fall leavesIt’s looking like fall, and the garden is winding down at my house. The weather in Utah has been glorious so far this fall, and the last few days I’ve been outside trimming the perennials, pulling a few weeds, and making an attempt to clean up the garden beds. I’m enjoying the fall garden colors, and although during the summer I don’t love these vines that creep over into my garden from the neighbors yard, they’re beautiful right now.

I’m not good at holding the camera still without a tripod, but even though the photo’s a bit fuzzy, I love the colors of these mums, the last flowers left in bloom.

There are also a few patches of purple mums growing along the fence in the back yard.

My three plants of Green Zebra Tomatoes are still pretty loaded, and a few tomatoes are even getting ripe, but they don’t have that sun-kissed flavor any more. I’m thinking that tomorrow I’ll pick all the ripe ones and cook them with some canned red tomatoes to make pasta sauce, maybe adding some tomato powder to make sure the sauce is red!

There are still quite a few Brandywine tomatoes on the plant too, and they’re ripening but pretty slowly. I keep watching the news to make sure nights aren’t getting too cold for these last few tomatoes, but so far they’re hanging in there.

A couple of weeks ago I gave all the basil plants a vigorous trimming so I could freeze the basil and make basil pesto. A few basil leaves have grown back, but I’ll probably pick them all tomorrow for the pasta sauce.

There are also 4-5 peppers on each of my three plants, so they’re probably going into the pasta sauce too, along with some turkey Italian sausage.

Some herbs are still happy, especially the curly parsley and flat parsley, which are thriving with the cool nights and slightly-warm days.

And the funniest thing of all about this tomatillo peeking up is that I didn’t even plant tomatillos this year! When these “volunteers” started showing where I’d planted tomatillos last year I didn’t have the heart to pull them all out. I don’t know if any will get big enough to use, but they’re fun.

One reason I’ve been out cleaning out my garden a bit more vigorously than I do some years is that over the next two weeks I have two exciting projects starting in my back yard. First, in the main garden I’m adding one more raised bed, converting to drip sprinklers, and having black cloth covered with fine gravel put around the beds (no more weeds between beds, yaay!) At the same time the contractor who did my house renovations is building a shed on the east side of my yard. I’m more than a little psyched about these projects, both of which will help me have an easier time maintaining the garden in years to come.

You can use the category for Garden Updates if you’d like to see all my garden updates through the years.

 

Share This: