Late autumn has arrived, the entire month has been cool to downright cold with a reasonable amount of rain for a change. The produce has quieted down a bit so just an update today of the current status here and there.
I planted the garlic back on October 17, rows 1-4 here. See post. The shoots in row 4 (from the left) came up within the first week while the others have staggered along with a different shoot finally popping up in the weeks since. Even today there are new shoots just appearing now. I'd been concerned that they were not all going to succeed but apparently each one has its own timing.
The basil is finally succumbing to the cold (34°F-45°F) evenings and mornings of the past week or so. I got one last harvest for a pesto a couple of weeks ago but even then the taste wasn't up to what we get in the peak of mid-late summer.
The broccolini plants were planted from a nursery 6-pack back in August. We started harvesting the stalks back in mid-October and have been picking from them since periodically. I'm finding that as long as I leave enough of a stalk with a side shoot from every cutting, more will keep popping up afterwards. I've done about 4-5 harvests in the past 6 weeks with more to come, each one yielding at least twice of what we can use in one dinner. Well worth growing since the flavor is far superior to even the best of what I've seen even in farmer's markets.
The performance of these two thyme plants in the herb box are pretty perplexing to me. They did well last winter and spring and grew quite a bit. During the dry summer after months of no rain, they started showing signs of stress even with the regular drip irrigation that helped the basil and Mexican oregano to boom. I started hand-watering by July to get them through and it really seemed to help. However for the past several weeks they've both been slowly dying back to the extent that I'll need to replace them soon. Maybe they're too crowded with the nearby marjoram. The thyme I've been growing in a container has done ok and I'm using that for cooking now. I'm thinking that maybe they just need to be replaced periodically but less than a year seems a bit premature to me.
After almost losing the Bearss lime to the drought last summer, the regular irrigation I gave it over the summer and autumn with the tree bags seems to have brought it back to life. I removed the bags at the start of this month as the rains started arriving and with it looking like more is in store for us over the next couple of weeks, I'll let them go for now. I got some blossoms last month which have now translated into a few fruit. Hopefully they won't drop this time if the plant keeps getting water.
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