Yesterday I played hooky from the blog and worked all day in the backyard. I have a ton of backyard projects I want to tackle this fall, and since yesterday was the first day of fall, I decided it was the perfect time to get a move on.
The first project I tackled was cleaning out the greenhouse. I pulled all the pepper plants, picked all the remaining green tomatoes from the tomato plants I had in pots, and heaved everything on to the compost pile {not the green tomatoes of course}.
The green zebra and stupice tomatoes were still thriving, so I trimmed those back as best I could and pick all the ripe fruit.
The burpless cucumbers were still alive and kicking as well, so I simply trimmed any ugly leaves from their vines and picked a few for an afternoon salad.
This is a picture of my Rainbow Swiss Chard in waiting. As soon as the tomatoes in the garden boxes outside die, this Swiss chard will take their spot in the garden.
I also removed the strawberry plants from 3 of the 4 gutters we planted back in early Spring, and replanted them with spinach and more Swiss chard. Right now all the strawberry plants are sitting in a wheelbarrow out back. So today, I’ll have to figure where the heck I’m going to put them.
The sugar snap peas that were planted in a pallet a few weeks ago, are not behaving at all. For some reason they are not yet climbing up the poles. Hopefully they will soon, If they don’t do it on their own, I’ll just hang some string from the greenhouse ceiling and tie it around the plants to get them going.
And last but not least, I filled 2 pots with 1 tomato plant and 4 Swiss chard starts each. I’m pretty confident the tomato plants will die, but I still want to give it a try. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and we will have a warm winter with lot’s of sunlight.
So how did you spend YOUR first day of fall? Did you do anything exciting? Sleep in? Get up at the crack of dawn to shuttle your kids to an early morning soccer game?
Peace Out Girl Scouts, I’m headed back outside. Have a great day!
♥ Mavis
Thinking about building your own greenhouse? Check out The Complete Guide to Building Your Own Greenhouse By Craig Baird. Amazon currently has it in stock and ready to ship.
Sarah says
Went to an awesome pumpkin patch and corn maize farm. It was perfect weather! Got some great ideas of squash and pumpkins to grow next year.
Looks like you accomplished a lot! Good job!
Tanya Peila says
Spent the morning sipping coffe and eating sugar cookies! Went to the library book sale this afternoon and got 4 volumes of “gardening made easy” for $4!
Marla says
Well, my first fall WEEKEND….(not technically the first day), I made homemade applesauce and dehydrated apples and pears, since they were both on sale for $0.79; and got a box of “mushy” plums from the store that were being discarded, and made six jars of plum jam 🙂 BUT they were watery!! I did use enough pectin; I’m wondering what else I could have done wrong??
🙂