Christian's Garden: Revisited

In the past week Christian has seen the germination of his final row of seeds, the carrots. All of his other crops have made some fairly decent strides in their rate of growth, despite the shortening of the photoperiod. With the advent of autumn comes a shortening of the day's length. It also means the sun's position in the sky will be progressively lower until the winter solstice on December 21. For his plants this means that less available light will slow their growth to a barely distinguishable crawl, however they will keep growing. In the meantime, crops hoping to overwinter successfully will need to grow to an appreciable size before the weather turns too cold. Christian's garden should fare well considering we still have a decent month (fingers crossed) of relatively pleasant weather ahead of us. His garden's proximity to the Puget Sound should also soften some of winter's more brutal effects.

From left to right: beets, spinach, leeks, carrots

Kale in the foreground, followed by arugula and endive

Fall crops sprouted

The few rows of fall crops I planted a couple weeks ago are making full use of the summer sun. All three rows (carrots, leeks, and spinach) are thriving in the August heat. I tried a slightly different method when planting this time. After making a small furrow in the dirt, I lined the row with moist peat moss. Peat moss retains water well, so I figured it might be worth a shot to plant the seeds in the moss with the hope that it would keep them moist better than plain soil. Moisture and warmth are key to getting seeds to sprout. Hard to tell just how much it increased the rate of germination, and how much can be attributed to the heat. Regardless, the germination rate was a lot higher than I expected. I certainly had more carrots sprout this time than when I sowed them earlier in the season in only soil.

Carrots reaching for the sun

The eggplant planted in the cold frame has a nicely developing fruit and a couple blossoms ready to bloom