Check-Up #3

This weekend, Pop-Pop said, "It's time to start planting your fall garden."

I said, "Ok. What goes in a fall garden?"

"Carrots."

"Ok. What else?"

"Don't know. Never grew a fall garden."

I stopped by the garden center on Tuesday. An attendant showed me a list of fall garden plants. It didn't excite me much. However, I did buy a few packs of seeds: carrots, beets, lettuce, and radishes. I also bought some seeds for some cool-looking squash, but I don't recall the name. The package showed a smooth, round, yellow fruit, and the instructions said to harvest it when it grows to the size of a billiard ball. Sounds easy enough. It's probably a summer squash, but there's probably enough warm weather left to grow it.

I planted the carrots - a "regular" carrot, and some short, fat ones - and the beets. I'm not sure that anybody in the family actually likes beets, but, hey...I had empty space. I'm also not very confident about the carrots. This will be my third attempt at growing carrots. So far, I've not had the first seed to sprout, much less had a harvest. Thinking my soil might be too hard, I dug a big bag of spaghnum moss into the row. We'll see if that helps.

Overall, I'm not yet very pleased with the way the garden is producing this year. We're getting enough tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash to eat, but not enough to preserve. The green beans have run up their canes like crazy, but they have barely bloomed. As usual, the hot peppers are making lots of pods, but the bell peppers are coming slowly. Pop-Pop says that everybody is complaining that their gardens aren't producing well. They are chalking it up to a cool, wet spring, late planting, and recent lack of rain. I am hoping that things will pick up as the summer progresses.