Well so far so good. This is my first attempt at growing cool weather crops... in cool weather. Planted everything the third weekend in August and everything seems to be coming up pretty strong. Since I had good luck over the Summer with sugar snap peas and since my family uniformly LOVES to eat them, I dedicated the two small beds entirely to peas. The larger bed I split three ways into carrots, lettuce and spinach (all considered cool weather crops).
Thank you neighbor's pine tree for the free mulch.
I used a legume innoculant on the snap peas which is supposed to produce a steady stream of nitrogen throughout the growth cycle... seems to be doing its job!
A young carrot top... before his career tanked!
A baby lettuce... the lettuce and spinach both have been somewhat frustrating in that even though I planted the seeds all at the same time, the sprouts just came up haphazardly over the course of a few weeks, so I have plants in varying stages of development.
Spinach... my favorite salad.
One of the larger lettuce plants (still only half grown)
The big uprights are from my tomatoes... just never took them down.
The sugar snap pea vines are looking very good and I hope we have a bumper crop (the peas freeze well so we'll get stocked up for the winter).
A sea of carrots! I made sure to use phosphorus this time and NO extra nitrogen... last year my carrots were giant bushes of green with pathetic little orange lumps the size of grapes under the surface.I will report again when I have something to harvest.
