Whew. What a week! It’s been a bit crazy around here with all the giveaway craziness (have you entered yet??) but I am so glad the weekend is here! After several weeks of temps in the mid-seventies during the day and 50’s at night, our fall finally seems to be setting in. The last 3 days have been grey and much cooler — and so windy that our shutters have been rattling almost nonstop and all of our sunflowers have finally fallen over.

Aside from the wind, this is the typical fall weather I’m now used to in Frankfurt, which really isn’t all that fab. But we’ve been needing the rain because our rain collection barrels were starting to dry up and I have been so busy lately that I really wasn’t concentrating much on watering plants. But despite my neglect, and the suddenly cool temps again, our little seedlings are still growing.

Fall is growing a bit more subdued than spring growing because it seems like everything takes so long to get going. Or maybe I’m just impatient. But it seems that with the shorter days and the cooler weather, the carrots are just creeping along and I have my doubts about whether or not the broccoli or brussel sprouts will become anything.

But hey, live and learn, right? Since I have never really been able to find any of those wonderful frost date charts for Germany (like you can find millions of times over online for the US), we just sorta have to wing and try to recall when our first frost was over the last few years… and we’re really not that good about it. Even though I keep a garden journal, by this time of the year, I’ve usually abandoned my meticulous weekly updates and instead just stop writing altogether. Horrible how that works out since the later dates and harvest info are so important as well.

We actually still have quite a few bell peppers growing; the most that have been on the plant all year.

And there are a bunch of eggplants on our plant as well, but I fear the cool weather will be killing it off soon. It’s already been our best year for eggplant ever, even after having several plants in our greenhouse a few years ago. But the skin of our eggplants has turned brown, and I’m not sure if that’s because of the cooler weather or a water issue or something entirely different. But I did learn while googling the issue that putting eggplant slices on your skin and letting the juice absorb for about 15 minutes can actually help reduce your freckles. Who knew?

I have been saving lots of seeds from our tomato plants, jalapenos, squash and other such things. I may very well have a seed collectors addiction. I can never really have enough seeds — and I just love being able to save seeds from things we’ve grown ourselves to create new plants with them next year! And a couple of our lettuce plants are about to go to seed which I’ve been waiting for since I used quite a few seeds this year already.

The caterpillars did a real number on the lettuce table and they haven’t quite bounced back yet. So I’ve got the lid down again and hope that they will get a bit of growth going once again. But at least the lamb’s lettuce seems to be liking the weather now.

What are you up to in your garden these days? Or are you just cleaning up and waiting for the new seed catalogs with anticipation? 😉

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