Adventures in gardening

I've never bothered with a fall garden before, unless you count turnips.  Usually by this time of year my garden is covered with weeds, and I don't particularly care.  
For some reason, I've kept most of the weeds pulled this year, although at times they got ahead of me.  I decided to try planting some things at different times than usual.  Because of this, I managed to keep a zucchini plant alive for a record two months, and it's still out there, although it's looking a little bedraggled.  
It's tradition to plant turnips on "the 25th of July, wet or dry".  

Well, it was dry, and only three turnips germinated.  

So I planted more last week, but this time I took my watering can out each day and gave them a drink; every seed came up.  I planted some radishes at the same time.  I have terrible luck with radishes:  they usually give me wonderful tops that go to seed without a normal, round radish ever developing.  A neighbor thought I'd have better luck if I planted late radishes, so I planted some at the end of July.  Those didn't turn out, so I've planted more.  The sad part is that I don't even like radishes that well.  Cliff likes them, though. 

I planted cabbage seed in late July during that dry spell.  Most of the seeds didn't germinate, but I do have three nice plants going strong.  As long as I keep them dusted with Sevin, Cliff and I should have cabbage to eat this fall.  We like cabbage boiled or stir-fried.  

  I planted more last week.  We shall see if they have time to develop before frost.  Again, I watered them after planting, and all the seeds came up.  

Green beans planted in July are almost ready to pick.  The rain we're getting as I type this will insure a crop.  

Encouraged by those healthy green bean plants, I decided to plant more seeds last week.  Interestingly, bugs don't seem to bother late-planted beans.  

I planted one acorn squash seed in July.  As you can see, it doesn't look very healthy.  I don't know what the problem is, but I don't have a lot of hope for seeing that little green squash develop into something I can eat.  This was taken this morning in the rain, so my flash went off. 

Here's how it looked yesterday in the heat of the day.  Pretty sad, eh?


Some of these late-planted things may not develop in time to escape frost, but it's a learning experience for me.  I've also planted beets, and I would have loved to plant some carrots.  But nobody has any seed for sale at this time of year.  The only place I know to get them is thirty miles away, and I can't justify our driving that far to buy a dollar's worth of seed that likely wouldn't produce for me.   
I've had three plantings of sweet corn that failed this year, and two plantings that did well.  I think perhaps the trick here is to water thoroughly after planting the seeds.  Next year I'll find out.