In typical NM fashion we had our first fall freeze, three nights even. Of course, the hard freeze happened on the day before it was predicted to freeze. Thursday night wasn’t supposed to really freeze, but when I got up the bird baths had ice in them. The night it was supposed to give us the hard freeze; it didn’t get that low at the house. I’m not sure why I only thought about the garden… but I should have been thinking about the trailer too. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me later. There are 3 more times that I will need the trailer for events this year. I’ll find out soon if the freeze did any damage.
I was pleasantly surprised that the gardens came through with only a few casualties. The basil, the luffa, the tomatillos, and most of the pepper plants. I think I’m going to try and over winter a couple of the pepper plants, just to see if I can pull it off. The took so long to get going, It would be nice to have a jump on them next year.
I’ve already started with the plans for what to plant and WHEN for next year. I’ve also worked on a plan for how to handle the heat next year too. Since it’s looking like these super hot summers are going to be our new normal. I picked up on a great sale two tall birdies beds from Botanical Interests. I’m planning on putting them next to the garage. I’ll let me have more control over the watering. The city controlling the water at the community gardens is a bit of a pain. It’s off all winter, so there is no keeping things going late in fall or starting earlier in the spring, it’s also unpredictable. Last year it was off for over a week, in the spring when we were all trying to get the plots started. Like a week after things were planted, which is not a good time for them to shut it off.
This is what I’m thinking to do….
From some rough measurements it should work out well. I’ll see once I put the beds together and get them into place. I am definitely going to try to grow more luffa plants next year. They looked amazing, I loved all the leaves and flowers they had, even if I only got two gourds this year.
Overall that space looked great this year… Biggest shock was that no one hit or drove over any of it this year. I still want a camera to keep an eye on it, since I keep hearing that people will steal some of it.
I did get the garlic planted where the corn/ green beans/squash was. The squash didn’t have enough time to yield anything. I’ll start it earlier next year, just like everything else.
I don’t think that I need to worry about all the herbs next year. The only one I’m concerned about in this picture is the horseradish that is on the left side of the picture. I do want to put different hanging baskets in for the future, the coir ones just dry out way too quickly.
Now I’m just leaving everything to see how long it will keep going. It’s looking like we won’t have another freeze for a few more weeks. It just needs to hold off until I’m done with the next two events.
This is kind of what I’m thinking of doing with all of the different raised beds for next summer. The four on the left are the winter and summer plans. I want to try growing some fall greens. Which may not work. All of the troughs along the top of the image are just continuations of what is currently in them. All of them are going to need more soil/compost over the next few months. I need to move the horseradish into the garage to over winter, so it doesn’t completely die off. With any luck I’ll be able to harvest a piece or two and generate a couple more from it.
