Today is the day to start the fall greens garden. My wife spent some time planting seeds from several different greens and root crops a few weeks ago and now it is time to get them into the ground. We planted fall tomatoes earlier and they are just starting to flower.
I have my soil tested every year so all we needed to prepare the beds was a light tilling of finished homemade compost, organic fertilizer and some coir. The natural breakdown of organic matter and the loss of nutrients due to harvest require us to add additional material each year. Our homemade compost is made up of turkey, chicken and goat manure; kitchen scraps; everything not eaten from the fruit and veggie garden; various dead animals and stable straw.
The plants you see in the first picture are kohlrabi, broccoli rabe, various endive and escarole. All of these are excellent additions to salads or soups.
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You can see in the picture some PVC pipe that I use to hold the row cover. This is helpful right now to shade the tender plants from the hot Texas sun, but will also be used later since these plants will still be growing beyond the first frost. A simple bent curve of the PVC and some bricks to hold down the row cover works well. Another feature of the row cover is to protect against butterflies laying their eggs, which turn into chewing caterpillars.
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I will begin weekly sprayings of aerated compost tea made from worm castings with fish emulsion and seaweed added.
Tony M.