Garden Cleanup and Broccoli Harvesting

It has been a while since my last post, but now that the season is pretty much over there is not much to write about.  Luckily I grew a fall crop and my broccoli is starting to come through and I have been harvesting them since the beginning of October.

I also decided that it was time to begin cleaning up the garden.  This means removing my pole bean trellis, digging up roots such as my sunflowers, peppers, eggplants, and many others.  I will probably rake up the loose debris in the garden as well so that I don’t have to do much when the season starts again next year.

So far I have been picking some broccoli from each harvest and I have probably had about four to five harvests.  Today was the most that I have harvested this season with several heads and many small side shoots.

I am not sure how much broccoli I will get this season, but I think that their potential is going to be limited due to the cold temperatures.  For now they are still growing and producing and that is what I am looking for.  As long as they continue to grow side shoots that is all I can hope for.

The plants are doing quite well and most of them have very large leaves which leads me to think that more broccoli is going to come.  Just before the heads began to grow I did side dress them with some blood meal which should help them to produce more side shoots and darker leaves.

Once I pick all the heads I think then I should be seeing harvests with lots of broccoli.  For now there are some plants that are still growing heads and some of them are quite big.  I have one that is about the size of my hand.  If all my broccoli heads were like this I would definitely be pleased with the harvest this year.

I am still in the process of cleaning the entire garden, but I was able to get some of the harder stuff done specifically the bean trellis.  I think putting it up is much harder than taking it down.  Right now I am drying the seeds from some of the larger pods that I picked at the end of the season.

Last week a frost came and did away with all my plants except for broccoli and my pepper plants still had fruit on them.  Luckily the peppers were not harmed and I picked them right away.  If I leave them out there they would begin to rot and that is why I picked them.