Ground Cherries & Herbs

With fall's official arrival there is no doubting the inevitable. Yesterday, one of my neighbours picked off all the green tomatoes and pulled her vines. I'll leave mine a while longer. The average day of first frost here is October 9 While it has been cool enough to have the funace on, today is sunny and bright.

I did a clean pick this morning yielding a stuffed basket of tomatoes, cucumbers and beans. The zucchini have a couple of small fruit but will be a day or two before being ready for picking. The vines are not looking as nice as before. I pulled a few of the spent tomato vines but won't start a lot of the winterizing until next week. By then much of the heavy canning and freezing should be finished.

Herb Bed

A few new perennials were added to the herb bed this year. The bed is 40 square feet planted in the square foot gardening method along with companion planting. With the exception exception of lemon balm, the main herb garden has no other mints. The lemon balm may be moved to another location as it just is not behaving itself!

The herbs are tolerating the cooler weather nicely. There is little to do to prepare this bed for the winter other than pulling the stray lemon balm plants. Most of the herbs are perennials but I'll harvest whatever I can from the annuals. I prefer to freeze herbs for a better flavour but will likely end up drying some as well.

Ground Cherries

Ground cherries are a new crop for me this year. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet other than hopefully get enough to make a pie. This is an interesting plant that at first appeared not to like our zone. The past few weeks, the ground cherries have been producing well and the vines look nice and healthy. Growing in the same bed is a sweet potato vine grown for looks along with marigolds. This is one of the newest beds so I'm pleased with the results.

Happy Gardening

Garden Gnome