Gardening in the "short days"

The days are really getting shorter and it it obvious that time is also short to grow anything but greens in our garden. Above the collards are looking good but this photo doesn't really do them justice. We have had a couple of frosty mornings but there hasn't been a freeze. That could happen at any time.

Eggplants are still growing -- now better than when the weather was hot. The recent heavy rain washed up a ton of dirt on the leaves but they are still growing and look pretty hardy.

Our gourds look good but the vines are a bit ragged. I think we will have at least a dozen gourds of varying sizes. They may not be fully dried until the summer but I suppose we will harvest them pretty soon. I don't want to touch them until they are ready. I just don't have any experience with gourds.

Surprisingly we have some tomatoes. I am hoping they begin to ripen soon, but we need daylight to ripen them. We even have some volunteer tomatoes coming up over close to the pumpkin vine. I think the only way we will get any tomatoes on those vines is in a greenhouse -- and we don't have a greenhouse.

Okra doesn't like cold weather and we were lucky to be able to pick any this week. No doubt the okra will be gone very soon.

We have been babying our pumpkin and hoping it will continue to grow. It doesn't have the prettiest shape but it is the best pumpkin we have grown so far. We should be able to use it for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. It is bigger than it looks in this photo and really heavy.

We are still getting some squash but it really doesn't look very good overall. I am afraid we are getting some powdery mildew. Very disgusting.

Todd comes out to the garden to supervise. Good job Todd. He won't let me pet him but he often comes up behind me and touches my leg, then runs away -- kind of like a game of tag. When we work in the garden he watches everything we do very closely.

The cucumbers have been slowly growing. We haven't been bombarded with them but it has been nice to have a few for our salads.

Working in the garden in the evenings is a struggle because there isn't very much daylight after 7:00 p.m. The short days and less sun means our garden season will soon be coming to a close. We really don't mind having the rest from picking vegetables, but we will miss them when they are gone.