Avocado Trees

Plants in containers seems more like keeping houseplants than gardening, but it's my only option in the winter when frost threatens.
Avocado trees are pretty, too. I haven't kept any long enough to know if they'll bear fruit.
For years, my sister would kill them as fast as I could start them. I finally got smart and stopped giving them to her!
This tree is 3 years old and survived last winter even after my furnace died. (A smaller one didn't.)
I was starting them by pushing 3 toothpicks evenly around the pit and keeping the base in water. All too often, I'd let them dry out, so my success rate wasn't high.
Then I thought, why not just put them in dirt and keep them wet? After all, how do they start without human intervention?
It actually worked! Now I once again have small avocado trees for gifts!

Container gardens

I don't have much luck with container gardening. Perhaps because I don't use big enough pots. My sister planted cucumbers this summer and brought them in when they first predicted frost. I don't know how many cukes she got, but her husband mows off anything she'd plant in the ground, so this is her only option. He's killed her rhubarb.
I do well with house plants, but that's another story....

Harvesting after frost

These storm windows worked well protecting my plants from frost.

 I open them so my plants aren't over heated during sunny days and slide them closed when the forecast is for a cold might.

Beans and tomatoes are frost sensitive. Carrots are OK with a few nights below freezing. I still have a lot of green tomatoes that I want to finish vine ripening as long as possible. After one night of frost, I'm still collecting good harvests!
So far, I've added 1 month to my 4 month long growing season.

Carrots

I have deep, loose soil in my garden, but carrots never seem to get very big. I've started buying seeds for shorter carrots and just pull them after 10 or 12 weeks. They taste wonderful and I enjoy my gourmet baby carrots!
In SFG, carrots are planted 16 seeds to a square...VERY time consuming with those tiny seeds! But, as the author said, there's no thinning, so no wasted seeds. I like carrots so much that I planted 2 whole packets this year. No seeds to save for next year.
The gardening season is winding down. My beans are finished. Tomatoes are ripening slowly. Onions are all pulled. So, mostly I'm getting carrots. The rhubarb is slowing down, but I think there's 1 more harvest of rhubarb.

Onion chives

The asparagus hasn't filled out its end of the garden, so I thought I'd use that space.

My neighbor gave me a start of onion chives. The chicken wire keeps squirrels and other small animals from digging them up.
I chop the leaves as garnish on potato salad and 7 bean salad. It adds a mild onion flavor. Little ones in our family don't like onion chunks. They don't seem to mind the pretty green bits.

Frost warning

Average first frost date here is September 15. It can vary by 2 weeks either way. So I was not surprised this past week to hear a frost warning in the weather forecast. In previous years, I tried to put plastic over my vertical frames. It never worked well. Too windy here, I guess.
I have way too many green tomatoes to let frost kill my tomatoes. This is after I broke off developing flower shoots.

This year, I took down the vertical frames and gently laid the tomatoes across the dirt. Then I got out some storm windows and laid them across my garden.
All that, and then the frost warning was a false alarm!!! I slid the windows across each other to allow heat to escape. Lows for the next week are predicted above 50. Oh, well. I'm ready now for frost when it does come. I just have to slide the windows so they cover and enclose my garden.

Compost

Composting isn't fun or glamorous.
There are many pluses:
Less trash in landfills. When I started composting, I discovered that I was putting out half as much trash each week!
Less fertilizer. I was already using organic fertilizer that I mixed myself. This year, I didn't fertilize my garden at all. Beans, onions and tomatoes are just as juicy and sweet. In fact, the other day I ate a raw onion by itself, and it wasn't a Vidalia.
As the percentage of compost in my garden soil goes higher, the veggies are getting a better balance of micro nutrients and not just the major PKN.
Last year's compost pile has grown some juicy, sweet tomatoes this year.
I'm becoming an incredible snob about what goes in my garden soil. At first, it was just "no chemicals or pesticides". I'm well on my way to " compost only".
What goes on my compost pile? Anything that was once a plant (except seeds, pits, newspaper with color printing), and eggshells. Crumbled eggshells are an important help for tomatoes. I even pour leftover coffee on when I'm watering.

Who doesn't like fresh asparagus?
I planted some at the west end of my garden. It has gone to seed, so no more asparagus for me this year. Once it establishes, it's just a matter of keeping it moist and fed. Asparagus seems to need lots of water and fertilizer.

Tomatoes

 When I was growing up, we let our tomato plants sprawl. That took up a lot of space. In sqf, tomato plants get 1 square foot. I dig a deep hole so almost the entire seedling is buried. They will send out roots along the entire buried stem. I put in several crushed egg shells for each seedling. The calcium helps prevent blossom end rot, as does not ripening on the ground. In the book, he makes vertical frames of fence posts and string. That didn't work for me. It's too windy here, I guess. I use 6 foot garden stakes and a 3 foot by 4 foot piece of chicken wire. Push the stakes through the wire a foot apart. Then set the posts at the 4 corners of the tomato square.

 They go about 2 feet deep, leaving not much space between the ground and the bottom of the wire. The open side faces the north side of my garden. The plants "lean" toward the sun and away from the open space.

 A blossom stem. Future tomatoes.

 A new branch. Sqf says to break these "suckers" off so the plant will focus energy on fewer tomatoes. I leave them until a month before first frost date, mid august here. 2 weeks before first frost, I break off all the new growth tips and blossom stems which haven't yet set fruit. This focuses energy on ripening fruit. Green tomatoes at frost don't do any good. I always pick every one before frost is predicted. Some of them ripen, but many wind up on the compost.

The last few days of waiting for ripe tomatoes always seem so long!

Green Beans

 I do like green beans. I have only grown bush beans. Pole beans would take less garden space, except my vertical grow spots are full of tomatoes. Square foot gardening divides the garden into square foot sections. Each square can hold 9 bean plants. 3 rows of 3. Just put the seeds in their final spacing. No thinning, no wasted seeds. Each seed packet, stored in the fridge will last more than 1 year.

I put a section of chicken wire around my garden, above the concrete risers. Squirrels don't seem to like climbing over it. They were burying corn in my garden, which then grew in the wrong place. Not to mention that they were digging up my plants. It always seemed to be too late for the corn to mature, which was frustrating.

The onions from the next square are starting to mature and fall over. I plant a square or 2 of beans every week until 10 weeks before the average first frost date. Once they start maturing, that gives me a continuous harvest.

Rhubarb

At this end, I planted rhubarb. After it goes to seed, the stalks cook up watery, which is OK for a sauce to top ice cream. Rhubarb has also been called pie plant.
Rhubarb Pie
3 cups cubed rhubarb
1 cup sugar
3 T. Flour
1 egg
2 pie shells
Put rhubarb in one pie shell. Mix sugar, egg, and flour. Pour over rhubarb. Put other pie shell on top. Crimp edges. Pierce top pie shell. Bake at 425 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.
Yummy!!

basics

My sister made this "stepping stone".

When I started to build a raised garden, everyone said, "Why?" and "Isn't the dirt in your yard good?" and "How are you going to fill it?" My back yard is a lake every spring. Can't garden in 2" of standing water! My zone 4 growing season here is from mid-May to mid-September. I really don't want to lose even a few weeks. Also, this wall is the perfect height for sitting on while gardening.

This book has lots of useful information. It was published in 1981, so some of the information is outdated, but the basic premise is still sound. I'll be referring to SFG frequently.

My garden is 4' x 31'. SFG recommends 4' x 4' garden beds. I don't have enough yard space to have walkways between small beds, so I made one long bed that I can reach into and walk around.