Quiet October

There is not much going on in the garden at the moment.  I've cleaned out a good portion of the beds, with the few remaining squash and melons ready to be removed at any time.  I just thought I'd take a picture of the trellis to show how well the Morning Glories did this year.  

Considering they need bascially zero attention, they really did a great job of climbing, and providing a nice canopy of shade under the trellis.  I'd like to eventually have Wisteria instead, but for now the Morning Glory is a nice stand in.

I also did a quick project the other day I wanted to document.  I made a teepee out of the old hardwood stakes that were left over when I pulled out the tomatoes.  I put it in place of that old ladder, which never looked very good anyway.

Most of the big sunflowers have whithered, but a few of the smaller ones are still going strong.

I Dream of Coldframes

Every year around this time I start to get an itch for some good ol'fashioned cold weather gardening.  As the tomatoes and other warm weather crops fall by the wayside I tend to find myself wishing that fall and winter were more then just 'cleanup' season in the garden.

One of my first gardening books was Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman, and it is good enough to make any gardener start dreaming about coldframes, greenhouses and fresh salad all winter long.  His other book, The New Organic Grower, is equally as good and I can't recommend it highly enough. 

Maybe eventually I'll find some ways to work in some coldframes and the like, but until then I'll have to just keep on dreaming.