No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.-John Donne
I felt it today. I felt the heavy, clingy, southern summer heat waver a bit. The highs have come down into the low 90’s and signaled it’s time to start preparing for the fall crops. I have never been a fan of fall. I grow my pumpkins in the spring, before the squash bugs come out and I prefer the verdancy of spring and summer. I’ve always considered autumn to be the bright yellow yield sign warning me that dreaded winter is coming, the dying foliage a depressing display of decline. And don’t get me started about the loss of daylight. I am up by 5:15. I wander around bumping into things and fumbling with cleaning until the sun comes up. If you saw me, you’d likely think I was drunk. When the sun isn’t up for hours, I’m a miserable somnambulist.
Here, though, fall offers a welcome respite from the weeds, the unrelenting heat and the insects that are sometimes too much, even for heat-loving me.
The peak of summer in the deep south, as opposed to cooler regions, is in many ways our least productive gardening season. The eggplant, peppers, sweet potatoes, melons and okra that don’t mind the heat, have to do battle with the weeds. Most other common vegetables hate months of intense sun and triple digit heat indexes. They wither and surrender no matter the water and we are not in a position to shade them all. At least in our mild winter, the greens and brassicas have less competition and that means less work for us.
So, this week, with a breeze and temps down in the low 90’s and upper 80’s, we are reclaiming the gardens.
The To-Do list:
Clear resting beds
Check and repair/move irrigation lines
Remove the spent plants
Clear walkways
Lay what wood chip we have left
Direct sow beans and collard greens
Broadcast the next round of cover crop and rake the area
Take cuttings from the tomatoes and start them
Start fall seeds inside (onions, kohlrabi, herbs etc)
Prepare compost tea
Next month we will transplant the starts, direct sow root veggies, lettuces, and peas as well as start brassicas inside.
Starting seeds inside prevents gaps in the beds due to uneven germination and allows us to keep the tender starts from becoming guinea food so we use this method as much as possible but it isn’t necessary for everyone.
Fall starts with a lot of work but it pays off and doesn’t leave you feeling like some sort of weeding Sisyphus.
Not done…so not done.
So bring on the dying leaves, the fake pumpkin flavored everything, the blasted bulky clothing and the near constant darkness because when this month is over, I will have earned a long sleep.
Chew on this:
Tanja Taljaard explains yet another benefit of contact with healthy soil:
Soil can help with depression.
Sunrise love from the farm
Happy eating, Katy
Katy Had a Little Farm 
My favorite season, my favorite poem:
To Autumn
By John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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Beautiful! Thank you for sharing! Maybe I will learn to love fall.
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