Septembering in the garden

So much going on at the end of a late summer. I have denuded my tomatoes, hoping to evade the dreaded blight by removing the leaves that so willingly transmit the spores. Not a pretty sight, unless you're fond of green tomatoes.



The oca is rampant. No other word for it. Hoping I'll be able to catch the harvest before it gets too frosty. This mass of greenery erupted from three tiny tubers, each about half an inch long, planted early last spring.



The harvest, September 3, while the blackberries were still edible. I have in my basket: (front row L-R) collard greens, watermelon radish, yellow transparent apples, cucumber grown in a wine barrel, broccoli and yellow zucchini grown in pots, red onion & Egyptian nodding onion, Bedfordshire onion, shallot; (front row) scarlet runner beans, Black Trifele tomato, Flamme tomato, Speckled Roman tomato, cherry tomato, Himalayan blackberries.



How lovely is the watermelon radish?



Three cucumber plants in three different locations (one in a wine barrel; two in raised beds) are all bearing fruit. the one in the darkest part of the garden is of course the slowest. The one in the wine barrel raced ahead of the one in the raised bed under cover, but raised bed under cover plant is now proving the most fruitful.



The peppers looked like they would never get going, tiny and slug-eaten for most of their childhood, but they have picked up and produced some very large fruits.. now taking forever to ripen.



The slug-bitten cabbage is finally starting to find its head.



Abundance of mint, chocolate and peppermint. The peppermint died off during the summer but then revived for a second crop.



Tiny diamond eggplants, growing in a pot with some beets.



And sweet potatoes flowering and leafing and hopefully tubing peacefully in their 5-gallon pails.