I just got these from High Mowing Organic Seeds in the mail.

I couldn’t resist ordering a few “new” seeds for this fall/winter season instead of hoping the ones in my aging stash were still good. They probably are, mostly, but I was out of kale seeds and while I was at it, couldn’t resist this highly recommended Winter Density Lettuce, a fennel, and a few other prize picks.

I’m priming some spinach and chard seeds (more on seed priming in a post to come soon) and plan to plant the spinach under a shade cloth. I have this one and it’s very sturdy-looking. Stainless hoops and strong netting.

If you haven’t read it already, Eliot Coleman’s Four-Season Harvest is a must-have for learning about getting the most out of the entire gardening year. And he gardens in Maine, so that’s saying something. It’s worth it for Appendix A alone, an Artichoke to Watercress guide to individual edibles including planting distance, crop rotation, growing tips, storage tips and recommended varieties of each. Did you know beets can benefit from a sprinkling of borax to help replace boron in the soil? There’s also a section on ‘garden helpers’–ducks in the garden. And compost . . .

And,. . .  oh wow, a girl can dream, right?

This British greenhouse is as purty as a speckled pup. On the website there’s a photo of the foundation for this structure, just the foundation, that is nearly as beautiful as the greenhouse itself.

However, this is far more realistic for me:

If you squint real hard, they’re almost the same thing, right? OK, no, but I bet the vegetables grown in them taste exactly the same.

After all this carrying on about fall gardening, I’d better have a few success stories to tell later. Fingers still crossed.