Southern Organic Gardening: Fall gardening 2009

We are growing a lot of the same things that we did last year but we've added lots of new stuff to the soil. Over the past few weeks, Daniel has added many bales of hay, another load of free wood chips, and a load of municipal compost to the garden. All the plants in these beds we started from seed indoors a few months ago.

Here is a batch of compost tea brewing. Daniel made and applied 2 batches to the garden so far. We were inspired by this gardener in Alaska who sells tea brewing kits and grows amazingly huge veggies. Here is the youtube video about his product--we didn't buy it but made something similar of our own.

The lettuces are looking beautiful and just about ready to harvest.

This is the biggest cabbage we've had. Still has a bit of growing to do.

Here is a bed of kale that has been hit hard by slugs.

Here is a close up. Once Daniel figured out what was destroying these greens, he started going out "slugging" after dark with a flashlight (picking off the slugs). There has been a lot of caterpillars on most of the greens so he's also been on the lookout for those guys during the day. He also sprayed some BT, an organic pesticide. A few of the transplants didn't make it but most of them are starting to come back with new leaves.

Here is a bed of lacinato kale that we've already been harvesting from. In the back of the row are the huge eggplants that are still producing. Behind the eggplants are a few small brussels sprouts that you can't see.