The Modern Victory Garden

According to the weather forecasts, today offered up the best opportunity to get outside for the entire weekend.   Even at that, it was gloomy and damp all day and by the time I came inside this afternoon - it was threatening to rain again.   It has been quite rainy of late and root rot and mildews now represent one of the biggest threats to the fall crops, second only to slug attacks.   The danger of damp increases as I begin buttoning up the greenhouse more regularly.   Some crops are more resilient to cool and damp conditions then others.   Peppers are not one of them!  They require some careful attention to keep them going late into the fall.   In fact, the one remaining Mini Bell pepper plant was showing signs it was succumbing to the cool and damp (leaves were wilting and stems drooping) so I went ahead and harvested all of the remaining fruits and then pulled the plant.   The two large Early Jalapeno plants are still going strong but could easily deteriorate too if allowed to get too cold or if subjected to really damp conditions.   They have a lot of fruit still on them so it is worth the effort to keep them healthy as long as possible.   It is getting cold at night and the daytime temps are barely getting above 55 degrees.   To keep the pepper plants going I need to start shutting the greenhouse up most of the time from here on out, and run the ventilation fan to keep the damp at bay as much as possible.         

I spent some time today getting the greenhouse ready for the winter season.   I removed the empty planting containers and put them outside - making room to bring in the containers of swiss chard that have been residing out on the deck.   The swiss chard was given a trim (removing leaves that had been chewed on by slugs) and then side dressed with some bone meal and blood meal.           

All of the swiss chard container plantings were given this treatment and then placed in the greenhouse where they will be more protected from root rot and hard freezes.   I usually manage to keep swiss chard going through the entire winter with the protection of the greenhouse.      

Since I do not have any starts of lettuce going (seemed to have missed getting some started per my schedule!), I opted instead to just transplant some of the young lettuces growing in the outdoor beds.   If they survive the transplanting process, they will provide some fresh salad greens long after the outside bed of lettuces have been frozen out.   The last thing I attended to this afternoon was to plant two of the large containers in the greenhouse with red onion sets. With that completed, the greenhouse is basically prepped to go into the winter.           

You can see the large tree-like Early Jalepeno peppers at the back of the greenhouse with the transplanted lettuces in the container next to them.   The two larger empty looking containers have the onion sets in them.   You can see the white ventilation fan in the lower right hand corner and the swiss chard plants on the lower left.         

Before I came in, I harvested some broccoli florets and a couple of carrots to go with the peppers I picked earlier.                          

Are you buttoning things up in your garden too?