Are you wondering what's been going on in the garden?

We spent part of the day today starting the garden clean up since we were close to, but actually under 100 degrees today!  Time to remove all the dead plants, pull up the stakes and the name plates.  Time to take up the weed barrier, the scarecrow, and the hoses.  

We cut back the tomatoes to about 1 foot, and the leggy pepper plants to about 8 inches. 

I'm disappointed in my tomatoes this year -- I think I'm giving up on these heirloom types. They just don't produce like the newer types.  I've only harvested about 18 pounds of tomatoes all total, compared to last year when we had 43 pounds by this time. Arghhh!! Is it just me, or has it been a bad year for tomatoes?

 Tomorrow I'm mixing up some of my special tomato fertilizer and I'm giving them all a good dose! The deer thought it was Christmas! They got all the garden plants and cuttings.

My tall, leggy pepper plants

I still have some plants that are doing well, especially the tomatillo plants.  They are huge and have spread out like crazy.  Today I harvested a bunch of those -- and tomorrow I'm making salsa.  I also found a nice recipe for tomatillo rice that I want to try.

I packaged up some of the seeds that I've been saving today.  Dried okra, oregano and fennel. Then I took all the datura seeds out of their pods and packaged them up to plant this coming spring.

KT looked at these and said they were "aliens!"

 

Then I started soaking the seeds that I'm planting on Sunday in flats for the fall garden.  We're only planting in the raised beds this fall, so there are only 6 things here + 1/2 of a bed of garlic that I've ordered and won't arrive until late September.

Let's see....there's Catskill Long Island Improved brussel sprouts, De Cicco broccoli, Early Snowball cauliflower, Early Flat Dutch cabbage, spinach and chard.  Hopefully most of these will last through a mild winter.