Sometime in late September/early October I planted lettuce, collards, red and green cabbage, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, cauliflower, and strawberries. I harvested most of the lettuce, collards and chard right before and after Thanksgiving due to travel plans and the predicted snowstorm (never arrived). The leafy greans were awesome. Lots of production and delicious. I spotted one small stalk of broccoli a few days ago and the cabbages are starting to form very small heads.
I planted two Zephirine-Drouhin roses over here by the deck at the end of October. My parents came to check out how the weeds were doing and very kindly bought me these two plants to balance out the weeds vs. planned equation in the garden. This variety is thornless and should grow very well over here and eventually I’ll train it to grow up over the top of the deck. The man at the nursery only wanted to sell me one plant since he said they can grow “15 by 15 in one year.” He also said they didn’t flower very well. Maybe he didn’t even want to sell me one plant. I had researched this variety so I insisted. We’ll see what happens…
The cardboard was used to stop the spread of the Bermuda grass and protect the ground from more weeds than I could handle. Cultivating weeds is an art and you don’t want to have more than you can take care of or they might get neglected and die. So down went all the cardboard (it helped that we moved in and unpacked all our moving boxes) we had over the most Bermuda grass-infested areas.
Here are a few pics of the garden with some of the plants I’ve mentioned as well as the cardboard. A repairman looked at the garden the other day and not knowing it was mine asked, “What are _they_ doing over there?” in a very scornful voice. Well, just trying to make way for new weeds!
You can see how much the cool weather crops (lettuce, cabbage, broc, cauli, collards) have grown since the veggie post.
Butterflies and hummingbirds don’t mind weeds so the two corners near the street are dedicated to these lovely creatures of flight. One corner was planted in September with coral honeysuckle vine (on a vertical pole), butterfly bush, lantana, purple coneflower, and purple winecup. The plants are still small and it looks a little scraggly but I am looking forward to the spring when it should all fill out and mature.
I was so inspired by the plans we had made for the garden that after Chloe fled the heat for the more verdant and cool surroundings of the Northeast I spent a few days clearing out all the weeds to make room new round of cool weather volunteer plants as well as some planned plantings. Check out the before pics here.
Mostly Weeds 
