garden accomplishments

Yesterday my son and I worked a couple hours in the garden. We got a lot done:

GARLIC: We cleared out the weeds and old vines from the squash bed, flattened the soil and then my son planted 40 cloves of garlic. He also transplanted the garlic volunteers that came up this fall in last year's bed. I need to figure out how many more cloves to plant. I think maybe 20 or 30 more. Its really nice to be planting cloves I grew - FREE! (I paid a lot for these last year.)

SALT HAY: I picked up two bales of salt marsh hay ($11.99/bale at Nunan's, Georgetown MA). We spread hay on the newly panted garlic bed, and on my beds of fall greens, and perennial flowers. Looks nice - all tucked in now. (The only thing I dislike about hay mulch is having to pull it out of lettuce when I harvest it. It gets all over the place and doesn't rinse off like dirt does.)

CLEARED BEANS: We have had a couple mild frosts and the beans were hit this time.We pulled off the big purple hyacinth bean on my fence. Also I pulled my shell beans and shelled about of cup of beans. I'm looking forward to a small but nice bowl of beans, maybe with bacon, kale and potatoes.

FROSTED PLANTS: I am noticing that my counter on my sidebar now says its 2 weeks past our usual first fall frost date. We are lucky to have a somewhat late frost. Its been dipping close to frost temperature many nights and giving us very light and scattered frosts, but so far, not a hard freeze. Yesterday, the nasturtiums and marigolds looked singed (as well as the beans) so we pulled these. But lots of plants will are growing: beets, carrots, cabbages, arugula, lettuces, spinach, hyssop, dill, borage, and peas. It seems that pea foliage is less frost sensitive than the pods. My pea plants have lots of pods, but they look like they've been damaged by the cold. I'll try to post a photo of these.