Today I thought I was going to be writing about my potato harvest and comparing my covered side with my uncovered side and the differences, if any. But, from Sunday to yesterday, we have had quite a lot of rain and the garden is very wet. It’s not a great day for picking potatoes. It’s sunny today though, so hopefully tomorrow it’ll be dryer and we’ll be able to get out and get that done. Sunday I’ll have the results.

In the meantime, I have been working on cleaning out my greenhouse. I still have some tomatoes that are on the vine ripening, but the plants themselves look pretty sad. It has been down to the mid 40’s some nights inside the greenhouse, but on a sunny day, it’ll still get up into the 90’s. But, the plants seem to know their time is short.

I talked about my experiment growing a late round of carrots and greens. I am thinking that’s not going to happen. I had spinach pop up within a few days of planting, but it hasn’t grown much since. My lettuce never grew. I reseeded it about 10 days ago, and there’s still not much happening there.

My carrots have sprouted, but just like the spinach, they haven’t grown much since. The spinach and carrots have been planted for close to a month, so I would’ve thought I’d have seen more growth by now, especially with the spinach. I won’t keep heat in the greenhouse past the tomatoes ripening unless I see lots of growth between now and then.

One thing I forgot to do before I planted any of these second crops though was to add more composted manure to the soil. It may be a nutrient issue at this point. I am still trying to decide if it’s worth it to add some sort of fertilizer or if I’m just done.

I also have herbs left growing in my greenhouse. They don’t seem to be affected much by the large shifts in temperature. I have been slowly harvesting them and getting them preserved. This summer I purchased a freeze dryer, but we hadn’t gotten it going until just a few days ago. I have been running the herbs through there as I pull them out of the beds.

This fall I would really like to get the beds cleared out, and get some manure back in the beds and mixed in before everything freezes. The composting manure pile is thawed out, which it won’t be next spring, and the beds will be open and ready shortly. That way I can just start planting this next spring as early as I can.

The other thing I would like to get hauled back into my greenhouse is my pots. I started 5 pots of flowers in my greenhouse last spring, and by the time I brought them outside they were absolutely beautiful. The pots that were already outside I planted in early June, and they just never did get as full or pretty as the others. I’d like to get compost added to those as well so they’re ready.

Last year, because we had a wedding in the greenhouse in late September, I didn’t get my beds put away very well. Plus, most of the beds didn’t have soil. That led to a late start this spring. This year I want to be a little more thoughtful about how I’m shutting things down so I can be much more prepared to get things going next spring.

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