winding down

The vegetable garden is close to over.

I still have to bring in potatoes, onions, leeks and carrots. The onions mostly are still green and growing, which they usually aren't this late in the season. The leeks, also, are still going well. The potatoes have all died back, but having taken a root cellar course, I found out that potatoes and carrots – which also are still green and growing – store better in the ground than in the root cellar, so it is best to harvest them late.

I am going to have to change my practices for potatoes next year.

Eric Sideman wrote an interesting piece about late blight in the latest Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners newsletter. He said that you should not put tomato and potato leaves in your compost, which has been the standard rule. And you should let all plant debris freeze, which kills late blight. But he also said late blight can survive from year to year in potatoes left in the ground over the winter

It has been my practice to let volunteer potatoes grow, and I usually dig them for early July potatoes. But next year I will have to pull them out early and destroy them so the late blight – which I think but am not sure was in my garden this year – does not survive.

And people who save their own potatoes for seed should not do it next year. I always purchase professionall prepared seed potatoes, anyway, but I know people who don't

The flower gardens also look a little sad. The dahlias are still going strong, and the hydrangeas stand up well. And we have some Chelone, also called turtlehead, and nasturtiums blooming here and there. We don't grow phlox, but I have seen some in other peoples gardens. And some people have chrysanthemums that actually come back year to year, but we don't.

Last Sunday's column is more instruction on digging and dividing perennials and creating new garden beds. The column this coming Sunday is ideas on what to grow – if anything – under trees. People keep asking me what will grow there, and the short answer is not much. But I provide some ideas.

Oh, yes. The fishing trip was good. I caught fish every day, but the college friend I was fishing with caught more. My biggest was a 15-inch landlocked salmon, he caught a 22-inch landlocked salmon. His big one was the only one we ate. But I supplied the potatoes and green beans from our garden.