Winter is almost here, and it’s time for Green in Real Life’s regular seasonal gardening update. As much as I love the colours of autumn, I’m no looking forward to the cool, dark, wet days of winter that lie ahead. But for now, into the fall garden we go! Here’s our autumn garden update on what’s growing (or not!) in our own home garden and other family news.
Growing and Giving
It wasn’t our most productive summer, but as always, there was still excess of some crops for sharing. This autumn’s overload included a huge harvest of mixed pumpkins (more on that below) and an abundance of feijoas. In fact, there were so many that after loading up our friends and neighbours, the extras were put on the roadside as free for the taking. There are still feijoas dropping even now. As luck and a bit of garden planning would have it, the carpet of living groundcover mulching the bed gives them a perfect soft and clean landing pad, but is still low enough to easily see and gather the fruit.
Seasonal Success Stories and Top Crops
As shared in our summer garden update, this year’s seed-grown pumpkin plants were stand-outs of the growing season. They were grown from saved seed and by chance must have been the product of an interesting cross-pollination. Each for the plants grown from the same parent pumpkin (a heritage iron bark) produced different looking pumpkins. We were also lucky enough to have a nice long period of harvesting capsicum and peppers straight from the garden, along with cherry tomatoes until the bedraggled end-of-season plants were removed to clear the beds for winter crops.
Elsewhere in the garden, the red and yellow cherry guavas fruited beautifully. The persimmon also produced a great first harvest, most of which we sliced and dehydrated as persimmon crisps. It’s the first time we’ve made these ourselves and they came out pretty decent. I’ve just finished the last batch, so no photos yet, but they also really pretty having kept most of their rich dark orange even when dried. I’ll share details in a future post here on on our Instagram.
Seasonal Failures and Flop Crops
Sadly, all of our stone fruit split due to variable weather at the wrong point in the fruit development cycle. Bad for us, but great for the birds. Our olives also had a strange season this year. They produced beautifully but didn’t ripen before our weather turned. Another victory for the birds. Oh well.
Our basil was far from a flop crop, but it was a harvest failure by me. It grew very well. Too well, as basil sometimes does. I didn’t get around to doing my bulk basil harvest for freezer pesto before the combination of bolting, bugs, and weather had the basil too far gone to be worth the effort. At least the bees got to enjoy the flowers before seeds were gathered and the garden was cleared compost.
Our Furfamily
Fall is also a great time for year for Humphrey, with more enjoyable temperatures for our adventures and outdoor activities. Unfortunately for the garden, I think the local birds now consider him fully domesticated and perhaps even their pet. Not the best garden guard dog, but great garden company.
A New Season Awaits
And that’s a quick look at what’s been happening this autumn. Fall is quickly fading into winter, and the new season awaits. Even if I am already looking forward to spring! Drop by our Instagram to check in on how things are growing in our garden, and I hope to see you again here on the blog sometime soon.
