Happy Thanksgiving (And Fall Garden Update)

Belle made a delicious apple cranberry pie. We can't wait to try it.

Isn't the sunshine beautiful today!

Happy Thanksgiving! It's a beautiful day here in south central PA. It's almost 60 degrees outside. Our family walked a 5k race this morning and had brunch with friends. Thanks Karen and family! We're so looking forward to dinner tonight! We hope your Thanksgiving Day is turning out to be as delightful as ours.

We've had many, many frosty mornings and even freezing nights. It's been hard on lots of our plants outside, but many of them are doing remarkably well. 

Here's a quick rundown of things, The good the bad and the ugly! Our white radishes and beets are withstanding the freezing weather, but they've all but completely stopped growing.

beets not bulking up

White radishes not bulking up either

Our cauliflower was planted in August, what's left has been ruined by the freezing temps.  Our cabbage and broccoli plants were put in the garden on September 15th. We were trying to extend our growing season by planting late. You can read about that here. It looks like we'll be only somewhat successful. Hoop houses would help. But it's not been a complete loss. Most of the cabbage and broccoli plants are growing.  Although many leaves have been killed by the freezing weather, many of the broccoli plants have thumb size heads.  Some cabbage plants have no heads at all; others have small heads and there are several fist size cabbage plants that continue growing. The kale is surviving the freezing weather, but it's growing very slowly. I think we'll harvest what's left and pull them up.

Freezing nights have ruined our remaining cauliflower plants.

An unhappy broccoli leaf.

A tiny broccoli plant. I don't think it will produce before it gets to cold

A healthier plant with a finger size broccoli head. Most of them are like this.

A fist size head of cabbage. At least it's growing!

A tiny head that's just begun to form.

Kale that was planted last spring is hanging in there.

Our second planting of carrots in late August is doing great. We can harvest them anytime, along with the rest of our leeks.

You can see how the freezing weather has made the top brown.

We have lots of leeks to harvest yet.

That's it! Our fall garden in a picture. The left are brassicas, the right under plastic is our garlic and the green is cover crop.

Happy Thanksgiving all! We are very thankful for friends, family and, yes of course for gardening too!