I went out to the garden this morning to find that all the leaves on the new baby garbanzo plants had been completely munched. Not sure if it was the quail or something else like insects. (I’d made cute little scarecrows out of old CDs, but they haven’t deterred the quail.)

So today, Brad built the first of our mini-hoophouses. This idea came from our friend Edwin. Here is a marvelous post on how to make these as well as some of the challenges of farming here. Because this design is round and low to the ground, it is relatively wind-resistant, an important consideration here.

Oh, and yes, this is another bed. We harvested the first round of garlic and replanted the bed with garbanzos.

In the meantime, the tomatoes are thriving, and there is more lettuce and tat soi than we can eat. It is lush and delicious.

We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two weeks on gardening. We dug two new beds and expanded the one in front of the greenhouse. This involves not only digging but filtering all the dirt (we estimate the soil here is about 25% rock) and enriching it with compost.

These beds have been planted with edamame, anaheim chiles, beans, and cucumbers. (This is in front of the two allumium beds.)

This bed (covered with a garden blanket) is half tat soi and half lettuce.

Brad also made these ingenious little circles for planting squash and melons. Half have been planted and half are still to be done. Drip irrigation all around.

This area is behind the batteryhouse by the solar panels. We've christened it "squashville."

In the greenhouse, I still have greens growing, which we have an overabundance of right now. We also have herbs and green onions there, and the first of the tomatoes have been transplanted from the house. I hope to have them all moved in the next two weeks.

The first baby tomatoes in the greenhouse

All in all, we now have about 375 square feet under cultivation, up from under 200 last year.

And the cactuses? Well, we’re still waiting eagerly.

Today was fall harvest day for the squash.

The big green striped squash are Sonoran squash. Believe it or not, we didn’t plant any. We planted all butternut. But the butternut these came from were growing close to Sonoran squash, and I understand that they can cross-breed. I guess this is evidence of that.

After harvest, we put in a second bed of garlic and shallots for next year. Brad is getting very good at the alliums.

While we were planting, we heard the first sandhill cranes of the season flying overhead. A definite sign that fall is here!

Our tomatoes are still producing prolifically, and I have fall crops of lettuce and spinach coming up.

It is also apple time.

We’ll be making lots of apple pie filling, applesauce, and hopefully apple butter in the next week or two.

That’s about it from here on the homestead for now! :)

Things are growing like crazy in this heat.

Brad harvested his garlic. (This is only about a third of it.)

We’ve been eating lots of peas.

The tomato plants have about 20 small green tomatoes growing.

And there are 5 or so little eggplants.

We’ve planted beans and cucumbers, which are growing great, and melons and winter squash, which aren’t up yet. We’re still cutting lettuce and wondering if it will ever stop growing or get bitter.

Despite two snowfalls, weeks of below-freezing nighttime temperatures, and no irrigation for over a month, our garden has been thriving.

Today, I cut down all the greens and turned them over to get ready for spring.

We also tackled another project I’ve been wanting to do. You might remember that we built the beds with railroad ties as borders (railroad ties that Brad had gone to a fair bit of trouble to get). Later, I heard from a couple people that railroad ties are treated with nasty chemicals. I tried to think they were overreacting. Then I heard a show on “You Bet Your Garden” — not a particularly radical show — in which the host said he would never, ever use railroad ties for anything. He went on and on.

OK, so maybe we’d need to get rid of them.

I dreaded telling Brad, but predictably he said it was no big deal. So we got some redwood planks, and today put them in, along with a little sitting bench since we sometimes have lunch in the greenhouse.

I’m already starting to think about what we’ll plant for spring.