End of the Beginning, or the Beginning of the End?

 

This mass of diseased vegetation needed to be cut back over the weekend. Some sort of horrible white decay attacked the yellow squash, and the cucumbers seemed to have reached a logical end. 

I believe that Livingstone might have been in there somewhere...but, alas, all I found were several huge, hidden cucumbers. How those giant things hide like that will remain a mystery. 

Tonight the Harvest Moon rises.

We've reached the season of decay. We had one last day of mid-80's yesterday, but you can feel the change in the earth, the air, and the water. 

There are a lot of yellowed leaves, and, significantly, the color of the ripe red tomatoes has gone more of an orange. I remember that from last year.

We're still running at that razor's edge of having a little more from the garden than we want to eat, but a little less than justifies canning. I made a salsa with about 2 lbs. of tomatoes yesterday. 

Significantly, according to my last budget, we saved about $300 in groceries over the last month. We're nowhere near breaking even with the investment in the garden, but it doesn't hurt.

But is it the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning? 

Garlic bulbs arrived last week. The plan is to plant them after the first killing frost, or Oct. 15 or so.

On the pretties side, there are a ton of crocus and daffodil bulbs that need to go in.

Decisions need to be made about when we can afford the dirt to make berms in the front, and fill the new megalithic raised bed, and when to replace the failed apple trees with slightly larger ones.

I planted an oat cover crop in the former beet and broccoli bed. We'll experiment with a cover crop in one bed this year, and see how it goes.