was out quite a bit and didnt see any moths. Hope they are done for the season.

Turnips

Probably one of the easiest things to grow here in Texas during cooler weather is turnips.  I like growing them for both the greens, and for the actual turnip too.   Here is my first section that I started from seed about 3 weeks ago.  They came up super fast, had no problem germinating in the heat.   Today I planted some more seeds next to it, and I might plant another set in a few weeks, to stage them into the late fall/early winter.  

These I planted from seeds that I saved last year.   I originally bought a packet of the standard Purple Top White Globe Turnips a few  years ago, and I have not had to buy any since.   Each year I let some of the plants flower, and they produced lots of seed pods. I let them dry out, and open the pods, and collect the small poppyseed looking seeds.  

If you mainly want to eat the greens, they are just as good planted in the spring or fall but you get the best turnips in the fall, when they mature as the weather gets cold.   In the mild winter we had last year, my turnips survived through the winter.  They are pretty cold hardy, but when it gets below 20 they die.  Last winter it was really mild and some of my other plants, including spinach, and some sweet peas, survived the winter.   Those turnips were about baseball size, and tasted good.  The spring turnips that mature in the summer are usually smaller, woodier, and hotter.  

Once I get enough greens growing, I will go out regularly and pick some of the bigger leaves to make turnip greens.  My wife and even the kids like turnip greens.  When some  of the turnips are big enough, I will dig some out, and chop them up and cook them with the greens.  

These will probably be ready for the first harvest in a couple week.  To feed six people I need to pick quite a bit of leaves, since they boil down a lot.