New Beginnings

I started this project to see if a person could subsist for a year on simply the produce grown from a backyard farm.  In June, the weather here became unbearably hot.  I didn't have any desire to be outside for more than a few minutes at a time.  On September 6, 2011, we had our first cool day, so I ventured out into the bramble that my garden had become.

Embarrassing!

All summer the bell pepper plants had been producing these strange red peppers that I never picked and they stayed on the plant for months at a time.  I was scared of them because they weren't green.

Mutant Peppers

My tangerine tree is doing well, but hasn't grown.  The plum tree has been losing all of its leaves, but it has grown twice as tall as it was when I bought it.  I realized that trees lose their leaves in the winter . . . but it's not even fall yet!  It even had a blossom on it for a couple of days.

The raised bed garden I built is still sitting empty.  This is the garden that I'm going to put my compost into when it is ready in January.

Speaking of my compost heap, it is decomposing nicely.  I added another compost bin that I've been throwing garden scraps into.  The compost is hot and black.

A portion of the compost heap has a square of mushrooms growing on top of it.  I'm wondering if this is what they call 'mushroom compost'.  I think they're there because it has been so wet lately.  You're supposed to put a tarp over your compost heap and manage the moisture, but as I said, I haven't done anything this summer.

Yum!

So the summer was a wash, but I'm going to start back and get the gardens back to pretty and plant some greens that will thrive in cooler weather.  I'm going to spend as much time outside this Fall/Winter/Spring as possible!