The garden has been super busy this summer, and I am barely keeping up. (You know, the usual.) I’m still waiting on my tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, and tomatillos to ripen, and I have already harvested the last of the snap peas and fava beans. Carrot and leek harvesting is ongoing; lettuces come and go depending on how on top of things I am that month. Still, amid all this busyness, I remembered to sow the seeds for my fall garden!

This will be my third year of fall gardening, and I have to say it’s the most relaxing gardening season. By the time fall comes around, all of the tomatoes and tomatillos have been harvested and stored away, and the cucumbers and melons have been eaten, and the onions and winter squash and finishing up. My very successful garlic harvest was this week–a bit later than I had planned, as I ended up being in CA over July 4th. My purple sprouting broccoli has survived the summer so far, but I sowed a few more seeds just in case it doesn’t survive August. The rest of the seeds I sowed are brassicas, with a few late seed purchases and lettuces added in. Here’s the Fall sowing count so far:

Bachelor’s Button, fancy blue hybrid	unknown
Broccoli, Nine-Star (sprouting, cauliflower)	Etsy
Broccoli, Burgundy	Gurney’s Seeds
Cabbage, Tiara	Johnny’s Seeds
Kale, Russian Red	Baker Creek
Cabbage, Nero di Toscana (Dinosaur Kale)	Baker Creek
Rutabaga, Navone Yellow	Baker Creek
Turnip, Tokinashi	Baker Creek
Summer Squash, Costata Romanesco (zuch)	Botanical Interests
Lettuce, Little Gem  (romaine)	Baker Creek
Lettuce, Parris Island Cos (Romaine)	Baker Creek
Lettuce, Salanova Red Bavarian	Johnny’s Seeds
Lettuce, New Red Fire (leaf)	Botanical Interests
Lettuce, Yedikule (romaine)	Baker Creek
Lettuce, Winter Density	Pinetree Seeds
Beet, Badger Flame	High Mowing Seeds
Beet, Bolthardy	Pinetree Seeds
Beet, Detroit Golden	Baker Creek
Onion, Ishikura (bunching)	Baker Creek

I don’t particularly like kale, but my mother has taken a liking to it as well as my red Salanova lettuces. I’m very excited about the Yedikule lettuce, as I’ve figured out my favorite lettuces are home-grown romaines, and the Yedikule (from someplace in the Middle East, I think) is suppose to have a “greasy” texture, almost as if it already has dressing on it. I prefer to eat my lettuce without dressing, so here’s hoping it’s true! I haven’t grown the Nine-Star Broccoli (which is actually a perennial cauliflower) but it sounds pretty interesting. The Bachelor’s Button is supposed to be a fancy hybrid that is specifically designed to not fall over, which has been my biggest pet peeves with Bachelor’s Buttons so far. I’ve also found green onions to be surprisingly useful, as I’ve found myself harvesting bulb onions early just for their greens.

All in all, I expect it will be a very productive, if low-maintenance, fall garden. Now, I just need to survive the rest of the summer.