Game over.....

So the first frost has arrived and that means no more trying to squeeze the last out of my summer plants. It also means I have a lot of truly dead plants in my garden to clean up. This summer has absolutely flown by and hopefully I'll have a few posts on how the garden went (since I was horrible about posting while they were actually growing).  

So this week I start cleaning up the plants ... this was my turmeric plant just before the frost. 

And this is what was under it. Now I have to figure out what to do with it (any suggestions I am all ears).  Once I finished harvesting all the turmeric rhizomes a certain someone couldn't stay away from chewing at the roots. Actually it was a bit of a battle to keep her out of the pot while I was harvesting the rhizomes.  She loves to chew on any roots I pull up. She doesn't discriminate between weeds or otherwise, she eats all of them, although I will say she did spend a lot of time chewing away at that turmeric root. 

 

I've been on the lookout for my saffron crocuses. I was convinced they must have died. Well today I finally saw these guys breaking through the soil. Honestly its a bit crazy to think that they are sprouting after the first frost. (I never dug them out so they have been in the ground all summer). I hope they flower.















Last spring I spread wine cap mushroom spawn in an effort to grow more edible mushrooms. Despite the hot dry summer they took. This is the second flush of wine caps. They will get a lot bigger than this but I found I like them when they are this small.  Now I need to lay down some fresh mulch so hopefully they will come up again next spring.









These Mexican sour gherkins really were the star of garden this summer. Both kids loved them! This is the last batch I picked on Sunday before the frost. The plant is supposed to be sensitive to cold weather but I guess that is only when you are establishing the plant. This one plant went all the way to the first frost.  More on this one in another post. (I have a post that I am working on about the new plants I tried this year).











So this was what I was able to harvest from my ginger.... I fear this is the best I will be able to do here in Zone 6. I understand that ginger needs five solid months of heat. I think I came pretty close to that this summer but still no luck. Oh well.

It has become something of a tradition for me to plant garlic on Columbus day. The kids have a day off from school so I am home anyway. 

 I am trying to be more organized with rotating my crops. What this means is that this next year my alliums  (i.e. garlic and onions) have to move to a section inside my fenced in garden. I went back and forth on this because garlic is one of the few things that the deer just won't touch so there is no need to put it behind the deer fence. However last winter the deer did trample all over the garlic (but the garlic still came up). At the end of the day I have a lot of heavy feeding crops so really I did need to rotate the alliums (alliums are not heavy feeders).   

Anyway I have one new garlic this year... music garlic. I have had my eye on this one for a few years now and this year I went ahead and bought it. These cloves are enormous and they are supposed to retain a good flavor (I haven't tried it yet). The garlic bulbs only contain maybe 5-6 cloves which is not a lot but they are really big.





















These are my spainish roja's.... they were my star garlic this last year. I still can't believe these bulbs came out of my garden. I know the first frost is already here however if anyone wants to try growing this garlic let me know I can send you some.