Heading into Fall

On January 24th, I posted a picture of spinach growing in our cold frames to illustrate how you can continue to garden through the winter.  After we pulled the spinach out of the cold frames this spring, we planted tomatoes in them.   This worked out well because we could close the lids when the plants were small to protect them against late frosts.

The tomato plants did quite well, but quit producing when the hot weather hit and have suffered for the last few weeks.  Usually tomatoes perk up when cooler weather comes and may put on a new crop of green tomatoes.  But these rarely have time to get ripe before it frosts.  So, this past weekend Tom and I pulled them up and planted lettuce seed. 

Even though it is still hot and seems like summer will never end, the days are getting shorter, the shadows are getting longer and it is time to plant a fall garden.  With lettuce, you have to protect it from the heat and water it every day until it gets established.  We have "shade" cloth that we put over the beds.  We leave the lids up and clip the shade cloth to the frame with large plastic spring clips like this:

I've been very diligent to go out and water the beds every evening and today I was rewarded by seeing tiny lettuce plants.

You can click on the picture to enlarge it and see the little plants better.

These plants will grow very rapidly when the weather cools off and we should have some nice lettuce to sell at the Farmers Market later this fall. 

After you garden for a few years, you get in tune with how the seasons ebb and flow.  And you learn to anticipate the new vegetables and fruits that come with the arrival of each one.  Just as I anticipated and craved fresh blackberries in June, I now look forward to fresh lettuce in a few weeks.